"Ferrari draws lessons from test days after Spanish GP and can now compete with Red Bull"

Red Bull Racing needs to take into account an improved Ferrari this weekend, as indicated by an analysis by Auto, Motor und Sport. Compared to previous weekends, the Italian team now appears to be much stronger in long runs. The German publication attributes Ferrari's significant improvement in Canada to a fairly simple explanation.

Firstly, the Scuderia now has a much better understanding of the package they brought to Spain. The tire tests conducted after the Grand Prix two weeks ago in Barcelona provided Ferrari with the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the updates. During the testing days, the team realized that they were completely off track during the GP weekend, leading to an immediate significant improvement.

The lessons from the testing days have been applied in Canada and are now paying off. The SF-23 not only proves to be fast in race simulations, but it is also consistently fast. The tire wear in Canada is not as severe as in Spain, but there is clear improvement in this area, which has been a challenge for the Italians throughout the season.

The lap times are very close. Fernando Alonso is the fastest on the mediums with an average of 1:17.5. Charles Leclerc and Max Verstappen follow closely with 1:17.6. Pierre Gasly comes in at 1:17.7, and Carlos Sainz at 1:17.9. Lando Norris also performs well for McLaren with a 1:18.0. This shows that the field is closely matched in Montreal.

Holding our breath to see how fast Mercedes actually is

Ferrari is still strong in terms of single-lap pace. Sainz was the first to dip below the 1:14 mark with a time of 1:13.844. This made the Spaniard two tenths faster than teammate Leclerc, who in turn was 48 thousandths faster than Verstappen. Mercedes did record even faster lap times, but that was when the track conditions were at their best and other teams were focused on race simulations.

There are still some question marks regarding Mercedes' pace in the race simulations. Lewis Hamilton and George Russell followed a different program compared to the competition. They focused on running the qualifying simulation at the best possible moment, and ran the race simulation at a less optimal moment. In that regard, Mercedes' race pace can be considered modest, but it should be taken with a grain of salt.