Daniel Ricciardo won the Canadian Grand Prix on Sunday, breaking the Mercedes stranglehold on the Formula One circuit.
The Red Bull driver earned his first Formula One victory and the first win this year for any driver other than Mercedes’ Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton. Ricciardo passed Rosberg, the points leader and pole-sitter, with two laps to go. Hamilton went out in the 48th lap with a brake problem.
Rosberg finished second, easily protecting his lead in the championship standings. The German has 140 of a possible 175 points through seven races, with two victories and five second-place finishes. Hamilton remains second in the standings with 118 points.
Ricciardo moved up to third with 79 points, passing Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso, who was sixth and has 69 points.
Ricciardo may finally be coming out of the shadow of his more celebrated Red Bull teammate, the four-time defending Formula One champion Sebastian Vettel. The 24-year-old Australian now has two fourth places, two thirds and a victory in his last five races.
Drivers had to contend with track temperatures of 48 C at the start, on a sun-drenched day on the Ile de Notre Dame in the St. Lawrence River off downtown Montreal. The track, home to the Canadian Grand Prix since 1978, will get a face lift as part of a ten-year extension announced on Saturday to keep the race in town through 2024.
Mercedes has been dominating Formula One this season, winning the first six races and sweeping the top two in five of them to put Rosberg and Hamilton 1—2 atop the championship standings with nearly twice as many points as third-place Fernando Alonso.
The streak ended on Sunday when the two came tire-to-tire at Turn 7 and Hamilton was forced onto the grass to cut the corner of the chicane. But his car was smoking and within a lap the 2008 world champion a three-time winner in Montreal was out of the race.
At just the fourth turn on the 70-lap race, Max Chilton and Jules Bianchi collided, destroying Bianchi’s car and knocking them both out of the competition. Another crash marred the finish, when Felipe Massa drove right into the rear of Sergio Perez and sent the Mexican slamming into the wall.
Only 11 of the 22 cars finished the race.
