Canadian Grand Prix 2017: Kimi Raikkonen has a point to prove as 'little bits and pieces' help Lewis Hamilton

Little bits and pieces. That was what Lewis Hamilton spoke of ahead of the Canadian Grand Prix on Friday. Little bits and pieces which Mercedes’s engineers have changed on the set-up of his car, and the sister model of team-mate Valtteri Bottas after they were squashed by Ferrari in Monte Carlo.

Whatever those little bits and pieces were – and it’s believe that they centred upon minor adjustments such as brake balance and suspension settings in order to get the tyres working in their correct temperature window – they appeared to make a big difference here.

The Circuit Gilles Villeneuve on Montreal’s Ile Notre Dame is a different track to Monaco in many ways – it’s much quicker for a start, with top speeds significantly exceeding 300 km/h and has a more slippery surface, but like the Principality it’s also one massive brake test. Its heavy demands on braking see drivers jumping hard on the left pedal for 19 per cent of the lap, and experiencing decelerative forces up to 6g. That, and the hard acceleration that follows imposes mainly longitudinal rather than lateral forces on the tyres. Getting heat into the front tyres is one of the keys to a quick lap time.

Interestingly, however, Pirelli have brought the same tyres here that they did in Monaco, the soft, supersoft and ultrasoft compounds.

Both Hamilton and Bottas seemed to manage the temperatures well so far this weekend, so the mood chez Mercedes is more upbeat. The Ferrari drivers never seem to have that problem.

Pirelli’s tyres have become somewhat of a lottery in F1 this year, as Hamilton explained.

“You just drive the tyres the same. You push or you drive slowly, depending on the temperature of the circuit, and when you come to do your laps sometimes the tyres are ready and sometimes they’re not. It’s difficult. It’s kind of an unfeeling - sometimes the tyres feel exactly the same when you leave the garage, and sometimes they grip up. It’s the same for every tyre.”

The Englishman was fastest in the first practice session this morning, heading Monaco winner Vettel by 0.198s, with Bottas right on the German’s tail. In the afternoon, Raikkonen became the only man thus far to dip below 1m 13s, with a lap of 1m 12.935s that is getting closer to the all-time fastest lap of 1m 12.275s set in qualifying by Michael Schumacher’s Ferrari back in 2004. Whether you believe he was screwed by his team in Monaco depends upon how much you believe in conspiracy theories, though the fact remains that he and his engineer wanted to stay out and were specifically asked to pit sooner than they wanted. That enabled Vettel fully to exploit much faster in and out laps in his own stop which came after he had also revived his flagging tyres to push as hard as he could. But on Friday Raikkonen drove like a man intent on proving a point, if only to himself. Hamilton was 0.215s adrift this time, Vettel another 0.050s off him.

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Having vowed to attack this weekend, Hamilton said: “It’s been a pretty good first day. The Ferraris are looking fast here and as the times show, it’s super close at the top right now.

“I feel like we are just a little bit behind the red cars at this early stage of the weekend, but we’ll be pushing as hard as we can to close the gap ahead qualifying on Saturday.

“After a tough weekend in Monaco the main thing is that our car is already feeling a lot better. It should be on the game for the rest of the weekend.”

Mercedes need a win this weekend, psychologically and practically, to stay in the title fight that has begun to swing away from them of late for the first time in four years. Ferrari took the lead back in the world championship for constructors in Monaco, and Vettel increased his lead over Hamilton to 25 points. They don’t like that in Brackley.

Team boss Toto Wolff remains his urbane self, but there was steel in his eyes when he said, “I don’t like losing. I really don’t.”

Canada habitually throws up some interesting and unpredictable results; the one thing that looks probable this weekend, however, is that Ferrari and Mercedes will be back at it, going head to head again.