George Russell claimed pole position for the Sprint race in Friday’s qualifying session in Canada. The Englishman was slightly faster than his teammate Kimi Antonelli, securing Mercedes a front-row start for Saturday’s sprint race. Behind them was reigning world champion Lando Norris, who managed to stay ahead of his McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri.
As always in Sprint Qualifying, the first two sessions were run exclusively on one set per session of the Medium compound (C4). The ten drivers who progressed to SQ3 were then able to fit a new set of Soft tyres (C5), completing two flying laps.
On his second push lap, Russell set the fastest time of 1:12.965. He was therefore presented with the Pirelli Sprint Qualifying Award by Pirelli Motorsport Director Dario Marrafuschi.
In the first free practice session, which was interrupted twice by red flags, all three compounds were used. The Hard was the most popular choice, tested by every team except Racing Bulls and Cadillac. The Soft was the second most used option, while eight drivers also included the Medium in their programmes.
SIMONE BERRA – PIRELLI CHIEF ENGINEER
As is usually the case on Sprint-format weekends, the majority of teams used a set of Hard tyres for most of the free practice session, but the programmes varied from team to team. Some combined long runs with performance runs, while others preferred to focus mainly on the latter, probably with the aim of carefully assessing whether the developments introduced after Miami were effective on track.
It is clear that the cars have fully capitalised on the upgrades introduced in Montreal. Taking lap times as a reference, the gaps are markedly smaller than the roughly two-second margin to last year’s benchmarks that teams had projected in their pre-event simulations.
Graining, which has always been a feature of this circuit, is limited to the front-left tyre and therefore does not affect the rear axle, which is the limiting factor at this track. The characteristics of the circuit also provide little energy to the tyres, meaning they require extra care to be brought into the correct operating window.
We saw this in Sprint Qualifying, where careful management of the outlap was crucial in extracting the best lap from the two softer compounds. The same will apply tomorrow in qualifying for the race, although drivers should find the track in better condition than today. The asphalt is constantly evolving and will continue to improve over the coming days.
