Lewis Hamilton reckons the lap which won pole in Canada was one of the worst of his career after he edged out Nico Rosberg and Sebastian Vettel in Montreal.
Hamilton beat Rosberg by 0.062s in Q3, with both Mercedes drivers failing to improve on their final runs as Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel moved to within 0.178s. It seemed Hamilton lost a chunk of time in the middle stint of his final run in Q3 and the world champion admitted pole number 53 will not rate highly in the list of his best qualifying laps.
Asked if there was any area he could have improved on his best lap, he said: "I think there's always room to improve. Honestly that wasn't a great qualifying for me in terms of laps, they weren't that great. My pole lap was definitely at the lower end of the pole laps that I've had -- so considering that fact I'm pretty happy I'm still on pole.
"To be honest it doesn't matter how far you are ahead, as long as you're ahead. Of course in practice it was much bigger a gap and today just didn't have the pace I had yesterday, but clearly it was enough. There was definitely more time in it but it was great to see how close we all were for the fans."
Sebastian Vettel had topped Red Bull's Max Verstappen in FP3, suggesting a three-way fight was on the cards, but Mercedes was still able to lock out the front row. However, Ferrari, running an upgraded power unit this weekend, was much closer and Hamilton welcomes the prospect of a fight in Sunday's grand prix.
"Ferrari have obviously picked up the pace with the upgrades they've brought from their car and this is a great track to test the ultimate speed. We're excited to have the race with them, it should be exciting for the fans. I think their long runs very strong, I don't know if it was as strong as ours, but we shall see tomorrow."