A newly asphalted slope with extremely low grip. High curbs and near boundary walls. Extremely stressed brakes. Tires that are capricious and difficult to get up to operating temperature and then maintain. Capricious weather events that are difficult to predict. Combined with a starting field in which the racing cars are closer together than could have been imagined a quarter of a year ago. The smallest mistakes are punished, as the rainy first day of training and the time trial on Saturday proved. 70 zero-error laps have to be completed on one of the fastest slopes in the calendar. Leclerc: “We are simply too slow.” “Anything is possible,” says Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur, of all people, the big loser of the dress rehearsal. Two weeks ago, Charles Leclerc was the dominator at the Monaco Grand Prix, his colleague Carlos Sainz Jr. A strong third – and then the two find themselves in eleventh and twelfth place, beyond the top ten qualifying. The Frenchman at the helm of the Scuderia is a great relativist. He didn’t want to admit the strategic mistakes in tire selection and weather forecast. The Reds had speculated on rain and played their joker too early. Leclerc, however, followed up the dirty words over the pit radio with a harsh diagnosis: “We are simply too slow.” The Monegasque, who finally seemed to have regained his footing, cannot explain why he was in no man’s land. What a crash that was You have to get it straight in your head first. It was just the qualification, but it was still a shock. Mercedes boss Toto Wolff acknowledged the Silver Arrows’ first pole position of the year with a subtle smile, and you can tell from the sphinx-like expression on his face The Austrian also doesn’t have any good predictions for the start of the second third of the season. It depends on the circumstances, but at least one thing encourages the former subscription winners, who have been struggling for two and a half years: “We have the speed.” A new front wing underlined the trend reversal that had already been indicated in Monte Carlo. The fact that Lewis Hamilton only starts seventh doesn’t hurt this – he was only 0.280 seconds behind Russell. “We’re going in the right direction,” says Toto Wolff about the policy of small technical development steps. “We’re back in the middle of the fight. We’re going for victory,” says Russell, for whom it’s only his second pole position since Hungary 2022 was, “Since the last upgrades, my car has felt incredibly good. It’s good to be back in the race.” “It remains pretty close,” says Max Verstappen, “the weekend wasn’t easy for us again. I’m happy with second place.” Apparently his team has already tuned the racing car strongly towards the rain showers that have been announced for the first phase of the race. The 26-year-old has never avoided a tough fight: “That’s it “It’s tight, it makes the race more interesting and it’s good for Formula 1.” His Red Bull Honda failed once again, and once again only the champion’s top form could make up for it. Norris: “That’s exactly why we love the track.” Teammate Sergio Perez, who had just signed a fresh two-year contract, said goodbye already in the first qualifying round, only starting from 16th place. “It must be something psychological,” says racing team advisor Helmut Marko. Nevertheless, this also underlines how much everything is on a knife’s edge on the traditional racing track, which is only used once a year. More on the topic Lando Norris was a full 21 thousandths of a second away from pole position, but the formation of the second row of the grid shows who is actually the strongest at the moment The power in the premier class is: McLaren. Because next to Norris is his teammate Oscar Piastri lurking in the second papaya-colored car. Both drivers feel how close they have come to the top. The colorful starting line-up, which also includes two outsiders in fifth and eighth place, Daniel Ricciardo and Yuki Tsunoda, shortly after the announcement of his contract extension with the Racing Bulls, could continue provide surprises. Especially since Fernando Alonso in sixth and local hero Lance Stroll in ninth can also feel unexpected feelings of happiness with the Aston Martin and push forward. A high safety car probability is another difficult-to-calculate variable that makes the right racing strategy even more difficult. “It’s not easy,” says Lando Norris, “but that’s exactly why we love the track in Montreal.”
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