Mercedes are “very strong” despite slower times, warns Ricciardo

Daniel Ricciardo says Mercedes are the “favourites” for the Canadian Grand Prix despite Red Bull lapping quicker than them on Friday.

Mercedes did not run the quickest tyres available as they have brought fewer sets of the hyper-soft compounds than their rivals. But Ricciardo believes they are the team to beat.

“I think the opinion is now Mercedes look really strong,” said Ricciardo. “The time they did on the [ultra-softs] was quick. On the hypers they would have got in the one minute 11s.”

Ricciardo’s team mate Max Verstappen headed both practice sessions, setting a faster time of 1’12.198 in the afternoon. Ricciardo had a disrupted day due to electrical problems on his car but said he still doesn’t expect to need a new MGU-K which would leave him with a grid penalty.

“We didn’t have the smoothest day,” he said, “we had issues morning and afternoon. I did enough to feel what the car was like, I know the direction I want for the set-up.

Ricciardo said his problem related to the new power unit Renault has introduced in Canada. “We have the B-spec engine this weekend, the upgrade. I think just configuring a few things on that were not necessarily aligned so we just had to go through a bit of trial and error.”

“Tomorrow hopefully we’ll get a smooth FP3. We’ll probably have to force a long run to see what the tyres are doing. We didn’t really get a long run today. But Max’s pace was good and I think we’ll be OK.”

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