MONTREAL – Sebastian Vettel will start from third place on the grid after delivering a superb final Q3 lap at Montreal’s Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. Daniel Ricciardo, meanwhile, will start from row three after finishing in sixth place in a hugely tight final session that saw just five hundredths of a second separate third place from sixth.
The champion's first run in the final 12-minutes of the hour-long session netted him sixth spot behind Daniel, with Williams' Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas using the power of their Mercedes engines on the circuit's long straights to claim third and fourth respectively.
With the Williams drivers involved all session in the battle for best-of-the-rest status behind Mercedes's Lewis Hamilton and eventual pole winner Nico Rosberg it looked as if their claim would be confirmed in the final runs.
Sebastian, though, clearly hadn't read that script and after an imperfect first sector the champion delivered a brilliant second sector, at that point the best of the afternoon, to provisionally move ahead of both Williams drivers. His best grid slot since the Chinese Grand Prix was confirmed by a solid third sector that netted him a lap of 1:15.548, just two thousandths of a second clear of Bottas.
"The start of the last lap wasn't great," admitted Seb afterwards. "I still didn't manage to get that first sector right. I didn't get along with the first two corners very well today. But, after that I tried to take more risk and it worked, so sector two was very good through the two chicanes, especially through the second one; I found a significantly better line and more time compared to previous runs. I then kept it together until the end, so a very good result. It was the maximum we could do – we were very close with those behind, half a second behind the Mercs, but then four cars were within four to five hundredths of a second of each other, so I'm happy to be the quickest of those."
Daniel, meanwhile, will start from row three, behind Felipe Massa, after missing out on fourth place by just four hundredths of a second. After his final run, the Aussie admitted that he had made changes to his car in the hope of finding an edge but that the adjustments hadn't delivered the desired improvement.
"It was a bit scrappy on the final run, we made a couple of adjustments and it didn't quite work out – but that's hindsight," he said. "We were close to third, but not close enough and we paid a bit of a price by being sixth. We've made progress throughout the weekend and we were not too far off, but it's disappointing to just miss out. The times were close, but it could have been better. Hopefully we can get a good start tomorrow and see how we go, the strategy will be interesting."
Team Principal Christian Horner afterwards said the result was better than predicted for the team at a circuit where power is paramount. "If you'd have offered us third and sixth in qualifying before the weekend, I think we'd have definitely taken it," he smiled. "An excellent final lap from Sebastian. He extracted the most out of the car to line up in P3 and Daniel is right up there too in P6. All things considered, it was a good qualifying."
At the front of the grid Mercedes Nico Rosberg took his third pole position of the season, beating teammate Lewis Hamilton by seven hundredths of a second. With Sebastian third, the Williams cars of Bottas and Massa fourth and fifth and Daniel sixth, seventh place went to Ferrari's Fernando Alonso, who finished just under a second adrift of Rosberg's pole time.
Eighth place went to Toro Rosso's Jean-Eric Vergne, the Frenchman enjoying an excellent outing at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve to beat McLaren's Jenson Button and 10th-placed Kimi Raikkonen in the second Ferrari. Looking forward to the race tomorrow, Sebastian admitted that it will be tough to take to the fight to the Mercedes but said he would take any opportunity that presents itself.
"Strategy could be a bit of a surprise tomorrow, we'll have to wait and see what happens but Williams is strong here and the Mercedes powered cars will be looking forward to the straights," he said. "I will try to stay as close as I can to the front two and get some tow. If we have a chance to attack them, then we should go for it."
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