It was a good first day and experience for me in Montreal. It’s a very difficult circuit, especially in the first session as the track was very dirty. I enjoyed driving my first laps here, although there were a few challenges. I went straight through the chicanes a couple of times, but we kept it out of the wall which was good! In FP1 we had a couple of small issues on my car which were nothing major, and everything was resolved for FP2. We also ran a few experiments on the aerodynamic side, which was a positive step in the second session as we got the car in a good window. There was some fine tuning to help the traction as that’s quite significant around here. All of the corner exits are very important and there’s a few long, combined exit phases. I think there’s still some more time to find but we’re definitely in the mix of the midfield battle.

It was great to discover a new track in Montreal and it was a positive beginning to the weekend. It’s a really good, exciting, and challenging circuit… I really enjoyed my first laps around here! We finished 10th in FP1 which was a good beginning, and the car felt pretty good from the first few laps of the session. With the hotter conditions in the afternoon the car still behaved well. However, we had a couple of issues on my short run, so we didn’t get to show the true pace the car has. I think we’re in the fight for the top 10 as Brendon’s times show. We need to work a bit tonight, but I’m feeling good with the car, so we just need to find the little tunings to make it a close fight tomorrow!

Overall I’d say it was a fairly productive Friday for us in Canada. Neither of our drivers knew the track, so coming here – similar to Monaco – the plan was to give the drivers lots of laps with a car that is as consistent as possible. We’ve obviously fitted our next new power unit here, being an updated power unit we needed to carry out the normal mapping work, and everything is working completely as expected. There’s been no issues and the driveability is very good. In the first session we ran some mechanical and aerodynamic tests, trying to find the best compromise with the setup on this track. Everything behaved as expected in the first session, we made some further changes for FP2, in particular with Pierre’s car. It was a fairly standard plan in FP2, Brendon had a very good session and his finishing position reflects that. I think the setup changes we made went a bit too far for Pierre. He wasn’t 100% comfortable with the car so he wasn’t quite able to get a lap together, which is why he finished lower on the timesheets. We know if we string it all together and get the setup optimised we can improve that. The Hypersoft was struggling a bit with graining and degradation, so I think many teams were suffering with that. On our car the Hypersoft looked fairly under control. There’s a lot for us to go through tonight to decide the best setup tomorrow, and to decide the right strategy direction for Sunday.

We are running updated PUs on both cars, with the changes mainly linked to the ICE and so far, everything is working as it should, which is encouraging for the rest of the weekend. Apart from that, we worked on our usual Friday programme of finding the best settings for the PU at this circuit. The two sessions were trouble free and so we were able to run through all our planned programme.