Mark Webber ended practice pleasantly surprised with Red Bull's pace, but the championship leader predicted a tight qualifying for Sunday’s race.
While he hadn’t had a good look at the data, he thought rival McLaren might have been quicker, but stressed that it was still early in the weekend.
“We're going to have a tight fight tomorrow with everyone, but the car ran really well today and we will see how the weekend goes,” he said. “You never know. But we are pretty happy with how the day went. I think we were pleasantly surprised with the pace, which is a good thing for us.
Sebastian Vettel was quickest Friday with a time of 1 minute 16.877 seconds around the 14-turn, 4.361-kilometre Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. Webber was fourth overall, lapping in 1 minute 17.273 seconds. Webber leads the championship with 93 points, five better than McLaren's Jenson Button with his team-mate, Lewis Hamilton, another four points adrift. Vettel is fifth on 78 points.
While happy with being at the top of the timesheets, Vettel was the first to admit that reading something into being first on Friday would be premature.
“It’s not that important but it’s looking not too bad,” he said. “I think the secret is the tires, obviously we saw in the end of the session that everyone was sliding around — it looked more like rally cross than Formula One. At the beginning of the session it was like driving on ice, there hasn’t been a race here in two years and partly it has been resurfaced.”
Vettel stressed that patience is the key on a street circuit where the drivers have to simply wait for the track to improve over the weekend — as long as it doesn’t rain, which is predicted for Saturday. Vettel made few adjustments between the two sessions but he thinks the small changes over lunch helped squeeze a bit of added speed from the car.
Webber also worried about the option tyre which didn’t seem to stand up well to the fast circuit, although he hopes it will get better as the track rubbers in.
“It is always the same in Montreal. The track is very tricky and we will see how it goes over the course of the weekend, but it is a normal thing for this surface,” he said.
“The option is not great. In fact, it is pretty poor for most people. It is not going the best at the moment, but should be OK for Sunday.”
Canadian Grand Prix: Friday Practice Round-up
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