THE 2011 Canadian Grand Prix was one the longest races in the history of Formula1. Rain interruption meant that the race was red flagged for over 2 hours before restart. The race saw 5 Safety Car periods in total, which were due to driver incidents on track and only 17 out of 24 cars crossed the chequered flag, in a race that went on for over 5 hours!
Narain Karthikeyan not only managed to finish the wet-dry race, but also managed to register his best performance of the 2011 season yet. The Canadian GP weekend started on a positive note for Narain and HRT as they proclaimed that the 107% target laptime didn’t bother them much and that they had made enough progress to make it through the qualifying session.
Their proclamation was true on two counts – not only did both HRT cars qualify without trouble, but Narain’s team-mate Vitantonio Liuzzi managed to qualify ahead of both the Virgin Racing cars for the first time this year. Narain’s qualifying laptime was one tenth off his team-mate and started 2 spots behind in 23rd. A good improvement for Narain considering that he finished the first practice session on Friday a second behind Tonio.
Tonio and Narain proved the reliability of the HRT F-111 by bringing their cars to the finish in Canada. The race was a mix of wet and dry surface and finishing the race means that the car and its driver are confident of their machinery in changing weather conditions. Tonio finished 13th and Narain in 14th, ahead of the two Virgin Racing cars and the Team Lotus Racing car of Jarno Trulli. This finish by itself is commendable and Narain’s fans must be happy to see the team make progress.
Post-race Narain was handed a 20 second grid penalty for straight lining Turns 13 and 14, a move that the Stewards believe gave Narain unfair track advantage. As a result, Narain’s classification in the Canadian GP dropped down to 17th.
Force India too had a good start to their Canadian GP weekend. The circuit characteristics aid the VJM04 which has phenomenal straight line speed. Force India drivers were consistently crossing the speed trap with one of the fastest straight line speeds. This allowed Paul di Resta to qualify 11th and he missed breaking into the top 10 by 4 tenths. Resta has outqualified his team-mate Adrian Sutil 6 times out of 7 races this season.
The race too began on a positive note for the Force India drivers with both cars running in the top 10 post the restart. Resta ran as high as 5th position before a few rookie driving errors meant that slipped down the order. The Force India cars had a good chance of collecting points, but the tricky driving conditions and the mid-grid fight saw both drivers retire with accidents. Paul di Resta was classified 18th since he had covered 90% of the race distance and he also registered the 6th fastest lap of the race.
On the Indian Grand Prix front, there is more confusion that has been added to the dates. First the reinstatement of the Bahrain GP saw the Indian GP dates be pushed to mid-December. Now the recall of Bahrain has been cancelled, which means that the Indian GP will be held at its originally scheduled dates in October.
