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Five things we learnt from Canadian GP qualifying

Mercedes make it a year on pole; McLaren seemingly go backwards; Power unit proves decisive; Lotus back on form; Sainz impresses again

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Lewis Hamilto celebrates pole position in Canada

Mercedes’ pole streak runneth over

Lewis Hamilton’s 44th career pole position in Montreal didn’t only have statistical significance for the man himself, it also brought up a landmark for the Mercedes team themselves. The world champions' 18th pole in a row moved them past the original McLaren-Honda vintage into sole possession of second place in the all-time list. Only Williams, who topped an astonishing 24 qualifying sessions in succession through a combination of Nigel Mansell, Riccardo Patrese, Alain Prost and Damon Hill, over an unbeatable 15-month period in 1992-93, now stand ahead of F1's latest all-conquering juggernaut.

In fact, Mercedes can now record a full year’s worth of poles themselves in Austria in two weeks’ time, the race last season where Williams’ Felipe Massa (albeit still in a Merc-powered car) became the only driver other than Hamilton or Nico Rosberg to set the Saturday pace in F1’s latest turbo era. On the evidence of Montreal – in fact the whole season to date – a spate of mechanical problems would surely have to intervene to deny them such a notable achievement given the W06’s single-lap advantage has averaged out at 0.495 seconds from 2015’s get-go in Australia.

Some could be uncharitable and suggest Mercedes’ streak has been a rather easy one to achieve given their sustained car advantage, but in the sometimes harum-scarum world of F1’s knockout qualifying format which has now and then made fools of the best of them, the impending 12-month invincible run should nonetheless be one to applaud.

Jenson Button gets a lift to the pits after breaking down during final practice for the Canadian GP

They knew it’d be bad… but this bad?

Before McLaren had even left Monaco they were already downplaying their chances in Canada, but did they really think it would be this bad? After registering their first points of the season in Monte Carlo, it was back to the old story of unreliability and a lack of straight-line speed in Montreal.

More from Canadian Gp 2015

First Fernando Alonso needed an engine change on Saturday morning which robbed him of most of P3 and then Button developed an electrical problem which damaged his internal combustion engine, forcing him out of qualifying while the unit was changed.

That unreliability doesn’t bode well for a team who had focussed on that area of development prior to the event and Honda’s engine token spend doesn’t seem to have had the desired effect. Button will start from the back on Sunday and isn’t expecting to make progress. "I don’t think I’ll be overtaking many cars tomorrow," he told Sky Sports F1.

Alonso scrapped into Q2 courtesy of problems for Sebastian Vettel and Felipe Massa, otherwise it was highly likely both McLaren cars would have been out in Q1 for the first time since China. McLaren were slow through the speed traps in qualifying, Alonso over 11km/h down on Valtteri Bottas's Williams during Q1 and only 2.1km/h faster than Will Stevens’ Manor with a 2014 Ferrari engine. 

Sergio Perez

Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz (power unit)

Janis Joplin may not have been singing about F1 2015 when she recorded the single in 1970, but it can never have sung as true as in Canada this weekend when the Mercedes power unit was the only engine worth acquiring.

While Renault and Honda continued to struggle, only one of the cars powered by the Brixworth-built unit didn’t make it into Q3 and that was due to Felipe Massa having technical problems.

Force India were a prime example of the benefits of the Mercedes engine. Only twice this season have the team had a car in the top 10 in qualifying, with Nico Hulkenberg and Sergio Perez usually languishing towards the tail of Q2. Things looked even worse two races ago when both cars went out in Q1. Yet here they were in Canada fighting it out in the pole position shoot-out, with Nico beating both of the Renault-powered Red Bulls.

With a heavily revised car not planned to debut until the Austria test, that improvement can only be attributed to Montreal being an engine-dependant track. There was noticeable improvement at Lotus as well with a team you’d expect to be around the fifth row suddenly looking like they could challenge for the second row. Romain Grosjean even topped Q2.

And of course, as mentioned above, the two works Silver Arrows remained in a private duel at the head of the field using the same power unit.Ferrari and Honda may have spent engine tokens heading into this weekend, but there can be no doubt that the Mercedes unit remains the class of the field.

Pastor Maldonado at the wheel of the Lotus E23

Lotus clearly like Montreal

Lotus enjoyed their best qualifying session of the year so far on Saturday, with Romain Grosjean fifth fastest ahead of team-mate Pastor Maldonado. But is the performance circuit-specific? It might seem that way, with the advantage of Mercedes power clearly highlighted this weekend with, as stated above, both the works and customer teams dominating the top 10.

Felipe Massa would surely have been in there too but for the loss of power he suffered, and it would have been interesting to see whether the Brazilian, like Williams team-mate Valtteri Bottas, could have got ahead of the black and gold cars. As it is, they occupy the third row, with Grosjean well placed on a track he clearly enjoys and where he finished second - the joint-best result of his F1 career - in 2012.

Maldonado showed well last time out in Monaco – well he did in practice and qualifying anyway, before the inevitable race retirement – and his presence alongside Grosjean confirms the suspicions of technical director Nick Chester pre-race that because the E23 “performed well in the slow speed corners around Monaco, this combined with the long straights should suit us quite well”.

Which kind of sounds specific to Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, with its long straight, chicane, even longer straight, even tighter chicane layout. It’s a one-off, quirky sort of place, with an emphasis on low downforce. Yet according to Grosjean: “I’m hoping the downforce level we’re using here is the one we’ll probably use in Austria, in Spa and other tracks. So it’s good that we’re going well here and we should have some more chances in the next few grands prix.”

We shall see. In the meantime, Grosjean is hopefuly of making progress. "You can always dream about the podium, it’s not forbidden,” he told Sky Sports F1. "I think the key of the race is going to be the brakes, the tyres and the fuel consumption. It’s going to be a busy race, a lot to do, but hopefully we get lucky.”

Carlos Sainz

Carlos Sainz showing he’s the real deal too

So, it’s the lesser-heralded of Toro Rosso’s two exciting young rookies who continues to show that, for now at least, he is the team’s main man over a single qualifying lap. By outpacing Max Verstappen by two tenths of a second to pip his team-mate to 11th place on Saturday, Carlos Sainz now leads what’s turning into one of F1 2015’s most fascinating intra-team duels by a 5-2 margin with over a third of their debut seasons now complete.

Sainz’s latest impressive result came in the same week as he suggested in an interview with F1i that he had "clearly" been overlooked by people so far this season amid the sustained attention being placed on his team-mate. In fairness to Verstappen, it's neither his fault nor is it hard to see why so much focus has been placed on his 17-year-old shoulders. He is, and almost certainly will remain, F1’s youngest-ever driver and points-scorer and increasingly, as he showed both on-track in Monaco and then in the press conference room in Montreal on Thursday, he is not afraid to mix it with some of the grid’s more established names. But the Dutchman’s most headline-grabbing impact shouldn’t come at the expense of deserved praise for Sainz: in different ways both drivers have provided a breath of fresh air to F1.

But, as both qualifying and race results show so far, it’s Sainz who has more regularly got the job done, and with Verstappen to start near the back owing to his combined 15-place grid penalty, the 20-year-old is again best placed to deliver another points finish for the Red Bull juniors. Should he continue such points-scoring form, then it’s sure to mean that he isn’t overlooked by the masses for much longer. 

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