After claiming an emphatic pole position on Saturday, Hamilton was peerless in the race, storming away to an unchallenged victory.

For title rival Vettel, however, Montreal was a race to forget. Things went awry for the Ferrari driver as soon as the opening corner, when his front wing was damaged as an aggressive Max Verstappen went by around the outside.

The first corner squeeze left Vettel fourth, but with a damaged wing that needed to be replaced.

In that endeavour he was assisted by the opening lap appearance of the Safety Car, due to a collision between Carlos Sainz’s Toro Rosso and Romain Grosjean’s Haas. Sainz, the instigator in the melee, ended up sliding out of control until he slammed into the Williams of innocent bystander Felipe Massa.

Hamilton’s only real challenge came early on from Verstappen. But that was shortlived when Verstappen’s Red Bull ground to a halt with an electrical problem.

From there a Mercedes one two was a formality. Daniel Ricciardo ended up a fine third place for Red Bull, in what was the Australian’s third such podium result in as many races.

Ricciardo – who shared his trademark podium ‘shoey’ champagne toast from one of his driving boots with actor Sir Patrick Stewart – was fortunate in that the following Force India pair of Sergio Perez and Esteban Ocon engaged their own civil war, with Perez refusing to move over for his team-mate despite Ocon enjoying fresher tyres and Perez demonstrating an inability to overtake Ricciardo.

In the end the Force India drivers were ambushed by a charging Vettel, who had stormed his way back up the order to salvage fourth place.