It was the closest Ferrari has been to the Mercedes on a Friday afternoon since beating them in an FP2 1-2 in Shanghai in April.

After today’s practice, Vettel said: “Overall the car seems to work, there’s nothing wrong – all the bits that we brought seem to give us what we expected. That’s good news from today.

“The car’s always very alive here, with the kerbs it’s quite a rough trip. There are some things we need to improve, we need to work on.

“We need to do our best, to see where that takes us, but the closer we can be already from Friday, the better.”

When asked by Sky Sports if his target this weekend was to split the Mercedes duo, Vettel replied: “Ideally I hope not to split them, to be ahead of them.

“I think they’ll be quick – that’s not a surprise, it’s a circuit that suits them and they’ve been very competitive here for the last couple of years.”

Raikkonen admits to struggles

Conversely, teammate Kimi Raikkonen failed to get to grips with his SF16-H around Montreal, and was only eighth fastest today.

“It was a far from ideal day,” said Raikkonen. “We struggled to make any sense of the car. Obviously we want to make the car’s handling better and we didn’t manage to do it. One of those days that things keep changing and nothing seems to work exactly as you hope.

“We tried many things to go through, and then we have to pick the right things for tomorrow.”

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