QUALIFYING

DURING THE BUILD-UP TO THE CANADIAN GRAND PRIX weekend, Fernando Alonso suggested Formula 1 had become predictable. Qualifying suggested otherwise, with the top three teams covered by less than 0.2 seconds and the identity of the driver on pole position in doubt right to the end of Q3.

In the end, Sebastian Vettel set two laps good enough for pole position – one on each of his two Q3 runs using hypersofts – and he could easily have gone a tenth faster.

“I was very happy with the first lap, but I thought that maybe in the first half of the circuit there’s a bit more,” said Ferrari man Vettel after improving by 12 thousandths of a second on his second run. “The second attempt in Q3, I found that little bit and it was, ‘OK, now I just need to repeat what I did before, because it was really good.’ I struggled and I lost a little bit of time.”

Vettel gained 0.083s in the first sector, then 0.017s in the middle, but lost time in the final sector. But it didn’t matter anyway, because nobody was able to challenge him.

Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas came closest, but failed to improve on his second run and complained of understeer that cost him in the first and second sectors. That added up to a deficit of 0.093s to Vettel.

Max Verstappen jumped to third with his second run, leaping ahead of both Lewis Hamilton and Kimi Raikkonen. The Red Bull looked stunning on track, and he lost around a third of a second to Vettel on the long straights, even with Renault’s engine upgrade.

Hamilton reckoned he should have had pole, but ended up fourth and 0.232s down after problems at the hairpin. “Constantly, today, going into that corner I was struggling to get the car stopped, be it front locking, or rear locking,” he said. “So it was quite messy. There was a good chunk of time there. Definitely just in that corner alone was pole position for sure, if I figured out how to fix it.”

He was nip and tuck with Vettel in the first two sectors, albeit a tiny fraction behind. But even with the error it was enough to be ahead of Raikkonen, who understeered his Ferrari onto the grass out of Turn 2 and had to abandon his second Q3 run.

Daniel Ricciardo in the second Red Bull lost much of Friday afternoon practice with an electrical problem.

Lacking rhythm, he struggled to sixth, almost 0.9s clear of Nico Hulkenberg’s Renault.

“I THOUGHT MAYBE IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE LAP THERE’S MORE” VETTEL