How Canadian GP chaos helped Max Verstappen get his Miami payback on Lando Norris

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MONTREAL — So dominant has Max Verstappen been in Formula One through recent years, the sight of him having to work hard for victory feels like a rarity.

He was powerless to stop Lando Norris winning in Miami at the start of May, when a safety car period worked against him and gave the McLaren driver a free stop in the lead. Norris then pushed Verstappen all the way to the last lap at Imola, requiring the Dutchman to use all the talent that has made him a three-time world champion.

And in Montreal on Sunday, Verstappen was required to be at his very best once again. Through a wet and somewhat wild Canadian Grand Prix, the Red Bull driver was worked hard by the weather, by Norris and Mercedes’ George Russell, and by the lottery of incidents that ultimately paid him back for his Miami defeat.

Emerging from the car post-race, Verstappen had the extra buzz that comes from the heat of battle. “It’s a lot of fun to drive these kinds of races now and then,” he said.

“You don’t want it all the time, because that’s too stressful. But I had a lot of fun out there today.”

How Norris got into the fight

Montreal was never anticipated to be a strong track for Red Bull, owing to the curbs and bumps that have recently exposed the few weaknesses of the RB20 car. Yet there was at least the expectation of him being more in the hunt than in Monaco, where Red Bull was off the pace all weekend.

Qualifying bore that out as Verstappen set a lap time identical to that of Russell (who got pole by virtue of setting his time first), whom he closely tailed through the damp in the early part of the race. It wasn’t possible for Verstappen to look at a lunge or a move too soon given the tricky conditions, allowing Russell to play defense.

Norris took his time to get into play at the front, sitting over four seconds back from Russell and Verstappen when the Red Bull driver closed up on the rear of the Mercedes. As Russell slowed Verstappen behind, it allowed Norris to take as much as a second out of the duo in the first sector alone, quickly closing the gap.

A rare Verstappen mistake at the start of Lap 17 allowed Norris to close as the track continued to dry, prompting race control to activate DRS. With that armed, Norris sailed past Verstappen at the end of the back straight on Lap 20 before picking off Russell in the same spot one lap later.

Norris looked to check out at this point and streak clear. Similar to Imola in the dry, where he’d managed his hard tires enough to go on a late charge, Norris had pace in hand and found the grip that Verstappen simply could not to the tune of two seconds per lap. A 10-second lead put Norris in total control of the race.

“Things were going beautifully,” Norris said right after jumping out of his car. “Of course, it’s Montreal. There’s always something that’s got to come into play.”

The safety car giveth, the safety car taketh away

That something was a safety car which, much as it played into Norris’s hands in Miami for his maiden win a month ago, today, cruelly punished him here. Logan Sargeant’s spin exiting the first chicane left his Williams stranded in the middle of the track, forcing a safety car to be called for its clearance on Lap 25 of 70. While Verstappen, Russell and Oscar Piastri all dived into the pits immediately, Norris stayed out. It meant by the time he came in one lap later, he could only emerge third. A shot at victory had eluded him as Verstappen moved into the lead. “What goes around comes around,” said Verstappen’s race engineer, Gianpiero Lambiase, on the radio. “That’s Miami back.”

“Sometimes (it) works for you and sometimes (it) works against you,” Verstappen said. “This time, it was working for us. I guess in that sense it’s 1-1 now this year. That’s racing.”

A tough break for Norris? Well, not quite. Following the podium ceremony and with a little more time to think about the race, his mood seemed to have dimmed as he clocked that it was not exactly like Miami. He acknowledged that he and the team made the wrong call not to immediately pit.

“We didn’t do a good enough job as a team to box when we should have done, and not get stuck behind the safety car,” Norris said. “I don’t think it was a luck or unlucky kind of thing, I don’t think it was the same as Miami. It’s on me and on the team.

“We should have won today.”

The late pressure on Verstappen

It left Norris to settle back in behind Russell and watch Verstappen slowly eke out a lead as the track started to dry, allowing the field to consider a swap to slick tires. Verstappen pitted on Lap 45, closely tailed by Russell, but Norris swept through the chicane on intermediates as the skies continued to brighten.

The call seemed strange, given how quickly the track was drying and how vital each additional lap on slicks over the intermediates would be. McLaren’s thinking was that a worn intermediate at the end of a stint would still be better than the first lap or two on a cold, new slick. Norris pumped in a fastest lap, gaining a chunk of time through the wettest part of the circuit at Turns 1 and 2, and was told to “give it everything” before pitting. He had a chance to at least leapfrog Russell by getting the overcut, and unexpectedly managed to briefly pull clear of Verstappen’s Red Bull as he exited the pits.

Norris tried to put down the power, only for his cold tires to struggle on a damp patch as they searched for grip, lighting up and sending his McLaren sideways. Norris caught the snap perfectly, yet by the time he did, Verstappen had sailed clear.

But Norris never thought there was really a chance to jump Verstappen given the time to get his slicks up to temperature. “We were too far behind Max in the first place,” Norris said. “I probably pushed too late on that inter tire in the middle stint.”

One final opportunity came, again thanks to a stricken Williams. Carlos Sainz’s spinning Ferrari tagged Alex Albon and sent him into the wall, prompting the safety car to be called with 16 laps remaining. Given Verstappen was already concerned about his suspension stiffness, saying he couldn’t run over the curbs, to now have Norris right behind him on similarly-aged tires was pressure.

The reality was Verstappen had it all in hand, saying after the race the suspension was “not particularly an issue.” He aced the restart, going eight-tenths clear of Norris before they even reached the start/finish line before adding a second on the first green flag lap. Norris didn’t have anything to fight back.

“It’s never an easy race, it’s easy to make mistakes, especially on the inters when they were almost becoming slicks,” Verstappen said. “It was very easy to go off. That made it very difficult.”

A reminder of Verstappen’s class

Had things worked against Verstappen this weekend, F1 might be leaving Canada with the belief that a championship fight could be warming up after the first flickers reignited in Monaco.

Instead, we’re now faced with the opposite situation. Leclerc’s retirement meant Verstappen’s points lead has stretched out to 56 points, while Red Bull is now 49 clear of Ferrari in the constructors’ standings. The supposed ‘weak track’ for Red Bull delivered one of its biggest points gains of the season.

“Max was really on the top of his game,” Red Bull team principal Christian Horner told Sky Sports post-race. “These conditions are a nightmare for everybody. Max working with the pit wall, his engineers, we got the calls right, we made the right adjustments at the right time. To win that race was a tricky one.”

Verstappen acknowledged that things have changed since last year, when he won 19 races and Red Bull was untouchable. “For whatever reason, it’s all a bit more difficult this year,” he said. “Some things are a bit hard to explain as well. Sometimes it feels like you are in a bit of a spiral and it takes time to get out of it. We are for sure on top of everything. There are always things you can do better. But yeah, we’ll come out of this weekend, analyze everything again and try to improve.”

Room for improvement, yes, but this performance served a reminder, as if we needed it, of just how good Verstappen is. He thrives in races where he is pushed all the way, and displayed again on Sunday not only the immense skill he has in all conditions, but his mental capacity.

More races like this are a thrilling prospect for the coming months. Verstappen may have won again, but boy, was he made to work for it.

(Lead photo of Max Verstappen and Lando Noris: Mark Thompson/Getty Images)