Montreal, QC – With Mercedes racking up four wins in four tries so far this season, several F1 outfits continued to play catch-up in Montreal as the front-running team also made some moves to add speed to its car.
After bringing some major updates to the last race in Miami, which saw it close the gap to the Silver Arrows, McLaren added a few more new parts to Canada as it hoped to keep the pressure on.
“The first big round of upgrades, it was already planned to be brought to Miami, and here in Canada we have a few more things, like a front wing, bodywork, and this completes this first round,” said McLaren team boss Andrea Stella.
“We are happy with what we saw in Miami in terms of the data that we measured, and also the impact that it had on our competitiveness. We are actually completing our review of what we tested here [in Montreal], especially the front wing. It was a significant upgrade, so there’s some more work to do in terms of review, but so far, we are happy.”
Stella feels it will take a few races to figure out exactly where the team falls after the upgrades shake out, especially since Canada may not give a true picture of the revised pecking order or a good understanding of his team’s overall competitiveness.
It didn’t work out as planned in Friday Sprint qualifying as Mercedes driver George Russell took pole for Saturday’s Sprint race, just 0.068 seconds ahead of teammate Kimi Antonelli.
“This is an amazing circuit here, high grip, and it feels like you’re driving a proper Formula 1 car around here, which is how it should be and I’m glad today came together,” said Russell. “[The upgrade] is definitely feeling great. The team has done such a great job to bring this forward and we obviously saw in Miami that McLaren were really close and Ferrari not too far behind. So pleased to have it on the car and pleased to be back in P1.”
Nevertheless, Stella believes that defending McLaren’s 2025 constructors’ title still remains in the cards despite an early 86-point deficit to leader Mercedes.
“I see the season being very long – we have done just four events – there’s at least 18 to go,” said Stella. “I think so far, and this was also the case in Miami, Mercedes are in a solid leadership. Here they took some more upgrades, so we will see how it works. Obviously, we would like to try and find some performance and see if we can set the challenge to Mercedes.”
For his part, Red Bull Racing boss Laurent Mekies tried to be optimistic about his team’s chances, but also dropped in a bit of realism, even after the team gained some ground the last time out in Miami.
“We don’t think it’s going to be a nice, linear road of recovery with closing the gap every race – there are going to be some bumps,” he said. “Certainly, Miami put us back into the fight. We know we need a lot more, but it confirmed that most of the difficulties we have faced at the beginning of the season, we have managed to cure. We know we have a bit more to do and to get on with the development race at full speed now.”
The pole for Russell ended a three-race run where Antonelli started at the front and won the race. The young Italian leads the world championship points after four races with 100, 20 more than Russell in second.
Although McLaren’s Lando Norris slotted into third, he put up a time 0.247 seconds behind the slower Mercedes, which seemed to indicate that Russell and Antonelli remain the drivers to beat. Norris’ teammate Oscar Piastri ended up fourth, with Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton rounding out the top-five.
Meanwhile, Mekies’ caution turned out to be merited as Max Verstappen put up the best time for Red Bull Racing and will start seventh, clocking in at 0.539 seconds slower than Russell.
Canadian Lance Stroll of the Aston Martin team lines up 18th for the 23-lap Sprint race.
In the only practice earlier on Friday, Antonelli topped the time sheets in a session red flagged three times. The first red flag came when Liam Lawson’s Racing Bull suffered a technical failure and then two flew for accidents, the first involving Alex Albon in the Williams and a second for Esteban Ocon in the Haas.
Russell survived a spin and a brush with the wall to end the session second, while Hamilton rounded out the top-three. Stroll put up the 17th-best time.