Andrew Shovlin was pleased with the Mercedes AMG Petronas Motorsport performance during practice on Friday ahead of the Canadian Grand Prix.
Lewis Hamilton was second fastest in the morning before slipping back to fourth in the afternoon with Valtteri Bottas fifth and sixth across the two sessions.
Shovlin feels Mercedes got the balance right from the beginning and that allowed them to have a strong and straightforward day at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.
“Overall we’ve had a fairly straightforward day, the car has run reliably and it was just the red flags and virtual safety cars that caused us to have to adapt the plan a little,” said Shovlin.
“The car balance has been good from the first run so it has just been a case of small balance tuning to keep the car in the right window as the track grip came up.”
Neither Hamilton or Bottas used the faster Hypersoft Pirelli tyre on Friday and Shovlin admits that means it is hard to work out where they are on single lap pace but is happy with how they are looking on long runs.
“It’s difficult to judge our single lap pace from today as we haven’t run the HyperSoft and some of our closest competition looked to have had less than perfect sessions,” said Shovlin. “However, comparing on the same tyres, we do look to be in better shape than we were in Monaco.
“The long runs seem consistent, with the tyres behaving normally although as always, Ferrari and Red Bull look to be very similar pace and we’ll need to wait until Sunday to see how we actually stack up.”
