Hamilton secures masterful pole in Canada!

Lewis Hamilton stormed to a brilliant pole position on the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve to record his 65th F1 career pole position, matching his idol Ayrton Senna in what was a brilliant nd hard fought battle with the Ferrari of Sebastian Vettel.

This was also Lewis's sixth pole position at the Canadian venue and his fourth for the 2017 F1 season so far. His pace of 1:11.459 was also the fastest lap ever recorded around the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.

“This is another race weekend where we knew that we were right in the fight - but had no idea if we had enough performance to put our car on pole position,” said Mercedes man James Allison. “What makes it such a sweet feeling is to see two immaculate laps and a really commanding performance from Lewis. Valtteri was unable to improve on his final run, but nevertheless retained a strong P3 which puts us in good stead for the Grand Prix. The feeling of being on pole is absolutely fantastic but, of course, we have it all to do again tomorrow.”

Sebastian Vettel was a very close second and he was not happy with his overall performance. That said however, he is confident that race day will be a totally different story…

“I was not so happy with my job in the last run of Q3” says Seb, who will start from second slot on the grid,” he said. “It is true that we faced tough competition, but we could have been closer. We could even have been ahead, but Lewis did a very good job today. As for me, I lost the car in Turn 2 and from there I knew I had to catch up. The car was very good and I had been happy in the morning session. To be on the front row gives you the chance to make a good start. I am looking forward to tomorrow, I am sure we're going to have a very close race. This is a nice track and we had a good run here also last year”

The second Mercedes of Valtteri Bottas finished third and the Finn will be joined on the second row by the second Ferrari of Kimi Raikkonen.

Best of the rest, or in fifth place, was the Red Bull contender of Max Verstappen, the position he had hoped to obtain after a tough Friday at the Canadian track. His teammate, Daniel Ricciardo will start alongside him on the third row of the grid after securing P6.

"After what looked like a pretty tight qualifying in Q1 and Q2 where we were within a couple of tenths of pole time, both drivers did an excellent job in extracting the maximum from the car in Q3 but unfortunately we just didn't have the pace to go with Mercedes and Ferrari around this circuit,” explained Red Bull boss Christian Horner.

“Nevertheless, third row of the grid is a good starting position and hopefully we can make best use of those in the grand prix tomorrow. Now to the most important race of the day which is obviously the raft race later on this evening, where there is absolutely no threat from Mercedes and Ferrari as they aren't competing!"

Felipe Massa put in a strong performance for Williams to qualify in P7 with Sergio Perez, Esteban Ocon and Nico Hulkenberg rounding out the top ten.