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Hamilton's Canadian Groundhog Day

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We arrived in Canada with the scintilating prospect of some top-notch inter-team rivalries at Red Bull and McLaren. In the end though it all came down to tyres. If that sounds a bit deflating (kersnik!), don't worry your pretty little head unduly. It most certainly wasn't.

Qualifying looked to be heading the usual direction (as in Red Bull's first and second) until Hamilton pulled a quick one out of his Mclaren and pipped them to pole, something he's rather good at round this circuit, this being his third pole here. A slight lack of juice meant he wound up pushing his car to try and get it back to the garage, but a £10,000 fine for running out of fuel probably wiped the grin off his face. Webber's 2nd place became 7th after a gearbox glitch, so Vettel and Alonso lined up behind Lewis. The Merc's were oddly off the pace, especially Schumi, who managecd only 13th. Never mind, he'd get his own back in the race...

The Canadian GP usually involves rergular appearances by the Safety Car, but not this year's race. It was anything but dull though, and an incident packed race was enlivened greatly by tyres that were wearing out a tad too quickly and causing wild variations in pace for the drivers as they lost grip. Liuzzi and Massa seemed to be in a private bumper-car race at the start, coming together three times before Tonio finall came off worse (and pointing the wrong way). With very early pit stops for some, a surprised Buemi even found himself leading at one point, whilst Michael first rather robustlt defended his podition against Kubica, before later squeezing his old team-mate Massa enough to put him off the track and requiring a new front wing. Petrov must have decided to see how many rules he could break in one weekend and received rwo drive-throughs, Kobayashi said "hello...argh" to the Wall Of Champions and we wound up thinking Webber was going to win. Unfortunately for the lanky Aussie his tyres were more knackered than me after watching someone run on the tele, and he began to lose pace. In the end, he finished a dissapointed 5th. Ahead of him, Hamilton won from Button, Alonso claimed 3rd after back-marker troubles and a run-in with Hamilton as they went wheel-to-wheel down the pit lane. Vettel was 4th and Rosberg (anyone remember seeing him?!) 6th.

Anyone know why the F1 Forum on the BBC's Red Button started, conked out... then started again?! Weird.

British Team first and second, British drivers first and second.

We may not be very good Footballerists, but we're prett decent at F1...

(Today's blog is (1) During the day as I'm waiting for the Gas Man to come and service the boiler (2) Typed up to the glory of Hall & Oates' classic H2O album (3) Typed by a knackered bloke who went out for an hour's yomp for the 2nd time in three days.)
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