Formula 1 fancies itself as of the most technologically sophisticated sports in the world, but that self-styled brand did nothing to stop a CCTV outage from scuppering almost an entire practice session.
FP1 lasted less than five minutes before it was red flagged and ultimately called off entirely.
The suspension at first was to cover Pierre Gasly’s stopped Alpine by the side of the road, but race control couldn’t get the session resumed when the closed-circuit television system failed.
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CCTV is the default system used by race control to monitor all parts of the track for safety purposes and to validate GPS and other data. The stewards also use footage for incident investigations. It is separate from the F1-managed broadcast footage.
Without CCTV working, the session wasn’t able to resume, and fans were forced to watch the timer count down to zero without cars on track.
Fortunately for paying ticketholders — and for the teams — an extra 30 minutes was added to FP2 to account for the lost track running.
That 90-minute session was dominated by the looming threat of rain, which finally thundered down on the track in the final five minutes.
There was plenty of dry running to be had before that, but the unusual schedule produced some unusual results. Red Bull Racing looked unusually off the pace, with Mercedes and Ferrari instead rising to the top.
It sets up a fascinating picture for the rest of the weekend given Saturday looks likely to be very wet but Sunday could well be dry again, or at very least merely damp.
Could the weather be wacky enough to genuinely trip up Red Bull Racing and Max Verstappen?
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WHAT’S HAPPENED TO RED BULL RACING?
The unusual program certainly delivered an unusual result for Red Bull Racing, which was off the pace on softs and mediums and on short runs and long runs.
The Circuit Gilles Villeneuve is an unusual track, but it’s hardly an outlier to the sort of magnitude that we’d expect to see the RB19’s considerable pace advantage trimmed so dramatically.
There are clear reasons both Max Verstappen and Sergio Pérez weren’t nearer to the top of the time sheet.
Both embarked on a flying lap on softs early, but Pérez clambered over the kerbs and came close to smacking the wall exiting turn 7. He abandoned the lap, and Verstappen close behind him did likewise.
Their second attempts were then truncated by the first red flag of the session.
But there were genuine issues for the team to overcome before Saturday, as suggested by the long-run averages.
Long-run averages, medium tyre
Ferrari: 1 minute 17.461 seconds
Aston Martin: 1 minute 17.491 seconds
AlphaTauri: 1 minute 17.520 seconds
Red Bull Racing: 1 minute 17.563 seconds
McLaren: 1 minute 17.633 seconds
Alpine: 1 minute 17.674 seconds
Williams: 1 minute 17.884 seconds
Alfa Romeo: 1 minute 18.172 seconds
Mercedes: 1 minute 18.416 seconds
Haas: 1 minute 19.183 seconds
“I think we still have a bit of work to do,” Verstappen told the F1 website. “The car is not fantastic at the moment over the bumps, over the kerbs.
“It’s still not too bad, but we definitely need to finetune a few things.”
Complicating things is that rain is forecast all day Saturday but is less likely to affect Sunday. The team will have to validate changes made for a dry grand prix in wet conditions during FP3.
“That normally always brings a few surprises in qualifying,” Verstappen said. “Then we’ll see what the weather will do on Sunday.”
It’s probably not enough to be hopeful of a genuine change to the balance of power at the front this weekend, but it does demonstrate how much influence a few disruptions to the schedule can have. The onus now is on Red Bull Racing to get things right in the one practice session remaining.
MERCEDES HARD TO READ DESPITE SESSION-TOPPING TIME
Lewis Hamilton, the equal most successful driver at the Canadian Grand Prix, topped the practice time sheet ahead of teammate George Russell on a tricky and disrupted Friday.
Is the Mercedes resurgence, fuelled by its massive May upgrades, really on?
Mercedes fans would do well not to get too far ahead of themselves.
There are some significant conditions on Mercedes’s Friday performance, the biggest of which was its run plan in the unusual 90-minute session.
Anticipating late rain, both Mercedes drivers did their race simulations at the very beginning of FP2 and did their qualifying runs on soft tyres late. By then the green semipermanent track had rubbered in and was offering much more grip. The cooler conditions also contributed to faster times.
That casts the 0.126-second advantage over Carlos Sainz and 0.424-second advantage over Verstappen in a more realistic light.
Inversely, Mercedes’s relatively uncompetitive long-run pace can also be attributed to the track being at its slowest in the first half-hour. The track was pretty much completely fresh, having seen practically no F1 running at all after FP1 was canned less than five minutes into the hour.
It means Mercedes’s place in the overall pecking order is clouded. Clearly the team is thereabouts with the usual frontrunners, but whether it’s at the head of the group or down in fourth is unclear.
“I don’t think we can read much into the timings,” Russell said. “But I do think the upgrades we brought to the car in Barcelona have helped the limitations we probably would have had more of with the old specification of car.”
But he cautioned against expecting a Barcelona-size step forward this weekend.
“I think we are still on the tail end, especially in qualifying pace, compared to Ferrari and Aston Martin,” he said. “But we always know it comes to us on Sunday, so that’s when it’s going to matter.”
FERRARI LOOKS ON TRACK FOR A MORALE BOOST
Ferrari’s week leading into Canada has been dominated by questions about the team’s disappointing Spanish Grand Prix, where Charles Leclerc was mystifyingly off the pace and Carlos Sainz was defenceless to hold second on the grid thanks to horrific tyre wear.
Leclerc revealed the team hadn’t come up with any answers between Spain and Canada, making this weekend something of a shot in the dark.
But at a track that features no high-speed corners and barely anything in the medium-speed range, the SF-23’s biggest weaknesses have been hidden, while its strength in straight-line speed has been allowed to come to the fore.
Telemetry comparing Sainz’s best lap with Hamilton’s shows the Mercedes is making up all its time on corner exit.
Conversely, the Ferrari is making almost all the time back on the brakes and down the straights, leaving them split by just over 0.1 seconds.
Even up against the Red Bull Racing car the Ferrari appears to maintain a straight-line speed advantage, though through the corners it loses time.
The fact its long-run pace doesn’t appear to suffer for what’s likely down to a lower downforce configuration is enormously promising for the Italian team.
That’s good news in the battle with Mercedes and Aston Martin, both of which have tended to be much quicker in race trim. Straight-line speed is the decisive factor in races in Canada. If you’re faster in the speed trap, you’ll be difficult to pass.
It’s difficult to know how the car will perform in a wet qualifying session, but it all bodes well for a strong result on Sunday.
POINTS PLACES UP FOR GRABS
Picking favourites for minor points looks much more difficult than usual this weekend.
The safe bet is still on Alpine given it has picked up the pace considerably in recent rounds, but the team had such a disrupted Friday that it’s difficult to tell.
Pierre Gasly’s stoppage in FP1 — which preceded the CCTV meltdown during the ensuing red flag — was the first issue, which the team put down to an electrical fault in his steering wheel.
Esteban Ocon then had to stop on track in FP2 with an unrelated reliability problem related to a loss of water pressure — a common problem for the French marque last season.
Valtteri Bottas appeared rejuvenated after a battering couple of rounds at Alfa Romeo. His one-lap pace looked consistently strong, though his long-run averages were closer to what we’ve come to expect from the Swiss team.
Even AlphaTauri, with Yuki Tsunoda behind the wheel, looked unexpectedly competitive over a race stint, though the Italian team’s very lofty place near the top of the race averages is almost certainly anomalous.
McLaren also looked reasonably quick, which has the team eager for the forecast wet weather — particularly if it can hang around to race day.
“Our car generally likes it when it’s cold and mixed conditions and stuff like that, so we’ll see,” Oscar Piastri said.
