Sebastian Vettel broke his duck in North America with a comfortable victory at the Canadian Grand Prix despite occasionally letting his concentration slip.
Red Bull’s triple world champion cruised to his 29th career win, taking the chequered flag 14.4 seconds clear of Fernando Alonso and extending his lead in the standings over the Spaniard to 36 points.
Although it was an easy victory, Vettel had the odd hiccup; skimming the wall at one point and over-running a turn when comfortably ahead.
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said: “It was a wake-up call for Sebastian because when you are so far ahead it is easy to lose concentration but it was flat out from everyone from start to finish here.”
Apart from those little mishaps, it was a perfect performance from Vettel (above), who made a clean getaway from pole position and led for almost the entire 70 laps. The only time he was not in front was for three laps when he made the first of his two pit stops to get fresh tyres and Lewis Hamilton briefly took over.
The German lapped half the field before reaching the halfway point of the race and only five cars finished on the lead lap at a Montreal street circuit bathed in sunshine after two days of rain.
Vettel said: “Finally we got our first win, it’s off the list now and it was great to win. The sun came out as well so it doesn’t get any better.
“We had good races here before but it didn’t come together to win, then I lost it in the last lap two years ago which was my fault but I made up for that this time.”
