Daniel Ricciardo responds to Jacques Villeneuve in the best possible way after Canadian claimed RB driver was only in F1 still because of his image.

Speaking on the opening day of practice, the 1997 world champion questioned why Ricciardo was still on the grid.

"We're hearing the same thing now for the last 4-5 years," he told Sky Sports, 'we have to make the car better for him', 'poor him'," he added.

"Sorry. It's been 5 years of that. No. You're in F1. If you can't cut it, go home. There's someone else to take your place."

Twenty-four hours later and Ricciardo qualified an impressive fifth for the Canadian Grand Prix, out-pacing Yuki Tsunoda for only the second time this year, and finishing just 0.158s off pole, 0.236s ahead of his teammate.

Speaking after the session, Ricciardo was asked about Villeneuve's comments.

"I still don't know what he said," replied the media-savvy Australian, "but I heard he's been talking shit.

"But he always does," he added. "I think he's hit his head a few too many times... I don't know if he plays ice hockey or something.

"Anyway, won't give him the time of day, but all those people can suck it. I want to say more but it's alright. We'll leave him behind."

A good riposte, but not quite in the same class as Fernando Alonso, who in 2016 was ruled out of the Bahrain Grand Prix after being deemed as not having fully recovered from injuries sustained in a crash in Melbourne.

Johnny Herbert, a constant critic of the Spaniard at the time, asked if it was time he thought of retiring.

"I will not retire, mate," replied the Spaniard. "I was world champion, you ended up as a commentator because you were not a world champion, mate!"

Eight years later and not only is he still driving, he is still very competitive.

While Ricciardo's qualifying performance was well received by his team, many are wondering why RB chose to only confirm Tsunoda as being retained for next year.

However, the Australian appeared unconcerned, content merely to focus on his Q3 performance.

"Obviously Miami was a bit of a one off, but I know how good those results feel, and that's why I do it, to feel those highs," he said, according to Speedcafe. "Coming into the week, everything felt right. I was really happy just to come back to this circuit and drive here, because I love it.

"Today's ten years to the day of my first win," he added, "and that day changed my life, so there's just a lot of nice emotions coming into it. I just felt like I was ready to do some good shit."

Possibly echoing Villeneuve's comment about the car not being right for him, he said the RB now feels right.

"From when we put it down yesterday on track, obviously FP1 not so much, but FP2 a little bit more laps got done, I just had confidence in it," he continued. "The car felt good. I was able to slide it and drive a little bit more aggressively. So that just felt like I was getting on top of it.

"But also, part two is, we're always going to be trying to perfect the car, but I also have to look at myself and make sure that I'm in a good place to be able to do results like this. It's obviously been a bit harder for me to find that sweet spot this year.

"I look back at ten years ago, I think it was kind of effortless. After Monaco I tried to just understand... I was always looking at on-track stuff, can I brake later here, or do this and that, but I was like hey, what's maybe some other things that are affecting my performance? Am I coming into a race weekend not feeling energised, or not feeling this or that?"

Check out our Saturday gallery from Montreal here.