George ends a difficult opening day in Canada in P7.

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Returning to the Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve for the first time in three years, George immediately took to the track on the Medium Pirelli tyres as he reacquainted himself with the unfamiliar circuit.

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Delivering his benchmark lap time of 1.21.437 in the first five minutes of the session, George quickly improved to 1.18.970 and into P6 before returning to the pits.

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The Brit ran both the Medium and Soft compound tyres throughout the hour-long session, amassing 29 laps to the opening session in P6 with a 1.15.822.

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Tweaks to car set-up delayed the start of George’s FP2 session but once on track, the Brit put in a 1.17.034 lap time to initially place into P13.

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On his first flying lap, George boosted himself into the top 10 before switching onto the Soft tyres at the mid-point of the session.

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Completing 31 laps of the Canadian circuit, George delivered his best lap time of 1.14.971 to end the day in P7.

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George Russell – Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One™ Team Driver

It's fun to drive around this circuit, it's old-school and very challenging, with the cars bumping over the kerbs. Our performance wasn't where we wanted it to be, we're quite a way off the pace to the front two teams and there's also a couple of guys - Fernando and Seb - who look very strong, so we've got work to do. It's still very bumpy out there, the stiffness of these cars is pretty brutal. We can't run the kerbs as much as we used to, we got the car as soft as we can but there's something about this iteration of cars stopping us really doing that. In FP2, that was probably the biggest deviation in set-up between Lewis and I, we went in completely different directions, so we'll be able to find a happy medium between the two overnight. We need to qualify ahead of the mid-field, we have a strong race car which is probably the third-quickest but if we allow one or two cars in front of us, that could make things tricky.

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