Mercedes and McLaren point to each other as Verstappen remains brief on Canada chances

After Miami, another Sprint weekend awaits the Formula 1 grid in Montreal. That means drivers and teams will have limited time to fine-tune any upgrades brought to the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.

In Miami, the Woking-based team emerged as the main challenger to the German outfit. Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri secured a one-two finish in the Sprint before both drivers finished on the Grand Prix podium behind Kimi Antonelli. The current championship leader stressed that they still need to remain wary of McLaren, who made a significant step forward last weekend.

He explained: "I have really good confidence in the car. Obviously, we’re in a great momentum. Hopefully, the package is going to work as we hope, but also McLaren is bringing another package and the step they made this weekend was very big. So, we just have to keep pushing, keep raising that bar, because we saw this weekend how much it flipped compared to the first three races. So, we just got to stay on top of the game."

Defending world champion Norris highlighted that Mercedes has traditionally done well in Canada, and he expects the same next weekend. "I think you’d have to feel silly if you don’t feel confident about the future when we improved so much this weekend.

"I’m always that guy that looks at things on the slightly more glass-half-empty side, but this is a track that suits us and in the past has not suited the Mercedes quite so well. Yet they were still very fast, and we’re going to go to a track that Mercedes have probably been the best at over the last five, six years. So, we have to wait and see," highlighting that there is no point of getting ahead of themselves.

His teammate, Piastri continued: "It’s going to be interesting to see. I think, yeah, as Lando said, we kind of need to see where we stack up at a few different tracks. I think especially in the Sprint side of this weekend, to have a one-two in the Sprint on pure pace, that was a pretty big surprise for us. So, things are working well. We expected the upgrades to be a good step forward and they have been, and hopefully they are again in Canada. But obviously Mercedes didn’t bring a lot this weekend and they also have an upgrade package for Canada, so we’ll have to wait and see how much that’s worth for them."

Speaking to GPblog, among others, in Miami, Verstappen had little to say about the next race. "Let's see. I mean, it's a completely different track, of course, to here [in Miami]. So let's see how competitive we can be there," he said.

The Dutchman's teammate, Isack Hadjar, added: "Montreal should be suiting us a bit better, let's say, but I expect something similar to this weekend." The Frenchman had to deal with issues through the weekend, therefore, he also highlighted: "We need to make sure next weekend we get on with it and there's no margin for fine-tuning."

Meanwhile, Hamilton explained where Ferrari needs to improve to once again be more competitive. The seven-time world champion added: "I'm looking forward to it, but, we need to see if we can cut some drag before the next race because we're on the straight line, we've got that deficit and so we've got to have a look into that."