Sebastian Vettel ended the dominance of Lewis Hamilton so far this weekend at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve as he topped the final practice session on Saturday morning, a session that was curtailed early the crash of Kevin Magnussen.
Vettel was the only driver to dip into the 1:13 bracket during the session, which was shortened by twelve minutes due to the crash of Magnussen, who lost control as he went through turn seven and hit the concrete wall hard.
Three teams were in contention at the front of the field throughout the session, with Scuderia Ferrari ultimately denying both Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes AMG PETRONAS team, with Vettel’s 1:13.919 beating Max Verstappen by 0.239 seconds.
Nico Rosberg was third for Mercedes ahead of the second Ferrari of Kimi Raikkonen, while Lewis Hamilton was only fifth in the second Mercedes ahead of Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo, with the top six all covered by 0.568 seconds.
Carlos Sainz Jr continued his quietly impressive season by posting the seventh fastest time for Scuderia Toro Rosso, ahead of fellow Spaniard Fernando Alonso, who was able to put his McLaren-Honda into the top ten despite a notable front line speed disadvantage for the Woking-based team.
Sergio Perez was ninth for the Sahara Force India team, with Felipe Massa making it into the top ten for Williams Martini Racing, with their respective team-mates Nico Hülkenberg and Valtteri Bottas just behind.
Jenson Button was only two-tenths of a second behind McLaren team-mate Alonso, but this deficit meant he was only thirteenth fastest, while Daniil Kvyat was even further back on his Toro Rosso team-mate Sainz, the sixth tenths of a second gap meaning seven places separated the team-mates.
Kvyat also caused a brief yellow flag after running off into the run-off area at turn three as a few drops of rain started to fall, but he was able to keep it off the walls, and, with a bit of help from the marshals, was able to return to the track.
Esteban Gutierrez was the faster of the Haas F1 Team drivers in fifteenth, two places ahead of team-mate Romain Grosjean, with Renault’s Jolyon Palmer separating the Mexican from the Frenchman, while Marcus Ericsson was eighteenth for Sauber.
Magnussen was nineteenth for Renault after his crash, ahead of the second Sauber of Felipe Nasr, while the two Manor’s of Pascal Wehrlein and Rio Haryanto were at the rear of the field, but less than three seconds covered the whole field.
Canadian Grand Prix Free Practice 3 Times
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