Pérez under pressure, Mercedes on the move, and more storylines for the Canadian Grand Prix

Photo by Eric Alonso/Getty Images

F1 is back this week with the Canadian Grand Prix, and here are the major storylines to watch

After a week off, Formula 1 is back this week with the Canadian Grand Prix. While there was concern early last week about whether the race would go forward, due to widespread wildfires raging through Canada, F1 calmed fears late last week about the Grand Prix taking place.

As the grid heads to Montreal, what are the major storylines to follow this week? Let’s dive in.

Will the Mercedes upgrades stick?

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One of the biggest storylines of the Spanish Grand Prix was the emergency of Mercedes. After months — and months — of debate over their zeropod design the team unveiled their upgrades at the Monaco Grand Prix, with a sidepod design similar to what we are seeing this year from teams like Alpine and Mercedes.

While that did not translate to immediate success in Monaco, Lewis Hamilton finished fourth and George Russell came across the line behind him in fifth, the team broke through in Barcelona, notching their first double podium of the season.

Are the Silver Arrows back, or was Barcelona a one-off event?

The team’s Trackside Engineering Director, Andrew Shovlin, opened the door to Barcelona possibly being a one-off this week. In the team’s debriefing session, Shovlin downplayed their chances in Montreal.

“There are more low-speed corners, quite a lot of straight-line full throttle and we would expect more of a challenge there,” he said. “We are not thinking that we are going in nipping at the heels of Red Bull. We are going in there prepared for a battle with Ferrari, Aston Martin and maybe even Alpine.”

Will Shovlin’s prediction come true, or will Mercedes have something else up their sleeves in Canada?

Can Sergio Pérez bounce back?

Coming out of the Miami Grand Prix, Sergio Pérez was just 14 points behind his Red Bull teammate Max Verstappen in the Drivers’ standings. And with the circuit heading to Monaco to test the Monte Carlo streets, there was every expectation that the “King of the Streets” would push even closer to Verstappen at the top of the table.

Two difficult races later, Pérez has now seen the gap to Verstappen bulge to 53 points. Pérez sound out early in Q1 in Monaco and was forced to start at the back of the field, and came away without a single point to show for his efforts. Then he failed to advance to Q3 in Barcelona and started 11th, and while he managed to fight through the field and finish fourth, he also saw Russell — who started behind him in P12 — beat him to the line and take third.

It was the first time all year a car started behind a Red Bull and beat them in a Grand Prix.

Now there are even rumblings about Pérez’s status with the team. Team Principal Christian Horner and Advisor Helmut Marko have both given the driver the vote of confidence in recent days, but with Red Bull looking for a second-straight Constructors’ title, they will be hoping Pérez regains his early-season form soon.

Because he has someone nipping at his heels …

Or can Fernando Alonso close the gap to second?

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As noted above, when the circuit left Miami behind, Pérez was just 14 points behind Verstappen at the top of the Drivers’ standings.

He was also 30 points clear of Fernando Alonso, with the Aston Martin driver in third place.

But thanks to Pérez’s recent struggles, Alonso has crept closer to Pérez, and now sits just 18 points behind him in the standings. While Alonso was not able to secure his 33rd career victory in his home race, he came across seventh, giving him points in each race this season.

Alonso’s history in Montreal is somewhat spotty. He finished ninth a season ago, but his last podium in the Canadian Grand Prix came back in 2013, when he finished second in the Drivers’ standings. But if Pérez continues to struggle, that could open the door for Alonso to inch even closer to the top of the standings.

However, following the finish in Barcelona, he had a clear message for the rest of the field:

Alonso also confirmed that Aston Martin would be bringing some upgrades to Montreal. Following the Spanish Grand Prix, the veteran driver had this to say:

“In Canada, we’ll bring more things, and in Silverstone too… It will all depend on which team is bringing updates. Even then, with a normal qualifying, we would have started alongside Hamilton and could have had some better chances.

“I think it’s just one race – and then in Canada, we crush them.”

With the way he has been driving this season, there is every reason to believe that Alonso will back up those words with results.

Can Ferrari figure it out?

Congratulations are in order for Ferrari, as the team secured a massive victory over the weekend in their return to the 24 Hours of Le Mans. It was the first win for Ferrari in 58 years, and it came after a 50-year absence from the event, as Ferrari last competed in Le Mans back in 1973.

Now Ferrari fans are hoping some of that success rubs off on the Scuderia.

Carlos Sainz Jr. finished fifth in Barcelona, while teammate Charles Leclerc struggled with his SF-23 all weekend and managed just an 11th-place finish. That, coupled with the double podium from Mercedes, has the team looking for answers.

“We are there in qualifying, and we are not there in the race,” said Team Principal Frederic Vasseur following the Spanish Grand Prix. “We are still inconsistent on the same car between compounds and sometimes between the same compounds.”

“We have 1,000 people [working] on this now and it is very difficult to understand and to fix it because it’s not always the same problem,” he added. “It’s true that in qualifying, you are in free air and in the race you are not. I think Charles struggled a lot in the first stint as he was a lot closer to the car in front of him. The main issue for us is not the potential on the lap on [high-speed] corners, the main issue is the inconsistency.”

Ferrari needs to figure this out, and fast.

Can Max Verstappen win his fourth-straight?

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Ok it is probably time to talk about Max.

With his victory in Barcelona, Verstappen secured his fifth win of the season, and his third-straight victory. Verstappen has finished either first or second in every single Grand Prix this season, sits atop the Drivers’ standings, and has helped Red Bull build a commanding lead in the Constructors’ standings.

He also returns to Montreal the defending champion, having won the 2022 Canadian Grand Prix in thrilling fashion, managing to hold off Sainz over the final 16 laps to secure the victory.

While Verstappen is well short of the record for consecutive victories — that having been set by Sebastian Vettel back in 2013 with nine-straight wins — he could inch closer to his own mark of five-straight wins, which he set a season ago with wins in France, Hungary, Belgium, Netherlands, and then Italy.

And given how well he is driving right now, that might be a safe bet.

Which rookie finally gets a point, De Vries or Sargent?

Having talked about the top of the table, let’s turn our eyes to the bottom. Only two drivers have yet to secure a single point this season, rookies Nyck de Vries and Logan Sargeant.

For de Vries, the last two races have shown signs of progress. After the Miami Grand Prix, where de Vries struggled in qualifying and placed 18th, he was given the “yellow card” by Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko. While that led to breathless speculation about a potential replacement at AlphaTauri — including from yours truly — de Vries has responded with stronger performances the past two races, which led to subsequent praise from Marko himself.

“This was by far his best weekend for AlphaTauri,” Marko told Motorsport.com following the Monaco Grand Prix, where de Vries advanced to Q2 and finished 12th. “Nyck was much closer to Yuki than before. This is what I want to see from him.”

Then there is Sargeant. The Williams rookie saw his best finish of his F1 career come in the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix, where he came across the line in P12. For those hoping that was a sign that he would be competitive this season, results since then have spoiled those hopes. After three-straight P16 finishes in Saudi Arabia, Australia and Azerbaijan, Sargeant finished 20th in Miami — his home Grand Prix — 18th in Monaco, and 20th again in Barcelona.

Despite the last-place finish in the Spanish Grand Prix, a week which included a crash in practice on Friday, Sargeant left Barcelona thinking he was close to getting things sorted out.

“I think it was a really good build-up on Friday,” he said following the Spanish Grand Prix. “I think the one mistake was very, very costly.

“I think [it] was the closest I have been, although it didn’t show in qualifying. I just think that mistake in P3, having to rush the car build back together was very, very costly. I think without that we would have been close to extracting everything.”

So which rookie breaks through for points first, and does that come this week?