Friday was a good day for both Mercedes drivers, with George Russell topping the times in FP2 at the F1 Canadian GP with Kimi Antonelli in third. Russell quickly found his feet in the W16, putting in consistent and impressive lap times throughout the FP2 session.
Despite both drivers leading the pack, Russell was quick to downplay the results from the team. He emphasised it was only FP2, and while Mercedes had decided to run with engines turned up, there was no guarantee that the other teams had too.
Russell has had an incredibly consistent start to the season, finding himself behind the McLaren on more than one occasion in the early rounds of the season. The triple header was a far more difficult run for the both Mercedes drivers.
Across the triple header the team collected just 18 points, slipping them down from second in the Constructor’s standings to third, behind Ferrari.
Initial confidence from FP2
However, Russell was overjoyed with the initial performance in FP2, saying, “It might be my first time top of the leaderboard the whole year! 10 races in… no, obviously we’ve had a very positive day.”
He admitted that with cooler temperature than the previous rounds, the W16 has settled. Much like 2024, the Mercedes lighting up in the colder temperatures.
“We had higher expectations coming into this weekend because of the cooler conditions. The track’s quite smooth, so the tyres naturally run quite cold, and we know our weakness, which is when it’s hot, we struggle and when it’s cold, the tyres run cold, we’re pretty competitive.”
Russell admitted the results were a confidence boost for the entire team, going as far as to say it was ‘needed’.
“That was definitely validation today. Nevertheless, we’ll try to maximise this weekend. I think my lap was really strong today, probably optimised. There was nothing more in the tank there.”
Kimi Antonelli shared the sentiment, saying, “The progress has been there – obviously there’s still quite a bit of work to do, but a single lap felt pretty okay, and then the long run felt good as well. We’ll try to keep pushing in order to improve for tomorrow.”
Antonelli is desperate for a strong weekend after struggling consistently throughout the triple header. Facing a nightmare weekend three weekends in the row.
Holding reservations
However, there were reservations the Brit had, trying to keep expectations under control, saying, “We had it all on the table – full beans, power and all the rest. So let’s see what tomorrow brings. You’ve got to be a little bit realistic. We’ll see tomorrow, it’ll be interesting.”
Similarly, Antonelli said the car felt strong, but his focus was on building up his confidence to qualifying.
He said, “The car felt strong today and the pace was definitely there. [The conditions] help everybody a bit, but for us the car is definitely very connected. I’ll do my best to try to be up there and to put on a fight – that’s definitely the goal. We’ll see, but I’m really trying to build the right confidence in order to be ready for qualifying.”
The topic of tyres has appeared in conversations since the start of FP1. With the new C6 compound being used some teams have looked at potentially using the medium tyres instead of the softs come qualifying.
Russell make it clear that’s still one of the biggest question marks over the weekend. He said, “Clearly, a number of teams are thinking about this medium tyre as well, so come Qualifying. Do you go on the soft? Do you go on the medium? That’s one of the challenges so far when we’ve had this C6 compound.”
