Red Bull team principal Christian Horner believes the next three races will be crucial in determining the success of the team's season.

After capitalising on retirements to claim a podium in Spain, Daniel Ricciardo followed that up with another in Monaco, as Red Bull enjoyed their most competitive form of the year to date.

However, the next three tracks on the calendar are much more power sensitive, meaning the deficiencies of the Renault engine again likely to hamper the RB13's competitiveness.

Looking back to the success in Monte Carlo, Horner claimed: "I think we are understanding the car better and developing the car better with better performance out of the car. That has worked to good effect on this circuit.

"I am a little worried for two weeks and four weeks time in Canada and Baku because there are completely different challenges. The next three circuits are actually really tough for us. Canada, Baku and Austria they are going to be our biggest challenges on the calendar bar Monza."

Indeed, so influential are the straights in Montreal and the streets of Azerbaijan's capital, the need to setup a car for top speed is only surpassed by Monza and, as Horner added: "If we can perform OK at those next three venues, then what is in the pipeline coming further in the season I think the second half of the season can be stronger than the first half."

Valtteri Bottas spent his Sunday in Monte Carlo fighting with both Red Bull's, though Ricciardo used strategy to get ahead of the Mercedes driver he was able to keep Max Verstappen behind him.

Giving his outlook on their potential threat in the coming race, the Finn said: "I reckon for now it's just Monaco because it's such a unique track.

"It's all about downforce and mechanical grip, and having a good car over the bumps and change of direction. Canada is very different, it's full of medium-speed corners and chicanes.

"I think they are going to be competitive sooner or later. They are a strong team and they can make very quick cars, so we should not underestimate them. But I reckon Canada will be a bit more tricky for them.”

Pascal Wehrlein will take to the grid for next weekend's Canadian Grand Prix after a scan on his back revealed no issues after his crash in Monaco.

The Sauber driver hit his head against the Tecpro protection as contact with Jenson Button at Portier saw the German's car pitched onto its side.

Though he was able to exit the car and walk away unaided after the incident, fears were raised Wehrlein may have reaggravated the injury he sustained in January's Race of Champions after a similarly violent crash saw him break three vertabrae in his spine and miss the opening three races of this season as a result.

However, on Thursday, those fears were unfounded after the 22-year-old tweeted: "Checks all done, see you in Montreal @SauberF1Team."

It is good news for Sauber as Wehrlein has impressed with an 11th on his return in Sochi followed by his best result in F1 of eighth in Spain, a result that moved the Swiss team ahead of McLaren in the Constructors' standings.

Lewis Hamilton has revealed the ongoing tyre problems he is enduring only applies to the ultra-soft compound.

The British driver is at the factory in Brackley in an effort to find a solution ahead of the Canadian Grand Prix next weekend, where the purple-marked rubber will again be used.

It follows two disappointing results at the last two races it was used, a fourth in Sochi and seventh in Monaco, compared to team-mate Valtteri Bottas who won in Russia and finished fourth in Monte Carlo.

“This issue with the tyres is a bit of an unknown," he was quoted by Crash.net, "it's only the ultra-soft that's been an issue. That's really what got I have got to try and understand with the team this week.

“There's so many things we have got to look into to try and understand why one car could make it work and the other couldn’t. Whether it's multiple laps, whether it's backing off, utilising the fronts more than the rears, whether it's making a more understeering car, an oversteering car, all these different things, brake balance, all these different things, we need to start looking into.”

The problems are also badly impacting Hamilton's championship chances with Sebastian Vettel currently 25 points clear of the three-time world champion. Add to that, the durability of the 2017 Pirelli tyres also likely mean the softest compounds will be used more frequently and the urgency to start optimising the performance becomes clearer.

“It's definitely going to be a difficult one,” Lewis claimed. “I really, really hope we get on top of that as soon as we get on top of that ultra-soft then I think that it puts us in a much better position to attack, an undercut and that's what we really need.

Focusing on next weekend's race, he added: “Montreal has been a great hunting ground for me in the past and I plan for it to continue. We are going to work very, very hard in the next two weeks to make sure the car is in a place to make sure we are ahead of those Ferraris.”

Former Formula 1 world champion and Indy 500 winner Mario Andretti believes Fernando Alonso is currently "wasting time" in F1 after his appearance at Indianapolis this past weekend.

The Spaniard has only one race finish to his name in F1 this year, coming at his home race in Spain as McLaren engine partner Honda struggles to overcome major issues with its power unit. 

It was those problems that mostly allowed Alonso to take part in the world's most famous oval race, with the British team returning to Indy as part of a tie-up with Andretti Autosport, run by Mario's son Michael.  

Ultimately, the venture would end in disappointment due to an engine failure 21 laps from the end but the double F1 champion left a lasting impression on everyone.

"Phenomenal," was how Andretti described Alonso's performance when asked by ESPN. "I'm so, so impressed, and not surprised one bit because he showed that poise from the very beginning at practice. He was out there maximising at all times possible, trying to test in all possible conditions.

"In the race I thought a lot of things would be thrown at him -- you know what, they did and he knew what to do with it. I'm totally impressed and that's what I feel so sorry for him to be let down on what should have been a really happy day. He would have had an interesting end to this race."

Considering how he'll be seen when he returns to the F1 paddock next week in Montreal, Mario added: "I guarantee that his stock is raised, no question about it. That respect, he deserves it. He did everything he needed to do, plus. So you can't beat that. There were no losers here. Except for that one engine!"

Now that the one-off appearance in IndyCar is done, attention will switch back to the ongoing situation in F1, with McLaren and Honda's struggles likely to continue and Alonso soon set to be considering his future as he is in the last year of his current contract with the Woking team.

"It is difficult," Andretti, who previously suggested Alonso should consider IndyCar in 2018, continued. "The only thing that keeps a driver happy is to be competitive, anything else is total frustration and you don't know who to take it out on! I feel sorry for him, he's at the top of his game and wasting time.

"McLaren is feeling the same pain obviously because that's a team that only knows how to be in front and they are paying the cost with him, that's why they backed him on this effort to try and get a smile on his face. He had it until the end of the race!

"It can only get better for him from here in terms of F1," he insisted, "it looks like they have a chassis for sure. The engine situation, it's going to get better. I'm sure he's going to be in the points before the season is out."

Lawrence Stroll, the father of Williams driver Lance Stroll, has defended his son ahead of his first home race in Canada next weekend.

The 18-year-old's arrival in Formula 1 this season has been met with a great deal of scepticism, with many believing the strong financial backing of his family, upwards of $70m according to some reports, is the only reason he earned the seat.

His performances so far have not been great either with several crashes pre-season and other incidents in the first six races. Stroll has also yet to score a point as he struggles to match the pace of team-mate Felipe Massa.

With a lot of attention likely to be on the first Canadian to race in Montreal since 1997 world champion Jacques Villeneuve in 2006, Stroll Sr. insists he is not a major factor in his son's racing, telling Le Journal de Montreal: "I do not put pressure on Lance, the pressure he has is that which he puts on himself.

"I am only his father. There are professionals everywhere who are paid to handle it, and a team that is very satisfied with his behaviour and his progress."

Lawrence, himself a billionaire fashion entrepreneur, also believe some of the criticism of Stroll is due to the perception he has been spoon-fed to the top.

"For sure there is jealousy," he said. "But I want to stress that Lance earned his place in Formula 1.

"He won everywhere he went and the [licence] points that he needed, he went and got them.

"This is probably the toughest year for a youngster to start in F1, with even the teams not always understanding exactly what is going on. So you cannot ask an 18-year-old to do it alone."

Those points do hold weight as Stroll arrived as the European F3 champion, the same series Max Verstappen jumped from without claiming the crown, and the demands of the 2017 cars have made it a lot harder for new drivers to simply walk in and be fast compared to previous years.

Addressing the notion Lance is a so-called 'pay driver' directly, Stroll Sr. added: "There is not a driver here who has not been supported by millions.

"Take Sergio Perez. How do you think it happened for him?"

When the suggestion of Stoffel Vandoorne was put to him, a driver who spent his junior career with McLaren and had to wait several years to get his first full-time F1 seat, Lawrence continued: "There are two points, the first is that Vandoorne is 24 or 25, not 18 like Lance.

"And the second is that the gap between Vandoorne and Fernando Alonso is larger than the gap between Lance and Felipe Massa."

Sebastian Vettel has claimed it will be August before he considers whether 2017 can see him claim a fifth Formula 1 championship, tieing him with Juan Manuel Fangio.

The German has spearheaded an unexpected Ferrari renaissance this season, using the new rules to rebound from a horrible 2016 to claim three wins in six races and fail to finish worse than second in the other three.

His total of 129 points at this point is only bettered by the 143 he had in 2011, in what would be his second championship year with Red Bull, and sees him 25 points clear of Lewis Hamilton's Mercedes, after the Briton only finished seventh in Monaco.

“It doesn't matter," he claimed when considering his current championship position. "I think I am trying not to look at it until the summer break.

"You try to do your best in every single race and then you don't need to be a genius to know if you win every race you also win the championship. If we can do that from now on then I don't need to look at the numbers but of course, that would be hard to achieve."

In contrast, Mercedes motorsport boss Toto Wolff and Hamilton have both claimed Ferrari and Vettel are the quicker combination with the Austrian even suggesting the three-time defending world champions are "underdogs" in the fight.

However, Vettel's conservative approach is merely a continuation of what Ferrari has done throughout this year, downplaying expectations and take this season one race at a time. 

“If we have the chance to do well whatever that is as I said before the race if we have a chance to go for the podium then we will go for the podium and if we get a chance to win then we will go for the win," the 29-year-old continued.

“That is what I want, the team wants and that is what matters. It would be a shame to miss out on the joy of today by being distracted by the points.”

Pirelli has announced the tyre choices for all the drivers ahead of the Canadian Grand Prix next weekend.

The Circuit Gilles Villeneuve shares a lot of similarities with the last race in Monaco, with the wall-lined layout only used for racing a couple of weekends per year meaning grip levels are usually very low.

This means the tyre supplier will again bring the ultrasoft, supersoft and soft compounds as in Monte Carlo, with teams again heavily favouring the purple-marked softest rubber available.

The top three teams have made small differences in their choices with current leaders, Ferrari going for an additional set of ultrasoft compared to their rivals.

This choice is not surprising after the previous rounds where the Italian team showed better tyre management than their opponents, especially Mercedes who are struggling with maintaining the optimum tyre temperature.

Red Bull may try to differ with strategies to cover the time gap that splits them of the top teams using the undercut or the overcut as seen lately in Monaco, they have also gone more conservative than the other top two teams with only seven sets of the ultrasoft compound, two less than Ferrari.

With the tyres lasting more this year, a one-stop strategy has become more normal meaning tyre management and choice is now crucial.

Across the grid, the ultrasoft selection ranged between seven to 10 sets per driver of the 13 allowed with just one or two sets of the soft compound, except for Pascal Wehrlein who went for three.

McLaren is the only team to go for 10 ultrasoft sets, a big number considering that half the grid decided to go for seven sets, leaving Vandoorne with one set of supersofts and two sets of soft compounds.

Also on Thursday, Pirelli announced that the ultrasoft, supersoft and soft compounds will be made available for the night race on the streets of Singapore in September.

Coming off a rollercoaster experience at the Indy 500, the topic of where Fernando Alonso will be racing in 2018 is once again back on the agenda.

It is well known that the Spaniard is in the final year of the three-year contract he signed in 2014 to rejoin McLaren, a return that has dominated by problems for Honda as they try to close the performance and reliability gap to their fellow engine suppliers.

Various potential destinations have been touted, but currently the two-time Formula 1 world champion, who has always maintained the topic would not be considered before the summer break, insists he remains open-minded regarding where he'll be next year.

"We'll see. I would be lying if I told you now that I have a concrete plan," Alonso told Spanish media in America.

"I could go to another team, I don't know whether it is Mercedes or another. If Renault starts to dominate, I don't know.

"If in June or July a team calls I think we would have a chance but it's all to be talked about."

Giving some thought to where he's sure he won't be next year, the 35-year-old added somewhat bemusingly: "I think perhaps Red Bull is the only one that has doors a little closed because it already has young drivers with long contracts."

Another place the former Renault and Ferrari driver may not be next year is back in Indianapolis, according to comments by McLaren executive director Zak Brown to Brazilian media.

"I hope he gets back on track with us to win the Monaco Grand Prix again," he said, "which means that perhaps the return (to Indy) will not happen in 2018.

"Of course the calendar isn't final yet but our main objective is to win again in Monaco with Fernando in the car," Brown added.

Before his appearance in IndyCar, Alonso stated F1 as his preferred focus for next year it was just a matter of which team he would drive for, however, looking beyond that, one idea by the new F1 management doesn't appeal to him.

"I have to see what they plan to do, I read that they want to make a championship of 25 races.

"When I started in F1 there were 16, now there are 20. If they tell me there are 25 I will retire," he claimed.

Ferrari third driver Antonio Giovinazzi will participate in seven Friday practice sessions with the Haas F1 team starting at the British Grand Prix it has been revealed.

The Italian gained his first Formula 1 experience this year standing in for Pascal Wehrlein at Sauber in Australia and China and now last year's GP2 runner-up will gain more track time with the American team at Silverstone, Budapest, Monza, Sepang, Mexico, Interlagos and Abu Dhabi.

Speaking about his new commitments, Giovinazzi said: “In a year that’s already been filled with great opportunities, I’m proud to have another one with Haas F1 Team.

“Being the third driver with Scuderia Ferrari is obviously a great place to be, and getting seat time in these FP1 sessions with Haas F1 Team will keep me sharp."

Explaining what he'll gain by participating, the 23-year-old added: “I’ll be able to take what I’ve learned in the simulator and apply it in actual race conditions. I’m proud of the faith Ferrari and Haas have in me and gracious for the seat time Kevin and Romain are sharing with me.”

What has caught attention is that Kevin Magnussen, who only joined Haas at the start of this year, will make way for Giovinazzi at all but one of the seven sessions.

Considering the impact of that, Jens Winther, F1 expert for Denmark's TV2 broadcaster admitted: "It is unfortunate for Kevin.

"If there is something positive in it, it may be that the team believes Kevin can cope without the Friday sessions more than (Romain) Grosjean can.

"We do know that Grosjean has problems with the brakes, while Kevin is comfortable with them. It could be one of the reasons.

"Unfortunately, it could also be simply about Kevin's points situation, as he has fewer points than Grosjean," he added.

Lewis Hamilton and Toto Wolff believe Ferrari holds a pace advantage over Mercedes after claiming a 1-2 finish at the Monaco Grand Prix.

The two teams have been virtually identical throughout 2017, but in Monte Carlo, the Scuderia clearly had the better package as the world champions struggled for the right set-up to meet the challenge of the street circuit.

The end result was while Sebastian Vettel took the checkered flag ahead of Kimi Raikkonen, Valtteri Bottas finished fourth and Hamilton seventh, after a shock Q2 exit in qualifying.

"Ferrari seems to work everywhere, so these next 14 races will be very, very difficult,” Hamilton said contemplating his fight for the championship having fallen 25 points behind the German.

"They've had probably the strongest car all year, a bit like our car last year where it just worked everywhere.

"This car currently is not working every single race we go to but the more races we do, the more we learn and the stronger we get.

"We still came away from here with some points. We know that the Ferraris are not bulletproof, they've got things potentially coming up - all the [engine components] they've used or potentially used, so we'll see."

Ferrari's first 1-2 in Monaco since 2001 also saw the Italian team take the lead in the Constructors' championship by 17 points and left Wolff claiming his Mercedes team was now no longer expected to win every race.

"I like the notion of an underdog because the underdog is who people obviously want to see win," the Mercedes motorsport boss said.

"As a matter of fact, I think we have been since the beginning of the season.”

The biggest issue Mercedes has faced this season is maximising the performance of the wider Pirelli tyres, with building up and then maintaining the optimum temperature a real struggle.

“We have been dropping in and out of the tyre window. We never had two drivers or two cars within that window,” the Austrian claimed.

"We have seen an exceptional performance of Valtteri in Sochi which we were not able to replicate on Lewis' car, we have seen an exceptional performance of Lewis in Barcelona and that inconsistency has been following through the season.

"And on the opposite side, Ferrari put the car on the track in Barcelona and were quick from the get go, so yes, we are the underdog, yes we need to catch up. This is the reality of it at the moment."

Elsewhere, Wolff was quoted as claiming there was an "Italian mystery" regarding the tyre situation, perhaps suggesting Ferrari and Pirelli had worked together on the 2017 tyres.

That was vigorously denied by the tyre supplier, however, with President Tronchetti Provera telling Italy's Rai TV: “The tyres are the same for everyone.

"Perhaps Mercedes, have been used to lots of success and now face an uphill task, but they will come back. However, with engineers that have worked like a team, Ferrari has done something that no-one expected. You have to give them credit and you have to be satisfied by the work of an Italian team."