Mercedes responded in the perfect way at the Canadian Grand Prix after their fiasco in Monaco as Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas managed a 1-2 finish for the first time this season. With that win, Hamilton is now just 12 points behind rival Sebastian Vettel and Mercedes have also regained their lead at the top of the constructors' championship leading Ferrari by eight points.
Vettel only managed to finish the race in the fourth position and finished outside the top two for the first time this season after a problem early on in the race forced him to go to the pits and change his front wing. The German teammate Kimi Raikkonen also struggled in Canada as he managed only a seventh-place finish.
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However, it was all Mercedes in Canada and the Silver Arrow and Hamilton, more importantly, will be hoping to continue at the next race in Azerbaijan. The Brit admitted Ferrari have been doing a fantastic job so far but Mercedes were the best in Montreal and described this blow to Ferrari as a punch from boxing legend Floyd Mayweather.
"It was our first one-two of the year so in terms of optimal points it was the most powerful weekend we've had, and we maximised it. If Ferrari do that to us, it's a blow. It's like a right hook. This time it was us punching like Mayweather. I hope this can continue throughout the year," Independent quoted Hamilton as saying.
After the disappointment in Monaco, Mercedes conducted a post-mortem investigation to find out the problem. One of the problems was the wind tunnel gave them one reading and the simulator gave them a different and along with that a mistake in setting up their car which prevented them getting Pirelli's supersoft and ultrasoft tires working in their limited temperature windows.
Hamilton said working in such a big company like Mercedes mistakes are bound to happen but is happy that they are where they belong at the moment. With the Azerbaijan Grand Prix up next, the three-time world champion will be hoping to get the better of Vettel again but a point to note here is that Hamilton struggled here last season.
The Brit admitted that he took his eye off the ball in the race last year and felt Mercedes will not have to do another post-mortem on that failure as his engineers did on Monaco's. The Azerbaijan Grand Prix is similar to the Russian Grand Prix where Hamilton struggled and could pose the same problems.
"I know what I did, what issues I had, at the time that I encountered them, so I don't have to go back over that. I don't have any worries about it. We learnt a lot from Monaco and we learnt a lot from this weekend. If we apply the same diligence that we did in the past two weeks after every single race, even after a win, we're sure that we can continue to do the best job that we can and to win," Hamilton said.
