Canada Grand Prix: Max Verstappen on charm offensive after headbutt threat to reporters

A trifle beleaguered here at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, named after the man whose driving style his perhaps most echoes, Max Verstappen made the perfect riposte to his critics. Putting aside yesterday’s threat to head butt those asking too many questions about his 2018 penchant for crashing, he set the fastest times in both of today’s practice sessions.

“Today was a good day, the car is working very well,” F1’s new enfant terrible said. “We did not really change a lot initially and that’s always a good sign and gives you hope. I think we looked quite competitive and it was a positive start to the weekend.

“Mercedes were very quick, but I think we are not too far away. The tyres worked well, we were quite fast and to see it in the long run, we can be even faster. The car did everything it should do, it started well straight away so I just followed the track. We are still lacking a bit of top speed, but we can make some improvements and tonight we will see what we can do. But so far everything went well and I have a good feeling.”

Where the Dutchman’s Red Bull team have the benefit here of an upgraded Renault engine, Mercedes left their latest power units behind in Brixworth as they did not quite meet their reliability target, something ever more crucial this year as teams may only use three per driver all season.

But though Lewis Hamilton was only fourth fastest, with 1m 12.777s to Verstappen’s 1m 12.198s, and the 1m 12.328s and 1m 12.603s of Ferrari driver Kimi Raikkonen and Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo, the underlying news was good for the current champion and team-mate Valtteri Bottas.

Where their rivals used the softest Pirelli tyre compound, the pink hypersoft, Mercedes set their fastest times using the purple ultrasofts, which were one stage harder. Unlike rivals, Mercedes opted for only five sets of hypersofts here, so elected not to run them until final practice and qualifying tomorrow.

Pirelli’s post-session calculations indicated that the hypersofts were worth “more than a second.” On corrected times, that would thus put Hamilton’s Silver Arrows fastest.

“It's been a beautiful day,” he said. “The weather has been fantastic and the track feels better than ever. It's such fun to drive and we didn't have any problems, I really enjoyed it. A lot of fans came out as well so it's been a nice Friday. The fact that we now have an additional DRS zone in Montreal means that we can think about running more wing this year. In previous years we would run a low-downforce setting here, whereas now it's kind of normal, so the car feels great through the corners.

“Straight out of the box today I think we started right with the car set-up. There were some things that we needed to adjust along the way making small incremental changes, from one time-out to another it always felt a bit different, but it's been good. I believe that the gap in the timesheets is down to the different tyre choices today, but we will find out tomorrow. Hopefully we'll get a good feeling when we first take the hypersofts for a spin in FP3, and it's not too different to what we've been driving today.”

While Hamilton seeks to stretch his points lead over Sebastian Vettel, who took fifth fastest time in his Ferrari with 1m 12.985s on hypersofts, this will be a critical weekend for Red Bull. They will be judging the relative performance of the upgraded Renault engine in comparison with an upgraded Honda in the back of their stablemate Toro Rosso’s cars. That will inform their decision whether to try and do a new customer supply deal with the French company to take them through to 2020, or to opt instead for a manufacturer supply deal, which owner Dietrich Materschitz has long sought, with the Japanese giant.