For all the crushing symbolism of the records achieved by Verstappen and his team, Canada did offer a chink of light to their competitors.
At every other race this season, bar the Australian Grand Prix that finished behind a safety car, Red Bull have finished more than 20 seconds ahead of their rivals. On Sunday on the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, Verstappen’s margin over Alonso was less than 10.
Whether this was because the track did not suit the Red Bull’s characteristics, or because upgrades on the Aston Martin and Mercedes – Aston’s for this weekend; Mercedes’ in Monaco last month – had closed the gap, or a combination of both, is up for debate.
Verstappen said he “didn’t think it was one of our best days”. He was struggling to generate tyre temperature, he said, so lacking his usual grip. And Horner pointed out the track has a small number of corners in which Red Bull could gain their usual advantage, all of them slow – not their strongest suit.
But Verstappen did admit: “I also know with their upgrades they improved, so they for sure got closer to us.”
Red Bull’s rivals, though, are not about to get too excited. Alonso did say he thought he could beat Verstappen’s team-mate Sergio Perez to second in the championship. He is now only nine points behind after another difficult race for the Mexican, his third poor weekend in a row. But challenging Verstappen is a whole other matter.
Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff said: “We didn’t expect to perform in Canada because of how the car DNA is. It’s more (suited to) mid and high-speed corners. So it’s encouraging to be not so far away.
“But one must not forget Max is still having an easier time in the front, not cruising but still there is margin. So there is quite a gap to catch up.
“The margin is still too big to really think Max is under pressure. I don’t know how much it was this race – was it 0.2secs a lap? – but still far off.”
Aston Martin introduced a significant upgrade in Canada and Alonso said they had not had time to fully get on top of it. And after their major car redesign in Monaco two races ago, Mercedes have more upgrades coming for Silverstone in two races’ time and more again scheduled before the summer break.
“It’s just that the learnings have accelerated a lot since we changed some of the conceptual architecture,” Wolff said. “There should be decent steps coming in the next four races.”
Hamilton, too, is caught between optimism generated from recent progress and realism spawned by the sheer power of the Verstappen-Red Bull combination.
“It’s been a great weekend for us,” he said. “We are slowly chipping away. The Astons took a bit of a step ahead this weekend with the upgrade but we are working on having some more.
“We knew this would not be our strongest weekend as we struggle in the slower-speed corners, and that’s where I was losing to Fernando and Max on traction.
“We have a lot of work to do to add rear downforce and efficiency to the car. Max was a little bit gone. But our paces were a little bit closer today so we’re going in the right direction.”
