Nico Rosberg struggling since winning first four races of F1 season

A collision with Hamilton as they disputed the first corner behind the fast-starting Ferrari of Sebastian Vettel left Rosberg ninth on the first lap. “Today we made a mistake, but in other races everybody makes a mistake”.

Ferrari’s gamble on pitting Vettel twice did not pay off, with the four times world champion still looking for his first win of the campaign. “That’s why I couldn’t really attack Max properly”.

Valtteri Botta brought his Williams in third for a second straight year.

Hamilton made it through the 70 laps on the 2.71-mile (4.363-km) Circuit Gilles Villeneuve with one stop, finishing in 1 hour, 31 minutes, 5.296 seconds, about 5 seconds ahead of Vettel.

Hamilton also sensed a growing belief among his mechanics, many of whom worked with Rosberg a year ago. “Then the Virtual Safety Car came and freezes the gap at that point”.

Hamilton paid tribute to Muhammad Ali, whose funeral was held on Friday, quoting the boxing great as he took the chequered flag. But I don’t think they’re quite with us, three tenths [in qualifying]. “It was really, really weird”.

“I don’t know if I got a tailwind or a loss of downforce from being so close to him, but I just had understeer, and after watching it was the smallest tap”. It dropped him to 10th place.

Team principal Maurizio Arrivabene responded to criticism of Ferrari’s two-stop strategy, saying that “we overestimated the degradation of the tyres and this is the reason why we called him (Seb) in”. It was not a clean race from both of us. It was a great weekend for Ferrari.

If the safety auto period had lasted just a little longer we may have had different outcome.

From then on it was always an uphill battle for the German, he even spun out on the final lap when he tried to overtake Max Verstappen but lost his rear brakes in the process. Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen was sixth ahead of 2014 victor Daniel Ricciardo’s Red Bull.

Hamilton has taken 34 points out of Rosberg, who won the first four races, in just two weekends and will feel there is a growing momentum to his bid for a fourth drivers’ crown after a hard start to the campaign.

Vettel said he had a “gut feeling” he could pass the Mercedes off the start, but lost some of his lead at the first turn. “There were two seagulls”.

“Lewis was a bit too quick, that was the issue”, he said on the podium.