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Follow the first practice at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve as the build-up to the Canadian Grand Prix continues
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Follow live F1 coverage as the Canadian Grand Prix weekend kicks off with free practice sessions one and two in Montreal.
The big news of the week is the FIA’s decision to “reduce or eliminate” porpoising on the advice of its medical team – just days after Lewis Hamilton suffered with severe back pain in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. Hamilton required assistance to get out of his Mercedes after his car bounced up and down at high speed throughout last Sunday’s race.
Mercedes ran their machines close to the ground in Baku to produce lower downforce. But the move exaggerated the bouncing, and under the FIA’s new technical directive, Mercedes might be required to raise the ride height of their cars which could further slow them down.
At the front of the grid, Max Verstappen will be hoping to extend his lead over chief title rival Charles Leclerc after he took full advantage of the Ferrari driver retiring last weekend with the race victory.
Follow all the latest updates as we build towards this weekend’s Canadian Grand Prix:
Lewis Hamilton has slammed Mercedes’ W13 after once again suffering from intense bouncing and poor performance in practice for the Canadian Grand Prix.
The seven-time world champion experimented with a new floor and dufferent setups on his car in Friday night’s running, but only ended up 13th fastest at the end of FP2, telling his team over the radio: “This car is now undriveable.”
After the session was over, Hamilton was even more daming about the machinery Mercedes have built for 2022, having previously produced the best car in the field every season since 2014.
“Pretty much like every Friday for us, trying lots of different things,” he told Sky Sports F1. “An experimental floor on my side which didn’t work. Nothing we do to this car generally seems to work. We went with different setups [on each car] to see if one way works one way doesn’t. We’re way off, but that’s to be expected with this car.
“For me it was a disaster,” Hamilton explained. “One touch of the kerb and the thing goes flying, it’s so stiff. It’s very, very tricky. It’s the worst that I’ve ever felt any car here in my career. It’s going to be a struggle. It’s a monumental fight the whole time to keep it out the wall. The car leaves the ground a lot, then it lands, grips up, and goes in different directions. It’s tough. It keeps you on edge and there were some big hits today. We raised the car and it makes no difference.
“It’s like the car is getting worse, getting more and more unhappy the more we do to it. It is what it is, this is the car for the year and we have to tough it out, then build a better car for next year. ”
George Russell says Mercedes still “have a lot of work to do” to catch up to the frontrunning teams in Formula 1 after struggling in the opening practice sessions for the Canadian Grand Prix.
The FIA has released a new technical directive designed to release the intensity of porpoising in F1, which is the name given to intense bouncing cars suffer at high speeds and long straight which cause back pain to drivers, but Mercedes are continuing to struggle with the problem in Montréal.
“It was fun to drive around this circuit again, but ultimately our performance wasn’t where we wanted it to be compared to the top teams, where we want to be,” the 24-year-old told Sky Sports F1. “We’ve got a lot of work to do. It’s still very bumpy to be honest, the stiffness of these cars is just brutal. Here you really feel the stiffness, and it’s something we’re trying to tackle.
“We can’t run the kerbs like we used to. We have got the car as soft as we can but clearly we need to make some improvements. In FP2 it was the biggest deviation [on setup] me and Lewis have had, we went in vastly different directions, so we need to find a happy medium. We have a race car that can put us third fastest, but we need to finish ahead of the midfield in qualifying.”
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has claimed that up to half of F1 teams will breach F1’s cost cap if the FIA does not opt to raise it, and warned that the championship battle could end up in court.
All ten F1 teams are limited to an annual budget of $140m to run their 2022 season, comprising costs spent in every area including car parts, staff salaries, and shipping.
The cost cap is designed to prevent teams from overspending and causing themselves financial problems, but Horner says the cost-of-living crisis means the cap should be raised significantly.
“The way you design your car is within your control,” Horner told Sky Sports F1. “You are in control of your own destiny. We’re not in control of what’s going on in the world right now, with fuel cost rises, inflation going up to 11%. That’s a direct impact on staff, commmodities, supply of parts. I think it’s a case of force majeure. It’s not about income. It’s about this one-off effect of inflation that effects people.
“The top teams would have to get rid of circa 2-300 people next year to stay within the cost cap. If the cost cap fails badly, it’ll be gone forever. We need to find a solution for an issue nobody could have ever predicted. About 50% of teams are going to be in breach of the cap if things don’t change. We don’t want a championship decided in front of a court or the FIA in Paris. They need to act now.”
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner remains angry with the FIA’s decision to introduce a new F1 technical directive designed to reduce injuries caused by intense porpoising.
The motorsport governing body stepped in this week after drivers voiced concerns about back injuries and potential long-term neurological damage following the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, but Horner has deemed the move unfair.
“You can understand safety being the FIA’s main concern, but to drop a technical directive in before a race weekend without consultation feels like the wrong way to go about things,” Horner told Sky Sports F1. “It’s a very dangerous thing to allow the FIA to set your ride height going into a weekend. How could they measure it? The intent is all well and good but it’s not been introduced in the right way. It seems a very complicated way to go about an issue which doesn’t affect all teams.”
Lewis Hamilton ended up a lowly 13th in that second practice session, six places and four tenths behind team-mate George Russell.
Mercedes abandoned a redesigned floor concept they ran on Hamilton’s car in FP1, and the 37-year-old isn’t happy with the result.
“This car is now undriveable” he said over team radio.
Max Verstappen has topped the timesheets in both free practice sessions this evenings, but was only marginally ahead of Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc in FP2. The full list of fastest times from the second session is below:
1 Max VERSTAPPEN 1:14.127
2 Charles LECLERC +0.081
3 Carlos SAINZ +0.225
4 Sebastian VETTEL +0.315
5 Fernando ALONSO +0.416
6 Pierre GASLY +0.752
7 George RUSSELL +0.844
8 Lando NORRIS +0.860
9 Daniel RICCIARDO +0.906
10 Esteban OCON +0.992
11 Sergio PEREZ +1.040
12 Lance STROLL +1.269
13 Lewis HAMILTON +1.294
14 Kevin MAGNUSSEN +1.372
15 Mick SCHUMACHER +1.389
16 GuanyuZHOU +1.399
17 Yuki TSUNODA +1.440
18 Alexander ALBON +2.044
19 Nicholas LATIFI +2.382
20 Valtteri BOTTAS N/A
The chequered flag is out and the second free practice session is over in Montréal.
Max Verstappen has once against finished quickest of all, showing that the Red Bull has strong one lap speed as well as long run pace.
He finished just over a tenth ahead of Charles Leclerc in second, while team-mate Sergio Perez didn’t make the top ten and was over a second off the pace.
Carlos Sainz was third fastest, while Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso followed up their impressive displays earlier this evening with fourth and fifth-place finishes respectively.
Max Verstappen has completed 24 tours of the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve now in this second free practice session, and remains fastest of all 20 drivers with a 1.14.127.
That leaves him just under a tenth of a second faster than Charles Leclerc in second, who is around two tenths faster than team-mate Carlos Sainz.
Sergio Perez is down in eleventh, over a second off the pace.
A dark rain cloud is on its way towards the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, after the track was left flooded by extreme rainfall earlier this week.
Max Verstappen is warned over Red Bull team radio that he may feel some drops of rain before the end of the session, which has around 15 minutes left to run.
The rain won’t begin to fall heavily until around half-an-hour from now though, so cars will likely remain on dry tyres,
Despite Sebastian Vettel’s potential reprimands, he is making mincedmeat of team-mate and hometown boy Lance Stroll, sitting fourth in the standings. That’s eight positions and just under a second faster than the 22-year-old.
It’s a simialr story for Alpine, meanwhile, with Fernando Alonso up in fourth while Esteban Ocon is five places and fifth tenths off his pace.
Experience is paying off so far for the two former world champions.
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