Montreal, 8 June

If Montreal is one of the most popular venues on the F1 calendar, it is partly because the city’s restaurants cater to all tastes and budgets and their menus are packed with delicious dishes. But today at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, Scuderia Ferrari only had eyes for their own very substantial technical menu as the team tackled the first day of practice for the Canadian Grand Prix, round 7 of the World Championship.

Just as two weeks ago in Monaco, this weekend, drivers find themselves facing a unique challenge on this exciting circuit that is part race track and part street circuit. So, all those laps in the Principality coming within just a few centimetres of the barriers probably comes in useful in Canada. However, the major difference is that while Monaco has absolutely no quick sections, at least in F1 terms, Canada is a much faster proposition. Here, the cars run in the lowest downforce configuration we have seen so far this season and that necessitates a different aero package. Naturally, these elements have to be evaluated on Friday. Then on top of that come the updates that are part of the Scuderia’s constant development of the F2012. Today, the most significant element was a new exhaust system, which was back-to-backed with that used at the previous two races. As you can tell, the workload is building up and that’s before we even get onto the usual tasks of evaluating tyres and finding the right balance to ensure tyres and brakes, which get a time here, can work at their best.


Both Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa were pleased with what they accomplished today and the Brazilian actually described it as his best Friday of the year. Perhaps that’s not surprising, as he finished the day third fastest, just one tenth of a second slower than his Spanish team-mate, who in turn was a miniscule 0.054s off the pace of the fastest man today, Lewis Hamilton in his McLaren. Sebastian Vettel was fourth for Red Bull, with Paul di Resta next up for Force India while Kamui Kobayashi completed the top six in the Ferrari-powered Sauber. Even if it’s traditional to dismiss Friday’s lap times, it is a good start in terms of pace, while when it comes to reliability, Fernando completed 70 laps, which is exactly the same as Sunday’s race distance and, running a different programme, Felipe did 56. The rain tried to affect the morning session but failed, while this afternoon, a ferocious storm hit the track, thankfully five minutes after the end of the session. Forecasters reckon we have now seen the last of the rain for the weekend, with a hot race day in prospect.