After his somewhat underwhelming showing in Monaco two weeks earlier, despite still managing a third-place finish, Ryan Carabott returned to winning ways in Canada with an extremely controlled drive to take his fourth win out of five this season. Meanwhile, the winner of the last race, Jake Sammut, took another second-place finish, whilst Adrian Manduca claimed his first podium of this season to give himself a much-needed boost in this year’s V1 Malta Series.
Qualifying was one that began in the dry and eventually ended up wet. In the end, Carabott prevailed to take pole position by almost half a second from Red Bull driver Brandon Bonello. Mercedes driver Michael Pace, Alpine driver Manduca, and reigning champion Sammut rounded out the top 5 on the starting grid respectively.
Carabott got a clean start from pole position and led going into the first corner. Bonello in second did not get a terrible getaway, however, Pace got a superior one and overtook him into second place. At the back, meanwhile, there was a collision involving Aston Martin driver Ryan Zammit as he ran into the back of Mercedes driver Brendan Buhagiar because of the latter braking extremely early going into turn 1. Otherwise, the start was clean and proceeded smoothly.
On lap 5, Anthony Calabrese, making his debut in the V1 Malta Series and driving for Ferrari, crashed out and this led to the Safety Car being deployed. Most drivers elected to stay out, however, Wayne Micallef in the Alpha Tauri elected to pit for a set of medium tires having begun on a set of softs, and the same applied for Alpine driver Keith Muscat.
The Safety Car went in at the end of lap 7, and Carabott got a fantastic restart and kept his lead and was pulling away gradually from the cars right behind. On lap 9, Micallef had an incident that damaged his front wing, and a few laps later he retired from the race.
On lap 18, the order of the top 5 was as follows: Carabott, Manduca, Pace, Sammut, and Bonello. At the end of that lap, Sammut was the first of those frontrunners to make his pitstop – as he switched from a set of soft to medium tires. However, on entering the pits, he sped in the pit lane and was penalized with a 5-second time penalty as a result. Despite the penalty, this looked to be an extremely shrewd move as the rest of the frontrunners did not pit until quite a few laps later since they began the race on the medium tires, and as a result, Sammut managed to gain the lead of the race on the track.
However, in what was bad news for Sammut, on lap 24 Williams driver Jamie Zahra crashed out and caused the Safety Car to be deployed for the second time in the race. This led to Sammut pitting again for a second time, as well as serving the 5-second time penalty he was awarded earlier on for having sped in the pitlane. On the other hand, however, there was the positive that pitting under a Safety Car meant a reduced time loss for making an extra pit stop.
The Safety Car went in at the end of lap 27, and Sammut quickly got back past Red Bull driver Wayne Schembri (who was on medium tires and elected not to pit during the Safety Car) for 5th place. On lap 31, McLaren driver Simeon Nechev spun and this resulted in his team-mate Christian Caruana colliding with him, and as a consequence Williams driver Chris Ciantar collided with Caruana, which led to all 3 losing significant time and suffering considerable damage. In the end, Ciantar ended up retiring from the race. Sammut used his slightly fresher soft tires to then get past Manduca for fourth place on the road. At the end of the race, unfortunately, Bonello had a technical problem and lost their position on track to Sammut. However, out in front there was simply no stopping Carabott who crossed the line to take victory in Canada. Pace finished behind him in second on the road, however, was classified 6th due to a substantial time penalty. Sammut and Manduca completed the podium, with Bonello in 4th and Daryl Pace of Haas finishing an impressive 5th. The rest of the top 10 was as follows: Alfa Romeo driver Keith Vella, Muscat, Alpha Tauri driver Kurt Friggieri and Schembri.
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