Mercedes claimed the strongest starting positions of any team in Canada but have some doubts over how strong they will be in the race.
George Russell took his first pole position of the season while team mate Andrea Kimi Antonelli qualified on the second row for only the second time this year. But although the W16 is enjoying its most competitive outing of the year in Montreal, Russell says it remains highly sensitive to changes in track conditions.
“We had good race pace on Friday but it depends on the temperature,” he explained. “In practice, it was five degrees cooler than it was today and the car was easily in its sweet spot. Now, it can easily go the other way tomorrow in the race.
“If the sun comes out – it’s a two o’clock race, it was 4 o’clock [start for] qualifying today – that makes quite a bit of difference. So it’s not going to be an easy race.
“I’ve got some really quick guys around me. We don’t know if it’s going to be a one-stop or a two-stop, so it won’t be straightforward.”
Even a slight variation in track surface temperature could have a significant bearing on Mercedes’ performance, said Russell.
“At the moment the tyres aren’t really overheating. Any circuits we go to where the tyres aren’t overheating, such as here, such as Vegas last year, we performed really well. McLaren, we saw yesterday they were really on the back foot.
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“So it depends: it’s something literally as simple as it clouding over could give us a two-tenths advantage over McLaren. If the sun comes out, that sort of neutralises everything.
“I’d love to say something more than that — it’s a little bit out of our hands right now. But regardless of the conditions, we’re obviously starting in the best place.”
Teams are also unsure what to expect from the hard tyre compound in the race, said Russell. “We don’t know how the race is going to pan out because the hard tyre is the one that we’re all going to use at some point in the race, and no one knows if that will do the distance to give you a one-stop or not,” he said. “So there’s that curveball in there.”
Russell also started from pole position at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve last year but finished third in the rain-affected race. “Last year was a poor race for me and I felt it could’ve gone differently,” he admitted.
“So obviously I’ll be doing my best to make up for last year’s losses. But it’s totally different this year.”
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