Motorsports: Vettel scores his first Canadian Grand Prix Win

canadian grand prix vettel win f1 redbull montreal

Before today, Sebastian Vettel already had 28 grand prix wins to his illustrious career.  However, the 2013 Canadian Grand Prix was the first time he won at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal.  He did it in a commanding fashion by scoring the victory from pole and cruising across the finish line 14 seconds ahead of Fernando Alonso.

It wasn’t all straight forward and easy. Intermittent rain made Saturday qualifying extremely difficult.  Special shout out goes to Valtteri Bottas from team Williams, who piloted his rain tuned car to third qualifying spot.  Great result for the rookie from Finland.  All of qualifying was done on intermediate wet tires, but the conditions worsened towards the end of Q3 session.  Vettel admitted that we was a bit lucky to get a fast time in his first Q3 attempt.

Sunday’s race brought beautiful sunny weather and there was no shortage of action on the track.  Vettel was able to keep the lead through crucial turns 1 & 2 and started to pull away.  The Williams of Valtteri Bottas started falling down through the field as his car was lacking dry performance.  Alonso took advantage and started to move up from his sixth starting position.  His Ferrari fell into good pace, and he began methodically knock off Webber and Rosberg.  It took much longer to get closer to Hamilton, but Alonso was finally able to make the pass with eight laps remaining.

There was close racing throughout the field, and Felipe Massa (coming off another qualifying crash) made a pass on Raikkonen with just a little over one lap left in the race.  That pass was for eighth spot.

2013 Formula 1 Canadian Grand Prix Results (Top 10):

Sebastian Vettel 1:32:09.143
Fernando Alonso  +14.4 secs
Lewis Hamilton  +15.9 secs
Mark Webber  +25.7 secs
Nico Rosberg  +69.7 secs
Jean-Eric Vergne + 1 Lap
Paul di Resta + 1 Lap
Felipe Massa + 1 Lap
Kimi Raikkonen + 1 Lap
Adrian Sutil + 1 Lap

The 2013 season goes to legendary Silvestone circuit in three weeks time on June 30th.  Team TFLcar is looking forward to another big race on that day – the 2013 Pikes Peak International Hill Climb.

Andre Smirnov
Andre Smirnov

Andre Smirnov is a life-long automotive enthusiast, software engineer, writer, and reporter. He has been writing and reporting at TFLcar since 2011. When not working or spending time with the family – you can find him tinkering in the garage or scouring the internet and other media for various automotive, mechanical, and computer related information.