Not many drivers can say they won a Grand Prix after being last at over halfway, let alone having also been involved in two accidents and sustained a drive-through penalty during the race. Then again, the 2011 Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal was no ordinary race. From start to finish it ran for over four hours after racing was suspended for more than two hours partway through because of torrential rain. Once again rain equalled high drama in Formula One.
Runaway championship leader, Sebastian Vettel, put his Red Bull on pole ahead of the Ferraris of Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa with Vettel’s team-mate, Mark Webber, in fourth. The British McLaren pairing of Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button lined up fifth and seventh respectively. The race began behind the safety car, and once the action got under way for real on lap five, Hamilton and Webber immediately collided, relegating them to seventh and fourteenth. Three laps later, Hamilton, anxious to make up lost ground, tried to overtake his team-mate but the two came together and Hamilton hit the pit wall, forcing his retirement and the deployment of the safety car. Button was able to continue, but was given a drive-through penalty for speeding behind the safety car, and when he rejoined the race he was down in fifteenth. On lap 20 of the scheduled 70 laps, and with Vettel holding a commanding lead, another rainstorm made the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve so dangerous that the race was suspended. At that stage the chances of it ever being resumed looked as gloomy as the skies overhead.
Eventually the rain eased and the race was restarted behind the safety car with Vettel leading and Button down in tenth place. When the safety car came in, the circuit had dried out sufficiently for the drivers to change from full wet tyres to intermediates. Button did so on lap 36 but on exiting the pit lane, he tried to pass Alonso at Turn Three, the two cars touched and the Ferrari spun and beached, bringing out the safety car once more. Button was left with a puncture and after heading to the pits he found himself in twenty-first and last place. It seemed his day was over.
But the 2009 world champion was not one to give up without a fight and by lap 44 he had worked his way back up to fourteenth. Soon he was in the points and then, after more new tyres, he was up to fourth behind Vettel, Michael Schumacher’s Mercedes and Webber. A sixth safety car – following a collision between Nick Heidfeld’s Renault and Kamui Kobayashi’s Sauber – compacted the field and Button, now a man on a mission, managed to pass Webber and Schumacher on the same lap to move up to second. Vettel led him by 0.9 seconds starting the final lap, but, feeling the pressure for once, the reigning world champion ran wide at Turn Six and Button needed no second invitation. Button went on to crown his amazing comeback by taking the chequered flag for what he described as the best win of his career. Neither Hamilton nor Alonso attached any blame to Button for the accidents, with Hamilton generously hailing his team-mate’s drive as ‘utterly fantastic’.
McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh echoed those sentiments. ‘I think it was one of the best wins in the history of F1. From twenty-first I don’t know how many times he had to overtake people. This was 90 per cent him and 10 per cent the car. He did a great, great, great job.’ Vettel went on to take his second successive world title, but there was little doubt that Button’s was the drive of the season.