Formula 1 championship rivals, Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton, are predicting a close fight between Ferrari and Mercedes at the Canadian Grand Prix.
The top two teams were covered by less than half a second in Practice 2 at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve with exactly 0.05s between the two drivers with a combined seven world titles.
For Hamilton, even though Friday indicated a return to form after the events in Monaco, he still considered the Italian team as the quicker.
“It’s been a pretty good first day for the team,” he reflected. “The Ferraris are looking fast here and 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, but we’ll be pushing as hard as we can to close the gap ahead of qualifying on Saturday.
“After a tough weekend in Monaco, the main thing is that our car is already feeling a lot better around Montreal. It should be game on for the rest of the weekend.”
The tyres remain the deciding factor of where the advantage lies and during the low fuel runs in the afternoon, it became clear that Mercedes still needed at least an extra lap to optimise the performance.
Ferrari also appears able to get more performance from the ultrasoft compound but Vettel is not getting carried away just yet.
“Of course,” he replied when asked if pole was the target in qualifying. “One-two would be ideal but I think Mercedes looked good today. I haven’t seen much yet but I think it will be very, very close. More or less as we all expected in a way, which is good.”
Sebastian did reveal, however, that it hadn’t been the smoothest day possible as the Scuderia looked to overcome the lack of grip out on the racetrack.
“It was a tricky day, the track was very slippery so I think overall we tried some things, some worked and some didn’t work.
“I think overall we should have a good understanding and hopefully we can be better tomorrow,” he added.
