ANALYSIS: Where did Hamilton lose to his rivals on practice day at Montreal?

Ferrari endured a tough opening day at the Canadian Grand Prix. Charles Leclerc suffered a heavy shunt in FP1 which ruled him out of any running in the rest of the day while his team-mate Lewis Hamilton struggled for pace. F1Technical's senior writer Balazs Szabo analyses where the seven-time F1 champion suffered his biggest loss.

George Russell completed a different run plan in the second practice session, running Pirelli's soft tyres at the beginning before performing his qualifying simulation on the yellow-walled mediums.

The British driver was quickest come the end of the first day of the Canadian Grand Prix weekend, stopping the clocks in 1m12.123s in the second free practice session, a time just 28 thousandths of a second quicker than Lando Norris.

It was a strong showing for Mercedes as Andrea Kimi Antonelli was third in 1m12.411s. It’s worth noting that the top seven drivers on the time sheet were all driving cars fitted with the Mercedes power unit.

Charles Leclerc and Lance Stroll failed to set a time in FP2: the Ferrari driver took no part in proceedings, as his car was damaged in FP1, while the local driver clipped the wall at the exit to turn 7, breaking the front left suspension.

Hi team-mate Lewis Hamilton also had a difficult first day. Although the seven-time F1 champion had a fairly quiet day bar a few small moments, he lacked pace both in low-fuel and high-fuel configuration.

Nevertheless, Hamilton racked up a huge amount of laps, gathering the data for the Italian team, winding up in the top 10 after running the medium and soft tyre in the second session.

The British driver said that he will need to make “some changes to make” before the start of the third practice session to improve graining on his long runs while also picking up more outright pace in qualifying trim.

“I don’t know [what’s possible]. I think it will be a challenge to get into Q3 at this rate, but not impossible. Then I think trying to fight to get into the top five is going to be tough.”

“Not great, not particularly great. I love driving here and the crowd’s been amazing today, but the car is a lot different to what I’ve experienced here in the past."

The British driver completed his initial run on Pirelli's medium tyres before using the red-walled softs for his second run. He never really looked particularly competitive in the second one-hour session.

McLaren's Lando Norris set the quickest time in Sector 1, but Alexander Albon and Liam Lawson were very close to him. Hamilton lost 0.149s in the first sector which was only enough for the tenth quickest sector time in the opening part of the Montreal track.

The Thai driver was quickest in Sector 2, fractionally beating the likes of Russell and Antonelli. Hamilton struggled in the middle part of the circuit as well, having lost 0.160s in the stop-and-go section that features the middle part of the track.

The last part of the track saw Russell beat Norris for the best sector time, with the two British drivers having enjoyed a relatively big performance advantage in his very section of the circuit.

Hamilton struggled the most in the part of the track, having lost over three tenths of a second. Interestingly, the seven-time world champion recorded fairly competitive top speeds down the back straight which indicates that he sustained a significant loss at the hairpin under acceleration which has been his SF-25's Achilles' heel since the start of the season.