Montreal: Romain Grosjean ended the first day of practice for the Canadian Grand Prix with the third fastest time, whilst team-mate Kimi Räikkönen – fifth fastest in the morning – saw his afternoon session curtailed as the team investigated a brake issue on his E21.

The morning session saw a damp but drying circuit, with afternoon running conducted in cool, dry conditions. Pirelli’s wet and intermediate tyres were used in the morning; the medium, super soft and developmental medium compound dry tyres in the afternoon.

Kimi Räikkönen, said that they improved the car through the day. “We improved the car through the day and by the end of the session it was ok; not ideal but certainly not a disaster either. It wasn’t easy to get the tyres up to temperature today, but it’s pretty cold at the circuit so that’s not too much of a surprise. If we can get the tyres working better it will be an improvement for sure, but it’s not going to change the world. We’ll be looking at how to get them a bit warmer for qualifying tomorrow and then see what the weather does. After that, we’ll do the best we can,” he said.

Meanwhile Romain Grosjean said that it’s quite hard to get the tyres switched on in those conditions. “It was more or less a normal Friday for us. This morning was obviously a wet session so we worked on setup for those conditions, then in the afternoon we tested the prototype tyres and completed some long runs. It’s quite hard to get the tyres switched on in these conditions as the surface here is very smooth, so with low temperatures it’s a bit more tricky to build up the energy in the rubber; more so with the mediums but even with the super softs. It’s meant to be quite warm on Sunday which is always a good thing for us, so we’ll try to get the maximum from the car in qualifying tomorrow and go from there,” said Grosjean.

Meanwhile World Champion Sebastian Vettel who finished seventh in second practice said “It was tricky this morning with the wet weather, but fortunately in the afternoon we had some dry conditions. It was quite slippery, with low grip at the end. The dominating factor was the weather today and we’re not sure what’s going to tomorrow, but we’re happy with where we are.”