Rainy weather welcomed F1’s return to Montreal. Getting wet by intermittent rain, medias surrounded the Red Bull guys. The “disturbance” happened in Turkey had been solved by a meeting in their factory. Sebastian and Mark were taken a photo titled “S*** happened” with smiles but the medias’ interests never calmed down.
“What happened, happened so there's not much more to say,” said Sebastian in Montreal. “You can look at it from many different angles and you can't change it now, so looking back I wouldn't have done anything differently. What happened was bad for both of us and especially for the team because we gave a present to McLaren, but the most important thing is to move on.”
In addition to this, Mark explained “Sometimes when you are even more careful, different things happen. It was such a fine line what happened. The result wasn't great, one car didn't finish, and in the future there is a big chance we will race each other again.” Racing each other in the future too is promised. That’s the policy of the team.
The stage of the Canadian Grand Prix is an artificial island made for an Expo in 1967. Instead of its beautiful site with St Laurence River’s green and water, it’s a tough circuit for the drivers. There aren’t large run-off areas like the other circuits and concrete wall beckons the drivers. It’s difficult to use the RB6’s advantage without aero-demanding corners. Sebastian and Mark struggled with the slippery track because it makes difficult to warm up and last the tyres.
Sebastian only could get 3rd in the qualifying session.
“Yesterday's practice showed that the soft tyre is quite difficult to last for more than a couple of laps so we went out on the hard tyres, which take a while to come in. We knew that and to be honest I didn't get a good lap in until the very last lap, so it wasn't perfect timing, but it worked. My final lap wasn't that clean, so I'm happy I made it to third today; it's good.”
Mark grabbed 2nd and said “We thought we could do a good job in qualifying on the hard tyre and it turned out to be the case. We knew we would still try and have a crack at the front row, but we also knew the McLarens were very strong on the option tyre, which they elected to take”. Afterwards he had to change his gearbox for precaution and was dropped five grids down by this penalty.
McLaren put an end to Red Bull’s pole records from the beginning of this season and their speed never changed in the Sunday’s race. Sebastian chased the McLaren strenuously from his 2nd grid but he lost the chance at his pit stop and couldn’t finish the race better than 4th. Mark made a mistake on tyre choice and had to run with ruined ones for a long laps so he also couldn’t fight for the top spots. "Tyres played a huge role in the race today and, in the end, we did the best we could” Mark said.
Sebastian also had a gearbox failure and it made him give up. As long as see the results, it looks terrible weekend for the Red Bull but they are not disappointed. They are confident to be able to fight back to the top when they return to Europe.
“I had a gearbox problem from around halfway through the race, which meant I had to slow down.,” said Sebastian. “Also, due to lapped cars, I lost six seconds to Jenson in two laps, so I was unable to fight for the podium. But, it's good that we got these final positions. Coming into the weekend we were not the favourites, but actually we had very good pace and we surprised some people with that There is no reason to panic from our side, we have a very good car and we're looking ahead to Valencia."
