Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton went quickest in an extended, 90-minute second practice session for the 2023 FIA Canadian Grand Prix, beating team-mate George Russell to the top of the timesheet by just under three hundredths of a second in a session that ended with torrential rain.
Earlier in the day FP1 had to be halted when problems were discovered with the circuit’s CCTV system and for safety reasons running had to be stopped.
As a result an extra half an hour was added to the second session and when the 90-minute session got underway it was championship leader Max Verstappen who set the early pace with a lap of 1:15.333 despite complaining that his Red Bull RB19 was behaving strangely on downshifts. It didn’t hinder the Dutchman unduly and he soon lowered the bar to 1:14.726.
Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc then took top with a 1:14.576s, but team-mate Carlos Sainz found even more time with a 1:14.196 on soft tyres.
Leclerc jumped ahead of his team-mate again and he held top spot until the halfway mark when running was halted.
Haas’s Nico Hulkenberg stopped on the start-finish straight with smoke pouring from his car and the red flags were shown. After a 10-minute delay running resumed again with just over 50 minutes left on the clock.
Sainz immediately jumped back to top spot with a lap of 1:13.844 but the session was soon stopped again when Alpine’s Esteban Ocon came to a halt at Turn 9 having been ordered to pull over by his team.
The skies above Montréal were beginning to darken and many of the teams switched to longer runs in the last third of the session.
Russell, however, was not one of them and he took his Mercedes to top spot with a lap of 1:13.745, before Hamilton slipped past with a 1:13.718.
With five minutes remaining, torrential rain began to fall at the hairpin. McLaren’s Lando Norris bolted on a set of intermediates to test the conditions but he soon returned to the pit lane. Aston Martin were next to head out with both Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll running on inters.
The rain intensified, however, and Hamilton collected P1 ahead of Russell, as Sainz completed the top three ahead of Alonso, Leclerc and Verstappen.
2023 FIA Formula 1 Canadian Grand Prix – Free Practice 1
1 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 1:13.718 30 212.968
2 George Russell Mercedes 1:13.745 0.027 31 212.890
3 Carlos Sainz Ferrari 1:13.844 0.126 39 212.604
4 Fernando Alonso Aston Martin/Mercedes 1:14.044 0.326 38 212.030
5 Charles Leclerc Ferrari 1:14.094 0.376 38 211.887
6 Max Verstappen Red Bull/Honda RBPT 1:14.142 0.424 34 211.750
7 Valtteri Bottas Alfa Romeo/Ferrari 1:14.220 0.502 40 211.527
8 Sergio Pérez Red Bull/Honda RBPT 1:14.250 0.532 29 211.442
9 Lance Stroll Aston Martin/Mercedes 1:14.419 0.701 31 210.962
10 Pierre Gasly Alpine/Renault 1:14.477 0.759 39 210.797
11 Oscar Piastri McLaren/Mercedes 1:14.533 0.815 38 210.639
12 Kevin Magnussen Haas/Ferrari 1:14.544 0.826 36 210.608
13 Lando Norris McLaren/Mercedes 1:14.617 0.899 40 210.402
14 Zhou Guanyu Alfa Romeo/Ferrari 1:14.811 1.093 37 209.856
15 Yuki Tsunoda AlphaTauri/Honda RBPT 1:14.941 1.223 43 209.492
16 Nyck de Vries AlphaTauri/Honda RBPT 1:15.002 1.284 38 209.322
17 Alexander Albon Williams/Mercedes 1:15.003 1.285 33 209.319
18 Esteban Ocon Alpine/Renault 1:15.092 1.374 17 209.071
19 Logan Sargeant Williams/Mercedes 1:15.426 1.708 38 208.145
20 Nico Hülkenberg Haas/Ferrari 1:16.369 2.651 11 205.575
