Vettel cruises to runaway victory in Canada

Such was Vettel’s initial pace that he seemed to be on a three-stop strategy, but it soon became clear that he wasn’t and that nobody was going to be able to challenge him. He was even able to brush a wall out on the back of the circuit on the 10th lap, and then make an uncharacteristic mistake in the first corner on the 52nd, without being even remotely threatened.

In his wake, Hamilton drove his heart out to leave Mercedes team mate Nico Rosberg well behind, and seemed to have second sewn up until Alonso launched a blistering attack in the final stint to slash a 10-second deficit to nothing. Hamilton lost time lapping both Alonso’s team mate Felipe Massa and Force India’s Adrian Sutil, and could not stop the Ferrari sweeping ahead on the 63rd lap. He counter-attacked on the 64th, and on both occasions the pair looked to make light contact, but both said later that they enjoyed their duel.

Red Bull’s Mark Webber should have been a contender for the podium too but his race was spoiled when Caterham’s Giedo van der Garde inadvertently turned into the hairpin with Webber alongside him on the 36th lap, damaging the Red Bull’s left-front endplate. That left him to take a distant fourth, well ahead of Rosberg.

Jean-Eric Vergne took an excellent sixth for Toro Rosso after the best race of his Formula One career, while Force India’s Paul di Resta started from 17th on Pirelli’s medium tyres and climbed to seventh before switching to the supersofts on the 56th lap. He maintained that position, but Sutil, who was lucky to get away with a spin in Turn 2 early on while fighting Bottas for sixth, lost his chance of eighth when he was given a drive-through penalty for ignoring blue flags for the Hamilton/Alonso fight. He finished 10th, behind Massa and Lotus's Kimi Raikkonen, whose solid chances in a one-stop race were ruined by a problem with the rear jack. The Finn did, however, equal Michael Schumacher’s record of 24 consecutive points finishes with his ninth place.

McLaren’s Sergio Perez and Jenson Button did two- and one-stop races respectively but couldn’t better 11th and 12th, the Englishman frustrated to find that the tyres would have withstood a faster lap time than he was given to adhere to in order to make the one-stop strategy feasible.

Lotus’s Romain Grosjean, like Di Resta, went a long way after starting on the medium tyres, but didn’t get much mileage out of his supersofts and had to stop for more mediums, dropping him from eighth to 13th ahead of third-place qualifier Valtteri Bottas whose Williams lacked the pace to stay near the front. Team mate Pastor Maldonado made an extra stop after getting a drive-through penalty for a collision with Sutil early on. Between them came Daniel Ricciardo’s Toro Rosso.

Jules Bianchi’s Marussia comfortably headed Charles Pic’s Caterham and team mate Max Chilton as the final finishers. Esteban Gutierrez crashed his Sauber at Turn 2 immediately after exiting the pits on the 64th lap, while team mate Nico Hulkenberg collided with Van der Garde as they braked for Turn 14. The Dutchman lost his front wing and didn’t make it home, while the German also stopped out on the track with a punctured left-rear tyre. Van der Garde was subsequently handed a five-place grid penalty for the next round for causing the incident.

The race puts Vettel well ahead in the drivers' championship with 132 points to Alonso’s 96, Raikkonen’s 88, Hamilton’s 77 and Webber’s 69, while in the constructor standings Red Bull have 201 to Ferrari’s 145, Mercedes’ 134 and Lotus’s 114.