canadian grand prix

Well here's a novel thing.

I'm writing this at home on Sunday night. I often pre-write the later entries in the week, but this is the first time I've ever written one at home on a Sunday. Part of the reason for that is because I know I'm going to be mega busy on Monday, but the other part is that, in the background, the Canadian Grand Prix is on and nothing is happening.

That's not because it's been a boring race so far, it's because it's been red flagged, due to the weather. Now in the past a red flag used to mean the race was stopped, but nowadays it means it's paused, with the possibility of it being stopped later.

In this case, the heavens have opened in Canada and it's been chucking it down for the best part of an hour. They reckon it's going to get going again, but it's going to be very later. Indeed, as I type this the rain appears to be stopped, but there's usually a warning period before it actually kicks off.

Of course, rain always makes things more interesting, but sometimes it can be so heavy as to make it very unsafe. I mean, it's never safe in the rain, but not safe enough to race.

There was an added curiosity this year because of the change in tyre supplier to Pirelli so no-one had ever raced on their wet tyres. But they seem to have coped pretty well.

Canada doesn't normally need rain to make it interesting and it's certainly been an interesting race so far.

Lewis was in the thick of things, as per usual. He seemed to be a bit out of position from qualifying and there's a good chance that this was because McLaren pre-empted the rain and put on a higher down force rear wing than they would usually use at Canada. Canada is a high speed circuit with some very sharp bends. That means lower down force is needed so you can get good high speed on the straights.

Unfortunately, Lewis ended up crashing into Jenson

And that will probably do for my pre-writing - I'll just leave a bit of room to say how the race ended...

It ended very late - the broadcast started at 5pm, and they only crossed the line at 10pm - but it was well worth the wait, as it was a cracking race.

Most amazingly was Jenson Button, who suffered a drive through and, including that, went into the pits 6 times and ended up in last place behind a later safety car... and went on to win the race!

It was a remarkable performance with some excellent driving. It also again begs the question how did is happen? Was the McLaren that set up for the wet conditions? If so, an incredibly risky thing to do. Maybe the car is just that much better on this type of circuit? But then if it is, why the poor performance in qualifying?