Lewis Hamilton may have qualified on pole in Canada, but the World Champion made it clear that he wasn't entirely happy with his lap.
Hamilton edged team mate Nico Rosberg by just 0.062s, helped by the fact that the German spoiled his last attempt by locking up and Turn One.
“To be honest, it doesn’t matter how far you are ahead, as long as you are ahead,” said Hamilton. “But of course, in practice it was a much bigger gap than today. Today I just didn’t have the pace that I had yesterday but clearly it was enough. There was definitely more time in it.
“But it was great to see how close we all were, I think that’s great for the fans to see. An amazing turnout on a Saturday here today, as always, and I’m glad that it stayed dry. Going to be interesting tomorrow, but it’s the best place to start that’s for sure.
“It was very similar to the last race, to be honest. The ultrasoft is not particularly soft for whatever reason, they’re just such hard compounds; it takes us so long to get the temperature into them, so yeah, you need two laps to really bed the heat into the tread. But I think it was the same for everyone. Most people were generally in the same boat. You could push for the first lap but they were just not quite ready, so that’s why people do the second one.”
Hamilton acknowledged that Ferrari's form has improved after Sebastian Vettel qualified a close third.
“Ferrari have obviously picked up the pace with the upgrades they’ve got in their car. This is a great track to test the ultimate speed so we’re excited to have the race with them. I think it should be exciting for the fans, I think their long runs look very strong. I don’t know if they were stronger than ours but we shall see tomorrow.”
