F1 Paddock Notebook - Canadian GP Sunday

- It would have been a dream narrative for Lewis Hamilton to win in Canada after coming back from an unusual mistake in FP2 that meant he went to the race without a proper simulation under his belt, and later would suffer an hydraulic leak that forced Mercedes to do some extensive work to get the car ready in time to go to the grid. Not that the problems stopped there: as soon as the silver car stopped in the second grid slot, the mechanics started to frantically work in the brakes area.

- With a huge crowd trying to understand what was wrong, Lewis’s mechanics were bleeding the brakes after the driver had complained about them in the installation lap. They only fired the car up four minutes before they would have to stop working on the car. “And after all that, I had a misfire in the formation lap, and I was like ‘holy crap!’” Hamilton said.

- But at the end of the race, Sebastian Vettel was the one wishing things had gone differently following his controversial time penalty. After moving the number one board in front of his car and telling the fans that Hamilton shouldn’t be blamed by what happened, he made sure to quickly do the interviews, first with the TVs, then with print media, as the protocol states, despite initially appearing that he may skip the podium entirely after missing parc ferme.

- In the first TV interviews, Vettel sometimes seemed to be holding back the tears - I was in the second interview group and many times he had to stop halfway through the sentence and his voice would fail a little bit. He was clearly measuring every single word he said.

- Hamilton, on the other hand, was all smiles in the TV pen and even said he “didn’t care” about being booed, as the Canadian GP always has a lot of Ferrari fans and he was used to go through this kind of situation.

- But the paddock seemed to be divided: some believed that having a driver crossing the line first and not winning was not good for the sport and felt the regulations could have been interpreted in a slightly different way. And the more pragmatic figures - and F1 is full of them - saw it as a black and white matter: Vettel didn’t re-join the track safety, therefore he deserved the penalty.

- Away from all the drama, there were some happy faces after the race. Max Verstappen was relieved to have finished the race in the same place as he thinks he would have finished without the qualifying issues, and the Renault drivers were happy to have shown what they believe that was a step forward from the team, especially two weeks before their home GP. And Lance Stroll repeated his maiden home GP performance by finishing ninth, also after a difficult start of the year.

- The FIA checked over Lewis Hamilton's car after the race as is standard procedure when any changes are made after qualifying, ensuring the hydraulic system fitted was the same spec as the one that had been used in qualifying. It was, allaying any post-race fears some Hamilton fans may have held.

- Ferrari also confirmed its intention to appeal Vettel's time penalty (despite the regulations saying a five-second penalty cannot be appealed), giving it 96 hours to bring forward new evidence to formalise the appeal. The FIA issued the final race classification on Sunday night though, meaning the result itself cannot change.