Canadian Grand Prix
Venue: Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, Montreal Date: 15 June Race start: 19:00 BST on Sunday
Coverage: Live commentary on BBC Radio 5 Live; live text updates on BBC Sport website and app
Max Verstappen said Formula 1 was “annoying” and that questions about him racing under the threat of a race ban were “childish”.
The Red Bull driver, who qualified second for Sunday’s Canadian Grand Prix, will be contesting the lead at the start of the race with Mercedes’ George Russell, who took pole position.
Verstappen deliberately drove into the Briton at the last race in Spain and a resulting penalty has left him one licence point short of a race ban.
Asked about this at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve on Saturday, the Dutchman said: “I don’t need to hear it again. You were speaking about it on Thursday.
“It’s such a waste of time. It’s very childish. So, that’s why I also don’t want to say too much because it’s really annoying, this world that we live in.”
Russell’s pole was his first of the season and he referenced Verstappen’s predicament in the context of their prospective battle for the lead in the race.
“We’re mates so it’s all good,” Russell said with a smile on his face. “I have a few more points on my licence to play with, so let’s see.”
Verstappen, who has said the incident in Spain was “not right and shouldn’t have happened”, said in his news conference on Thursday that the threat of a ban would not change the way he raced.
“I cannot just back out of everything,” he said. “I’m just going to race like I always do. I trust myself.”
The incident in Spain was not the first moment of tension between Verstappen and Russell.
They had a public row at the end of last season, in which Verstappen was unhappy with what he perceived as Russell trying to get him a penalty at the Qatar Grand Prix. Russell was offended by Verstappen’s comments in a conversation afterwards.
They exchanged criticisms of each other in public, including Russell calling Verstappen a bully and Verstappen saying Russell was a backstabber.
They also insulted each other after colliding in the sprint race at the 2023 Azerbajian Grand Prix.
Russell said his pole lap was “probably one of the most exhilarating laps of my life” and that it had given him “goosebumps”.
The Briton let a victory slip through his fingers after taking pole in Canada last year and said he wanted to make amends for that.
“Last year was a poor race for me,” he said, “and I felt it could’ve gone differently. So obviously I’ll be doing my best to make up for last year’s losses.
“But it’s totally different this year. We don’t know how the race is going to pan out because the hard tyre is the one that we’re all going to use at some point in the race, and no one knows if that would do the distance to give you a one-stop or not. So, there’s that curveball in there.”
Mercedes’ improved performance is down to the combination of relatively cool temperatures at just over 20C and a low-abrasion track that enables their car to keep its tyre temperatures down.
But Russell said he was wary of how the car might perform in Sunday’s race.
“We had good race pace on Friday, but it depends on the temperature,” he said. “In practice, it was 5C cooler than it was today, and the car was easily in its sweet spot.
“It can easily go the other way tomorrow in the race. If the sun comes out – it’s a two o’clock race, it was a four o’clock qualifying today – that makes quite a bit of difference. So, it’s not going to be an easy race.”
The track characteristics have the opposite effect on championship leaders McLaren, whose car is the best in the field at managing tyre temperatures.
As a consequence, McLaren have been struggling to make it operate at its best in Montreal.
Championship leader Oscar Piastri is third on the grid behind Russell and Verstappen but his team-mate and title rival Lando Norris could manage only seventh, admitting that he had made two mistakes in the final session of qualifying.
Norris said: “I think we can go forwards anyway, but not a lot. You know, it’s not like we’re easy one-two, like we have been on other tracks.
“It’s just very low grip, first of all is one of the bigger things. And therefore the car balance just never comes together as much as what it does in other tracks.
“Probably just low grip and some of the kerb-riding and bumps, which just hurts us, it seems, more than some others.”
Norris was using a revised front suspension layout that was designed to increase the feel from the front axle of the car, the lack of which the Briton believes is important in the flip in form between himself and Piastri between last year and this.
Norris said it was “tough to say” whether this had improved the feeling coming from the car.
“This track, everything just feels different,” he said. “So I think it’s something we’ll have to wait and see on the next few races through Austria and Silverstone and so forth to understand and maybe back-to-back tests between them both.
“It’s nothing that I’ve felt just yet. But it’s more that when you go to a new track, it’s hard to remember everything perfectly relative to other tracks. So we just need a bit more time to understand if it’s any better or not.”
Piastri stuck with the old layout, saying: “It’s not an upgrade. It’s a different part. It changes some things, some things are better, some things are worse. I have been happy with how the car has been this year.”
Team principal Andrea Stella said: “From Lando’s point of view, there were no downsides. If anything, despite the result that we had in Q3 with Lando, pretty much right away, Lando has actually been competitive, especially compared to Oscar throughout the weekend.
“So we think that the experimentation of the front suspension is a successful one, and it’s a preference, it’s a set-up option in a way, that might be even different across drivers depending on their requirements from a driving point of view.”
