Today's press conference with Lance Stroll, Lewis Hamilton, Valtteri Bottas, Pierre Gasly, George Russell and Arvid Lindblad.

Part 1: Lance Stroll, Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas.

Q: Let's start with the hometown hero. Lance, welcome. Lots of fans coming to see you race at home this weekend. Just what does it mean to be back in Montréal in a race car?
Lance Stroll: It's great. I look forward to this weekend all season. It's my favourite race of the year. I love the track, you know, the fans, the energy, the whole city gets really into the race weekend and it's just electric. Even when you drive around for the first out lap in FP1, you just feel the energy around the circuit, it's amazing. Great memories over the years coming here, some good results, some good races. So yeah, it's exciting.

Q: Talking of memories, before we come on to on-track performance, you had a pretty special time, I believe, yesterday driving some old cars, a Senna-inspired Honda NSX. Am I right?
LS: Yeah, it was a fun day with Honda, some old cars, and it's always fun to drive some different machines. So, it was fun.

Q: Alright, what about the race car then, on track? Both Astons finished both the Sprint and the Grand Prix in Miami. While the pace isn't where you want it to be at the moment, are you beginning to make some progress?
LS: Yeah, we fixed the vibrations in Miami, so that was good. We finished the race, both cars got to the chequered flag for the first time this season, which I think is a step forward. And now we just need to find a lot more downforce and power. So, when we do that, we'll be in better shape. So that's what we're focused on.

Q: Have you been given a time scale by the team as to when you can expect more downforce, more power?
LS: We have an upgrade for Spa or the one after Spa. I don't know which one... Zandvoort, yeah. Is it going to be enough to fight for the front? No. But yeah, these things don't happen overnight, so everyone's pushing as hard as possible and we're doing everything we can to bring as much lap time to the car as quickly as we can.

Q: Final one from me, Lance. You raced a GT3 car recently. Max Verstappen did the same, at the Nürburgring 24 Hours last weekend. What did you make of what he got up to at the Nürburgring?
LS: Yeah, I didn't watch the whole 24 hours. In fact, I saw some highlights and, you know, for sure, hats off. He's so talented and so fast and so brave. I saw he was making some crazy moves in the middle of the night and was super quick behind the wheel whenever he was behind the wheel. So yeah, it's fun. I think when we have breaks, you know, I have a GT3 car for track days and stuff, just for fun. And when we had that six weeks off, I got some friends together, put the car in the race and we got out there and had some fun. So, it's always cool driving different things. He was good. It was fun to watch.

Q: Lance, thank you for that. Best of luck this weekend. Lewis, coming to you. When you hear stories of Lance racing a GT3, Max doing his GT3 stuff, does it whet your appetite? Does it make you want to go and have a go as well?
Lewis Hamilton: Not particularly, no. There's definitely a part of me... I mean, I love the Nordschleife, so I would love to drive a car around there at some stage. And I mean, the racing looks fantastic. But I don't know. Could do, don't need to.

Q: Well, let's bring it on to this weekend. Wins here in Montréal, including the very first of your 105 victories. Just how special is it to be back at a track where you've had so much success?
LH: It's one of my favourite places to come in the season. It's good to see everybody here. The weather's fantastic today. I landed this morning and my mum's coming this weekend, because the atmosphere in the city is electric. And then just to come to this little tidy island and have such an iconic weekend, where the fans are probably the closest that they get through the year, and the track is one of the best tracks in the world. So yeah, obviously had some great races here in the past. Excited for this weekend.

Q: What can we expect from you and Ferrari then this weekend?
LH: I think hopefully a better weekend. I think there's a lot of learnings taken from the first races and particularly from the last race. I think there's been a huge amount of work, which I'm really grateful for, all the team back at the factory working incredibly hard to try and analyse where we've been good, where we've not been so good, and the adjusted processes and approach. So, I'm hoping that we're able to extract more from the car, because I still think we're still trying to extract the most from the package that we have, and then also just being realistic about where we stand currently compared to Mercedes, for example. But lots can happen, so it's just about trying to extract the most from the car this weekend.

Q: Where do you think you do stand in the pecking order with the upgrades that you brought to Miami last time out?
LH: I mean, it probably adjusts each weekend. Obviously, Mercedes are at the top. McLaren looked incredibly strong last race as well, they took a good step, and obviously Red Bull have made a huge step. So, I think we're kind of in and around McLaren and Red Bull, I would say. Which order that it is, we'll see. But I don't know. Obviously, Mercedes have a big upgrade this weekend. Even without an upgrade they were very quick in the last race or still won the last race. So, our focus is just going to be on ourselves and just trying to optimise. For me, I'm really excited to hopefully have a better weekend.

Q: Thank you for that, Lewis. Best of luck. And Valtteri, let's come to you, the lap record holder in Montréal, no less. How much do you relish the challenge of the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve?
Valtteri Bottas: It's fun, like both drivers here covered. It's one of the most fun tracks on the calendar, really technical, makes good racing. So, it's definitely a challenge, especially now with just one practice. Track is always really green, so the evolution is pretty big, but I like it.

Q: Now the team introduced a big upgrade last time out in Miami. Can you tell us a little bit more about it and what areas you felt the car had improved?
VB: Yes, it's definitely a more aero-focused upgrade that we had. We've been lacking quite a bit of stability of the rear end of the car in high speed, so that definitely improved. But in Miami there was only like one or two high-speed corners, here none. But yes, we're making progress behind the scenes. And again, this weekend we've got some new aero bits, some mechanical upgrades as well. So yes, there's a lot of stuff happening in the background.

Q: So where do you see your battles this weekend with all of the upgrades that you just mentioned?
VB: I think everyone is improving, everyone is making steps, and we need to try and make sure that we make bigger steps. For sure, we're still battling Aston. Hopefully we can see that we're a bit closer to the midfield and then we see as we go.

Questions From The Floor

Q: (David Croft - Sky Sports F1) Thanks ever so much, Tom. Question for Lewis to start off with. Hope you've had a good couple of weeks. Congratulations to Arsenal for winning the Premier League title. Don't know what you've been doing in the last couple of weeks. But when you went back to Maranello, did you go in the sim? Did you do any sim work? And if not, why the change in approach? What is it about the sim work that you think, "Don't need that, I could actually be better off without it, without doing that before I prepare for a race"?
LH: No, I didn't use a sim. Firstly, the sim is amazing. It's an amazing space to work in. It's the best sim I've ever seen and best group of people that I've known, a large team of people that I get to work with there. So, a day at the sim is actually pretty incredible. It is a very powerful tool and something that as a team we continue to evolve. I think since I've been there, I've had a lot of input in some of this evolution and they've been really respondent and made loads and loads of changes, and we've just been improving it. With simulation, I feel that the goalpost is always moving. So, I started driving the simulator in 1997, the first simulator, I would say, at McLaren. The cockpit didn't move but we had force feedback in the steering, and I remember it was at Woking, at McLaren's old factory. And then when it moved to the first real gen, they let me sometimes use it when I was in GP2. And then McLaren, we used it relatively often. Didn't particularly enjoy it, because they were kind of long days and a lot of laps. There's a point at which you stop learning when you're doing so many laps, for me personally. And then when I joined Mercedes, they were quite far off with the sim at the time. I didn't use it in all the championships that we won, barely used the simulator, very rarely. And then in 2020, maybe 2021, I started to use it a little bit more. I think there's only ever been really one time through all the years that I've used the sim in these 20 years that the set-up that I had on the sim was the exact set-up I used in qualifying and qualified pole, and that was Singapore 2012, maybe, I think, something like that. So, then all the other times it's not quite perfect. But as I said, it is a powerful tool. I just think since the last year I used it every week and more often than not I felt you do all the work on the sim, and you get to the track, you find a set-up that you're comfortable with, you get to the track and everything is opposite. So, then you're undoing the things you've learned, some of the ways you've approached the corners you have to shift and adjust, set-up that you felt that was good on the simulator is not the same at the track. Sometimes it is, and so it's kind of hit and miss. So, I just decided for this one, I'm just going to sit it out and focus more on the data. So, there was just a lot of deep diving on through-corner balance, mechanical balance, corner approaches, brake balance, optimising the brakes, which have been a problem for me for some time. That's led to really good integration with my engineers. It's not a tool that... I'm not saying I'm never going to use again. I think it's something that, for sure, we'll continue to utilise, particularly on power deployment. But yeah, so most often what I've done for the last six months, you'd go in after the weekend and you'd work on correlation, and so that when we run it again, but then you go to the next track and it's slightly off sometimes. So, we'll see how the weekend goes. But China, for example, I didn't do the sim for China and it was my best weekend.