Canadian GP Contenders vs. pretenders
Welcome to the first Contenders and Pretenders blog. In this blog I will give my takes on the GP with an overall ranking and I will talk more deeply with an Contender and an pretender.
First and foremost, let’s discuss the GP. The Canadian GP is top 5 of GPs on the schedule in my opinion, but this was a little boring due to the limitationsof the car. I give it a 6 out of 10, mostly because George Russell won, and in terms of the championship, this was a very significant race. George Russell put in one hell of a lap on Saturday that he converted into a race win. I am so happy that we now have a 4 drivers in a title race(even though we all know only a McLaren will win), but we can’t forget about the wreck between Piastri and Norris. Norris messed up big time that significantly hurt his championship odds. He is now 22 points behind Piastri and only 21 points ahead of Max. This was bound to happen but with how well they were battling the first part of the lap, I would've never guessed that Norris would just run into the back of Piastri. Its a big shock seeing this so early in the season. With that being said let’s get into my Contenders vs. Pretenders
Contenders: Mercedes
Is this really a surprise? They brought a rear suspension upgrade that was supposed to fix their tire degradation problems, and it seemed to work. We all know the Mercedes are kings of the cold but this GP was a good test of the upgrade. It could’ve been the type of tarmac that they race on but they definitely seemed to have better tire life that of the Red bulls, which is a big jump from previous weekends. There’s not much more that they could have done this weekend besides having a 1-2 but Kimi getting 3rd is probably the most impressive part of the weekend. He’s now the 3rd youngest podium finisher only behind Stroll and Max. Now the question is what’s next for Mercedes? Can they prove to contend even in the warmer temperatures? Time will tell.
Pretenders: Williams
There are so many teams that could’ve been included in this section, like with Alpine being the obvious pick. McLaren and Ferrari just not having the speed this weekend, but I chose Williams. Why Williams? Because Williams should at this point behind fighting for top 10s with both cars, and recently thev’ve have reliability issues, strategies problems and now this weekend it’s been both. Yes Williams are comfortably ahead of the rest in the constructors, however 3 of the 4 teams gained points on them this weekend. Sainz finished p10 but Albon started 9th, quickly fell to like 12th after a questionable overtake attempt and then a very bad strategy call left him last until he had to stop due to a reliability issue. This is now back to back DNFs for Albon and only 3 points for Williams in the last 3 races.