A dirty and slippery Circuit Gilles Villeneuve caught out driver after driver during Friday’s two practice sessions. And it left the impression there is little to choose between the usual two top teams.
Lewis Hamilton was typically keen to stress the Ferrari’s chances after being outpaced by all of two-tenths of a second.
“The Ferraris are looking fast here,” he said. “As the times show, it’s super close at the top right now. I feel like we are still just a little bit behind the red cars at this early stage of the weekend.”
We’ve seen before Mercedes can usually find more from their qualifying set-up than Ferrari can, which raises the prospect of another closely-matched contest on Saturday and Sunday.
Ferrari made a point of completing their qualifying simulation runs slightly early. This allowed them to begin their race stints sooner, which paid off when Max Verstappen’s stoppage brought out the red flags.
That allowed Vettel to cover more ground on the super-soft than any other driver – 29 laps – giving the team very useful data for what should be their second of two stints on Sunday.
However Pirelli pointed out teams had also found good performance from the soft tyre. That could tempt some teams into making an early first pit stop and running until the end, particularly for a driver who qualified ‘out of position’ and is having difficulty gaining ground.
But despite the track’s reputation for producing dramatic races, Sergio Perez is pessimistic about how easy overtaking will be on Sunday.
“A strong qualifying performance tomorrow is going to be very important,” said Perez. “Overtaking here is not easy and I think the strategy options on Sunday will be quite limited.”
Red Bull endured a frustrating day in terms of reliability but should be able to take heart from their performance at a track which doesn’t ordinarily suit them. Verstappen was within half a second of the pace, and unlike Daniel Ricciardo wasn’t running all their new upgrades. Perhaps the upcoming trio of high-speed tracks won’t be so unrewarding for them after all.
Longest stint comparison – second practice
This chart shows all the drivers’ lap times (in seconds) during their longest unbroken stint. Very slow laps omitted. Scroll to zoom, drag to pan, right-click to reset:
Combined practice times
Pos | Driver | Car | FP1 | FP2 | Total laps |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Kimi Raikkonen | Ferrari | 1’14.230 | 1’12.935 | 69 |
2 | Lewis Hamilton | Mercedes | 1’13.809 | 1’13.150 | 77 |
3 | Sebastian Vettel | Ferrari | 1’14.007 | 1’13.200 | 69 |
4 | Valtteri Bottas | Mercedes | 1’14.046 | 1’13.310 | 63 |
5 | Max Verstappen | Red Bull-TAG Heuer | 1’14.861 | 1’13.388 | 44 |
6 | Felipe Massa | Williams-Mercedes | 1’15.106 | 1’14.063 | 69 |
7 | Fernando Alonso | McLaren-Honda | 1’16.521 | 1’14.245 | 32 |
8 | Esteban Ocon | Force India-Mercedes | 1’14.785 | 1’14.299 | 81 |
9 | Daniil Kvyat | Toro Rosso-Renault | 1’15.658 | 1’14.461 | 64 |
10 | Sergio Perez | Force India-Mercedes | 1’14.578 | 1’14.501 | 75 |
11 | Romain Grosjean | Haas-Ferrari | 1’16.345 | 1’14.566 | 51 |
12 | Nico Hulkenberg | Renault | 1’16.473 | 1’14.604 | 65 |
13 | Carlos Sainz Jnr | Toro Rosso-Renault | 1’14.621 | 44 | |
14 | Kevin Magnussen | Haas-Ferrari | 1’16.233 | 1’14.676 | 60 |
15 | Daniel Ricciardo | Red Bull-TAG Heuer | 1’15.441 | 1’15.072 | 31 |
16 | Jolyon Palmer | Renault | 1’17.004 | 1’15.127 | 66 |
17 | Lance Stroll | Williams-Mercedes | 1’16.313 | 1’15.240 | 76 |
18 | Marcus Ericsson | Sauber-Ferrari | 1’16.805 | 1’15.611 | 55 |
19 | Stoffel Vandoorne | McLaren-Honda | 1’15.943 | 1’15.624 | 49 |
20 | Pascal Wehrlein | Sauber-Ferrari | 1’17.606 | 1’16.308 | 59 |
2017 Canadian Grand Prix
- 2017 Canadian Grand Prix Predictions Championship results
- Hamilton takes first Driver of the Weekend win of 2017
- Canadian GP rated highly despite no fight at the front
- 2017 Canadian Grand Prix team radio transcript
- 2017 Canadian Grand Prix Star Performers
Sankalp
9th June 2017, 22:45
Smart money is still on Lulu. I expect Vettel to push him, but I think he’ll finish second with Bottas in 3rd.
Andy (@andybantam)
9th June 2017, 23:55
Erm, Lulu?
Sankalp
10th June 2017, 0:14
Don’t pretend you don’t know who I’m talking about. 😈
Greg
10th June 2017, 3:09
Hammy Lulu?
Hans (@hanswesterbeek)
10th June 2017, 10:57
Yeah, you know. Lulu, Vava, Sebeb, Kimi (that’ll do), Dannyric, EmVee, Checo, Oco, Roro, Kmag, Philip, Lala, Dakvy, Carl, Yolo, Hulk, Wehweh, and Mama. What’s the fuzz?
Hans (@hanswesterbeek)
10th June 2017, 10:59
I forgot two actually (because they usually only do lap one I guess). Nando-lolo and Stosto.
Arad (@just-an-fan)
10th June 2017, 12:22
Where is Mad Max?
Sensord4notbeingafanboi (@peartree)
10th June 2017, 6:00
I expect front row lockout, the power sensitivity is really high and Ferrari mustnt throw away reliability. You can tell from the lap charts, how much mileage does these pu have mercedes does more laps then is ferrari, renault and honda.
Arad (@just-an-fan)
10th June 2017, 12:24
Did that ever occur to you that Ferrari are playing mind games with this part change? Mercedes has one PU already done and dusted.
Fran
10th June 2017, 7:28
How do you work that one out?
Fran
10th June 2017, 7:30
That’s for the fan of Lulu who started this thread.
Sankalp
10th June 2017, 10:00
He has always had something extra in Canada. Check jos record here.
Sankalp
10th June 2017, 10:01
His*
Andre Furtado
9th June 2017, 23:58
Stroll just can’t even get close to massa huh that’s crazy bad. Imagine if he was against bottas like it was supposed to be originally.
Robbie (@robbie)
10th June 2017, 3:45
Yeah but I think we’ve established by now he and Vandoorne as another example, deserve some time and patience, no? Look at how tricky these tires are being. Consider that LS may be driving conservatively to learn but also to not set himself back with a shunt.
The Duke
10th June 2017, 4:56
Neither driver you mentioned deserves the seat.
Lower tier success means nothing in F1 at the end of the day. Many champions fall when they step into F1.
It’s he lack of hunger from either driver. There’s no killer instinct in either.
Neutron
10th June 2017, 5:29
@robbie Stroll’s best lap was on supersofts anyway, and Vandoorne’s was on softs.
Massa’s best lap on softs was a 1:15:3 and on ultras, it was 1:14:0. Vandoorne’s lap was a 1:15:5 or 1:15:6. Taking Massa’s delta as reference, he could have been very close to Alonso had he set a decent lap. McLaren seems to be surprisingly fast here.
Similarly taking other drivers as reference, Stroll would have found a 0.7-0.8 s on the ultras, meaning he would have been within 0.4s of Massa. Not bad for his first time around the track.
I hope both Vandoorne and Stroll do well here.
anon
10th June 2017, 8:26
@robbie, Keith did point out in his previous article that Stroll did not do a qualifying simulation run in that session whereas Massa did, meaning that a large chunk of that time difference is due to the performance offset between the soft tyre that Stroll was using and the ultrasoft tyre that Massa used for that qualifying style run.
Sensord4notbeingafanboi (@peartree)
10th June 2017, 6:03
Now imagine where would williams be with an Alonso, Ham, Danny Ric, max, vettel. Their car might aswell be as quick as the rbr but no great drivers there.
Fran
10th June 2017, 7:32
Massa is well up there this year and kept Bottas honest last
Jeffrey (@jeffreyj)
10th June 2017, 8:52
Not really Fran.
Last year Bottas scored 62% of the team points (85 to 53) and won the qualifying battle 17 to 4 (!).
Fran
10th June 2017, 9:19
Point proven, thanks for the back up stats
Ju88sy (@)
10th June 2017, 8:51
Right, if we assume Massa is showing the potential of the car, Stroll is wasting that seat currently. It’s sad to see for Williams.
Jeffrey (@jeffreyj)
10th June 2017, 8:54
I’d say Massa is kinda waisting that seat… Imho it’s pretty safe to say that had they had someone like Sainz and/or Hulkenberg or maybe Grosjean they’d be further up the road by now .
montreal95 (@montreal95)
10th June 2017, 10:36
@jeffreyj You can’t say that with any degree of certainty. I’d criticized Massa constantly last year, but these new cars are totally different and much closer in the way they need to be driven to the time when Massa was really good. Cars suiting or not suiting certain drivers natural driving style is a factor that gets constantly underestimated. Yes, the very rare super adaptable drivers like Alonso can drive anything super fast. But not being adaptable doesn’t mean you can’t be super fast if the car’s traits suit you. Not even the 2 other drivers currently on the grid considered to be candidates for the All Time Greats list, namely LH and SV are as adaptable, and struggle if the car doesn’t suit them. So, seeing that Stroll isn’t a benchmark we can’t know how well is Massa driving this year compared to last year.
Ju88sy (@)
10th June 2017, 13:28
@jeffreyj A little harsh! It’s hard to get a read on how Massa is doing this season with Stroll in the other seat. He appears to be doing an o.k. job. I also wonder what results we would see from the team with one of the drivers you mentioned in the seat.
Very hard to judge the pace of the Williams car this season. The money Stroll brings is clearly helping the team, but to no benefit with the woeful results.
mog
10th June 2017, 12:58
Ironically, its strolls millions that have gone towards producing a good car but strolls ability means they cant capitalise.
Fritz
10th June 2017, 10:45
2017 is not the year of the rookie. The cars are harder to master. I’ am not going do any assumptions at this end of the year, any conclusions on Strolls performance are in my opinion premature and based on last years gummy bear car specs.
Ju88sy (@)
10th June 2017, 13:36
True, difficult to see development in the rookies considering both Stroll and Vandoorne have three retirements a piece and one DNS!
We should perhaps reserve judgment until the first few races after the summer break!
Loup Garou (@loup-garou)
10th June 2017, 11:56
Mercs will certainly have the advantage during qualifying but on race trim Ferrari can close the gap IMO. But the team from Maranello need a well planned and flexible strategy and good driving if they even remotely hope to overcome the Silver Arrows on this track.
Scuderia-Racing-Or-Ping-Pong (@)
10th June 2017, 12:27
Friday practice has been a spinny one so far.