Hamilton never overtook in the race. So, why the win for him? Because of some virtual potential that he could have overtaken and kept the lead. Which is ridiculous.
The penalty was stupid.
They should have forced Sebastian to move to the second place, so Sebastian could have had the chance to take the position back.
This is a known rule in F1, if you kept a place by acting unfairly, gaining an advantage leaving the track or blocking someone in that manor then give the position up, if he did that they wouldn't have penalised him.
Reality was Hamilton was faster, if he got ahead he'd have built a gap easily which is why they wouldn't even consider that.
Ex drivers are almost the worst people for judging things fairly. You have footballers saying that ain't a penalty, for something that clearly is, just because it's a situation they hated getting a penalty against them for rather than it actually being a bad call. Ex drivers are the same, they hate to get penalties for things like that but that doesn't make it wrong. Ex drivers are amongst the most biased and in my experience least likely to call things correctly, they also don't account for rule changes since they've been driving either. "that wasn't a penalty in my day", even if true, it's irrelevant, is it a penalty now.
The idea that vettel was out of control the whole time is basically just nonsense, you can see the slowmo replays from onboard Vettel. When he hits the track sure there is a kick, though you can argue part of that is he accelerates because he knows what's coming. But after that quick blast of counter steering to get control, he's in control, he turns quite hard so change his line from going straight into the wall but long before he gets there he straightens out the steering wheel. For me he's in complete control at this point, but rather than turning to not end up closer to the wall, he eases off the turn and that imo is to make sure Hamilton can't get through.
Several things that Vettel has said since are, I couldn't see Hamilton.... a guy right behind him for 10 laps, a blind man would know where he'd be at that point. That Hamilton could have gone around to the left.... just, no, at normal speed and making the corner then he can't at race speed just decide to go for off line because he has no clue that Vettel isn't going to do his best to not stay off the racing line. Later on he said something along the lines of these guys obviously don't know how hard it is to control the car one handed, while on the radio, with grass on the tires. So he accelerated (it would seem from the engine noise anyway) entering the track despite himself knowing grip would be worse than normal, he was on the radio which he's saying effected his ability to control the car.. strike 2 really. You're in an unsafe situation, you choose then to be on the radio when about to re-enter the track, and strike 3, you did it one handed, again in that situation? He's arguing he didn't re-enter the track unsafely, but has given reasons that he made it less safe.
Realistically for me he should have given up the place then fought for it, and when drivers don't do that they get a penalty. I think he had a snap of oversteer, caught it but didn't do much to leave space for Hamilton after he quite clearly had control of the car back. At the time when Hamilton finally had to back off and then Vettel moved another several inches over, such that if Hamilton hadn't backed out there would ahve been a crash, Vettel was not oversteering, he wasn't out of control and he was turning less than he previously was while still under control, meaning he could turn more and leave space but didn't because he knew Hamilton had the run at him and it was game over.
Meh. More importantly, tires are crap. Canada has been dire two years in a row, yet it was way better in 2017, it's not the cars, it's not the aero, it's the tires, they didn't work well today. Hards faster than softs, no ability to push the softs to be faster, softs went plenty long if you wanted them to without really losing performance again, mediums and harders able to be pushed harder. Very few cars were able to make passes and again it's not aero or regulations around the cars, they did way way better in 2017. The tires changed in 2018 and LOADS of tracks got much much worse, and 2019 has made a them worse again. Going back to 2018 tires won't help because they were crap last year.
This race was a borefest for the most part, just people not pushing and going long, unable to push the tires to go faster. At the very least they need to return to 2017 tires, they didn't degrade and were too hard... but they could actually still be pushed hard and the softer compounds were still faster than the harder ones, the drivers were still able to push hard to catch up if the car was there.
The big and completely overshadowed story is the tires are once again unfit for purpose.
