It was a Canadian Grand Prix that was disastrous for one Englishman, but certainly fell in place for another as McLaren's Jenson Button made a storming comeback for his first ever victory at the Gilles Villenenuve circuit.
The 2009 world champion came through from the back, mostly attributing to a collision with his teammate Lewis Hamilton and later with Fernando Alonso, to capitalise on leader Sebastian Vettel's mistake on the final lap when the German slid wide in the Turn 6 chicane.
His miraculous recovery told only half the story from a race that provided chaos from a torrential downpour that delayed a restart of the race by two hours, and several examples of disastrous overtaking attempts throughout the field.
Button was in the mire of the race's talking points, and on Lap 8 and defending sixth place from Lewis Hamilton on the pit straight, deviated towards the pit wall that left Hamilton no room to pass, consequently smashing his left rear axle and therefore retiring despite complaining to his team his car was still fit to continue. Hamilton was also in the wars on Lap 4, the first real racing lap as the race disappointingly started under the safety car, when a failed dive into Turn 1 sent Red Bull driver Mark Webber into a spin as he and Hamilton lost several positions.
With Button taking to the pits to assess the damage and change to intermediate tyres, the safety car made its entrance again to clear debris from the Hamilton incident. As Button was making his way back to the pack he incurred a pit lane penalty for speeding under safety car conditions. With Vettel in control, Webber and particularly Button, were sything their way through. The Brit caught his way up to eighth when a downpour, and subsequently a safety car and red flag, put paid to his progress.
After a two-hour halt waiting for the rain to abate, he restarted back in ninth in hunt of the uncompetitive Fernando Alonso on Lap 34. But the two collided three laps after the restart on the Turn 4 chicane, diving on the inside with Alonso refusing to budge, with Button returning back to the pits for the then fifth time with a puncture left front and a change to inters, and Alonso beaching his car on the high kerb.
The change to intermediates soon galvanised after the safety car intervention from the Lap 37 incident in an drying racetrack. The race evolved to the point where rain tyres quickly became uncompetitive and the likes of Button, Michael Schumacher, Webber were making strong headway with intermediates, and then to the soft slicks. Button surged to fourth until yet another safety car appearance came on Lap 56 when Nick Heidfeld clattered the back of Kamui Kobayashi and dislodging his front wing scarily under braking the following corner. The incident gave Button the opportunity to creep his way towards Webber and Schumacher, passing both using DRS as well as his supreme driving talent in evolving conditions, before pursuing Vettel with only five laps left.
The gap was only three seconds then soon the gap dissolved as Vettel, who was in reasonable comfort at the front the whole race, was a target for a determined Button, who had thought his chances of a strong diminish from the early stages. Vettel on colder tyres than Button's, ruefully dipped his right tyre off the racing line, causing him to slide and agonisingly see his McLaren rival breeze past him to victory.
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