How Vettel and Ferrari parried Hamilton's 'great blow'

Lewis Hamilton's commanding Canadian Grand Prix victory was a vital step in redressing the balance in the battle to become the 2017 Formula 1 world champion.

After the travails of Monaco two weeks earlier - where Sebastian Vettel won convincingly, Mercedes looked lost and Hamilton finished a lowly seventh - Hamilton needed a big weekend in Montreal to get his F1 season back on track.

He achieved just that, praising his Mercedes team for responding to a crushing defeat in Monte Carlo in a manner that put him firmly back into contention.

Hamilton's performance, particularly during the intense final moments of qualifying that were key to the outcome of this race, was, as Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff put it, "stellar".

There aren't many drivers around who can trade blows with Hamilton at his best. Vettel is one of the privileged few - especially armed as he is with a Ferrari as superb as this year's SF70H.

And although first-corner shenanigans with Max Verstappen's Red Bull ultimately prevented a full-blooded fight between Hamilton and Vettel in Montreal, the way Vettel recovered to within a sniff of a podium showed the true grit of a champion.

This sort of damage limitation is just as vital to a title challenge as the days when you are out in the lead and no one can touch you. Vettel's strength in adversity ensured he left Canada with his points lead only halved, when at one stage it looked as though it could disappear completely.

VERSTAPPEN'S CAMEO

Vettel missed pole to Hamilton by three tenths of a second on Saturday, two of those tenths given away with a mistake at Turn 2.

But Vettel's starts have been stronger since Ferrari made tweaks to its car for May's Spanish GP and he must have fancied his chances of hassling Hamilton on the short run to the first corner.

The Ferrari didn't get a great launch off the grid, though, and as Vettel followed Hamilton into the braking zone for the first left-hander, he found himself under attack from both sides - pincered between Valtteri Bottas's Mercedes on the left and Verstappen's Red Bull to the right.

Red Bull boss Christian Horner called Verstappen's rocket-like start from fifth on the grid "magic". If Verstappen sees a gap, you can bet he will fire himself into it with the carefree confidence of a go-kart racer.

Verstappen darted between Kimi Raikkonen's pedestrian Ferrari and Bottas, then attacked Vettel on the outside of Turn 1. But as Verstappen turned sharply across the bows of Vettel's Ferrari, the Red Bull's left rear wheel connected with Vettel's right front wing endplate.

"I was focusing on Valtteri," Vettel said. "I didn't really have anywhere to go because Lewis was in front - so if I brake later, then I run into Lewis. And then Max took his chance on the outside and ran over our front wing.

"I don't think he did it on purpose because normally you get a puncture, so in that regard he was lucky he didn't get one, but we had damage on the front wing we didn't notice initially. That's why we missed the slot to come in during the safety car and have a free pitstop."

Horner said Verstappen didn't even feel the contact, which caused no damage to the Red Bull's tyre, and Ferrari initially left Vettel out because it hadn't noticed any substantial loss of downforce on his car.

But once back up to racing speeds after the safety car period called to clear the mess left by Carlos Sainz Jr's game of pinball with Romain Grosjean's Haas and Felipe Massa's Williams, the right part of Vettel's front wing disintegrated, so Ferrari had to call him in - unfortunately under racing conditions.

"The first lap of the race usually is quite messy because the tyres are cold, and especially today was windy," Vettel added.

"I felt something out of Turn 6/7, and then there was a safety car. I asked to check, and behind the safety car was so slow that you couldn't really feel the damage.

"Straight away [after the restart], I ran a bit deep into Turn 1 and felt I had an issue, and then again in 3, 4 and especially in 5 - which is usually easy flat - I couldn't [stay flat], I had to lift."

Vettel pitted at the end of lap five of 70, which dropped him to the back of the 18-car field, more than 10s adrift of the next highest placed runner - Pascal Wehrlein's Sauber.

Meanwhile, having fended off a brief challenge from Verstappen at the restart, Hamilton was stretching away gradually at the front. At this stage, things were looking decidedly shaky for Vettel's championship advantage.

THE VETTEL FIGHTBACK BEGINS

Vettel set about catching up to the pack and had just latched on to the back of Wehrlein when the battery on Verstappen's Renault engine failed at the start of lap 11.

That promoted Vettel to 17th place, and he gained two more positions thanks to Marcus Ericsson and Jolyon Palmer pitting under the virtual safety car.

The VSC period ended as Vettel was finishing his 13th lap and he immediately dispatched Wehrlein, before relieving Grosjean's repaired Haas of 13th place along the back straight next time around.

By the end of lap 18, Vettel had risen back into the points - passing Stoffel Vandoorne's McLaren-Honda, Daniil Kvyat's Toro Rosso and Nico Hulkenberg's Renault on consecutive laps to climb to 10th.

Within nine more laps, Vettel had cleared Lance Stroll's Williams, Kevin Magnussen's Haas and Fernando Alonso's McLaren-Honda and was back up to seventh.

Vettel's recovery looked fairly serene, but he was fighting against residual damage from that earlier incident with Verstappen, which Ferrari estimated was costing two tenths per lap in lost downforce.

"The car was not great," Vettel explained. "The pace was good but it was not the car I drove yesterday [in qualifying].

"We saw the loss, but when you're racing so many cars, you're full of adrenaline and you just get on with it. You adapt, but certainly it was not ideal."

THE ROAD TO RECOVERY GETS ROCKIER

Vettel's next challenge was to join the race-long battle between Daniel Ricciardo's Red Bull, the Force Indias of Sergio Perez and Esteban Ocon, and the sister Ferrari of Raikkonen, which lost ground early on to that poor start and a wild moment on the grass exiting Turn 8, in which Raikkonen was lucky not to crash.

With Raikkonen struggling to make an impression on the Force Indias, and Vettel closing but having to go "full speed" on his clapped out super-soft tyres to do so, Ferrari opted to switch strategies.

It brought both its drivers into the pits for fresher ultra-soft tyres in a bid to allow them to attack the cars ahead at the end of the race, when their rivals' own rubber would be well past its best.

"They were very quick down the straights," said Vettel of the Force Indias. "I thought I might have a chance, but the problem was they were - with Kimi - four cars in a train, and I was the fifth.

"It's very difficult because every car is giving the car behind a tow, so DRS or no DRS doesn't make much difference when you're fourth or fifth down the road.

"I had a similar pack of cars I fought through before, but obviously the [lap time] delta was bigger and I was quite a bit faster, whereas there was only five, six tenths per lap [difference to the Force Indias] - not enough to do something.

"Maybe I should have pitted sooner. We talked about it on the radio. I wanted to have a sniff first and see if I could do something, but I couldn't."

VETTEL SHOWS HIS CHAMPION'S METTLE

Raikkonen made his stop at the end of lap 41; Vettel's came at the end of lap 49, with Ferrari calculating Vettel would catch back up to the cars ahead and have eight laps left to fight his way through to the podium.

Vettel trailed Raikkonen by a shade under seven seconds with 20 laps to go, but that gap was down to little more than two when Raikkonen's brake-by-wire system overheated and failed, sending him skittling across the escape road at the final chicane at the end of lap 60.

This consigned Raikkonen to 10 laps of nursing his car home to the finish in seventh and boosted Vettel back into the top six.

Having just broken into the 1m14.9s for the first time in the race, Vettel now had to bridge the 5.2s deficit to the pack led by Ricciardo's third-placed Red Bull, which was struggling to lap quickly while hanging on to a set of well-worn soft Pirellis.

"I couldn't really get anything out of the soft," said Ricciardo, who was given the hardest compound to guarantee he could make the finish after stopping early on lap 18. "It was really hard to find the grip and quite easy to make a mistake."

Perez's super-soft shod Force India was struggling to make any impression, but Perez refused to accede to requests to let team-mate Ocon - who pitted 13 laps later than Perez and was on much fresher rubber - past to have a crack at the Red Bull.

If the Force Indias had worked together, Ocon might have reached the podium, but their squabbling allowed Vettel to home in and the Ferrari finally got its chance to attack at the end of lap 65, when Perez blocked Ocon's attempt to overtake at the final chicane.

Vettel got a run along the main straight and fired his Ferrari down Ocon's inside at Turn 1, nearly losing control on the dirty line and almost rear-ending Perez too. It was impressively committed stuff from a driver with so much to potentially lose in the title fight.

"Full risk, full on - I wanted to get past, full stop," said Vettel.

"I was surprised because I was so much faster and I thought it should be straightforward to pass them, but it's not just the tow effect with two cars in front of you, it's also that the loss of downforce is quite big, so I was sliding quite a lot.

"They had a run at each other into Turn 13/14 and I focused on the exit. I just committed halfway down the straight and I said, 'I go down the inside no matter what'."

Ocon took to the escape road as Vettel made his move and the dirt the Ferrari driver collected on his tyres led to a scruffy lap in the immediate aftermath. Vettel "nearly went into the wall" in Turn 4 and "nearly spun" again at Turn 8, where he was forced to cut the chicane.

That delayed his pass of the struggling Perez at the final chicane until lap 68, by which point Ricciardo had gained just enough breathing space to be safe in third.

Vettel pressed on, and cut a 1m14.719s personal best on the final lap, but fell six tenths short of completing his recovery drive with a podium finish.

"I think we had pace to do more than P4 - a lap longer we could've been third," Vettel rued. "But would, could, should... I think Mercedes was very strong, but they were untouched and could control the race."

MERCEDES CRUISES AND COLLECTS

Mercedes absolutely maximised its own performance to come away from Canada with its first one-two finish of the season.

Hamilton had little to do once Vettel dropped back and Verstappen dropped out, winning by almost 20s as Bottas leaked time on the soft tyre during his second stint.

HAMILTON VERSUS BOTTAS IN THE SECOND STINT

Hamilton pumped in the fastest lap of the race (a 1m14.551s) towards the end, which he said was more about collecting data for the engineers than simply doing it because he could. But to do it on tyres that were more than 30 laps old only served to underscore his superiority.

Hamilton called this "the most powerful weekend we've had", and although it's true Mercedes went ultimately unchallenged in the race, the team was undoubtedly back on form after struggling so badly to get the ultra-soft tyre to work in Monaco.

"People were working with the simulator - it ran 24/7 for 10 days in a row and nobody took a day off in that group," said Wolff of the transformation.

"There are no silver bullets in this sport. It is about analysing the data and making conclusions.

"We looked at all areas - there was no stone left unturned. It was aero, it was mechanical balance, it was set-up work, it was the tyres, the way the drivers drove the car."

Hamilton drove his brilliantly in Canada, but so too did Vettel - in far from ideal circumstances.

And while it was a shame not to see F1's two top title contenders go at it full-throttle for 70 laps - a fight Hamilton said he was "down for" before the start - it was possible to appreciate that both enjoyed a victory of sorts in this race.

Mercedes' one-two result delivered what Hamilton called a "great blow" to Ferrari in the championship, but Vettel's performance ensured that blow wasn't nearly as painful as it might otherwise have been.

He lives to fight another day in this enthralling and titanic contest between two of F1's best.