Pascal Wehrlein was delighted with his performance during qualifying after putting his Manor Racing MRT05 ahead of both Sauber F1 Team drivers at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve on Saturday.
The Mercedes-protégé felt he exceeded his expectations during the session to jump ahead of both Marcus Ericsson and Felipe Nasr, and will line-up in eighteenth position for Sunday’s Canadian Grand Prix, with Wehrlein hoping to exceed some more of his expectations during the 70-lap race.
“I’m very happy with my qualifying; I was very close to Q2 and we’re ahead of the Saubers, who are our main competitors at the moment,” said Wehrlein, who set a best time of 1:15.599, just missing out on Q2 by 0.155 seconds. “We knew we could be competitive against them here, because of the long straights where you need more power.
“But you also need good braking and good traction, and we seem to have all that, which is positive for us. On the first set of tyres the track was completely fine but then it started to rain halfway through and the track became more slippery, so we couldn’t improve.
“I’d say we exceeded expectations a little here today, so I hope we can do the same in the race tomorrow.”
