'Not the greatest but not the worst' on Friday, says Hamilton

Lewis Hamilton might have topped the timesheets at the end of a disrupted Friday at the Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve, but the Mercedes driver is by no means getting carried away by his prospects in Canada this weekend.

With FP1 abandoned after just four minutes because oa a technical issue with the track's CCTV safety system, Hamilton and his team mate George Russell spent much of the second session on heavy fuel runs.

But in the last half hour they switched to soft tyres and went for some fliers, with Hamilton going quickest with a time of 1:13.718s putting him just ahead of Russell, and 0.126s ahead of Ferrari's Carlos Sainz in third.

• Read also: Hamilton and Russell top extended Canada FP2 before rain

But despite both Mercedes cars featuring at the top of the final times for the day, Hamilton was keeping expectations for Sunday's race well and truly under control.

"It was a strange day with the issues in FP1. I felt really bad for all the fans out there," he said. "I'm glad that we got out there eventually though and it was good to have a 90 minute session. We haven't had one of them in a long time!

"The car didn’t feel bad, but I think we’ve definitely got some work to do," he said after FP2 ended amid a heavy storm rain shower.

"It’s feeling pretty decent, it’s just bumpy and I think everyone’s having the struggles with the bumps," he reported. "We’ve just got to improve our ride control and our balance through the corners, and then I think we’ll be alright.

“Not the greatest, but not the worst by far,” he summarised. But he was pleased to report that the car was a significant improvement from where it had been, after recent upgrades rolled out for Monaco and Barcelona.

"I can only base it off comparing to last year and it’s massively better than last year,” he acknowledged. “The rear end is not necessarily, but overall the car is just a step forwards.

"I’m definitely feeling the improvements we felt in Monaco, I’m feeling them here," he said. “I love driving this track. It’s mega. From the moment you leave the pit lane you’re like, ‘Yeah, this is wicked!’"

Russell was also careful not to get over excited about the Mercedes 1-2 in today's timesheets.

It's been quite a strange day given what happened in FP1 and then the extension of FP2," he said. "I don’t think we can read much into the timings. We did our low fuel qualifying prep towards the end of the session when the track was quicker.

“It was a reasonably productive session," he added. "The upgrades we brought to the car in Barcelona have helped the limitations we probably would have had more of with the old specification.

“Between Barcelona and here, they are two totally different circuits. Barcelona is a super smooth high-speed circuit, here it’s incredibly bumpy.

"We need to find out where we are going to be," he continued. “I think we are still on the tail end - especially in qualifying pace compared to Ferrari and Aston Martin.

"It looks to be wet tomorrow so let’s see what it brings," he suggested. "We always know it comes to us on Sunday, so that’s when it’s going to matter."

Mercedes' trackside racing engineer Andrew Shovlin gave more details as to why the team has approached FP2 with an inverted programme compared to their main rivals Ferrari and Red Bull.

"After the non-running in FP1, we decided to start our FP2 programme with high fuel work before moving on to low fuel running," he said. That was to ensure we completed our long runs before the expected rain fell.

"We were an outlier in that respect and our low fuel work therefore benefited from more track evolution than the rest of the field. That was the predominant reason as to why we finished at the top of the time sheets.

"There's also a good chance of rain tomorrow; that could change the picture significantly but hopefully we'll get the chance to do some wet running in FP3."

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