Team mate George Russell also enjoyed his time on track during Friday, with the 26-year-old ending the day in second place on the timesheets.
“It was good fun out there, to be honest,” Russell said after the session. “Difficult to take much learning because every single lap was different conditions, spitting then raining then drying up, which was pretty fun. The car was pretty good, but we’ll only find out tomorrow.”
FP1: Norris leads Sainz and Leclerc during wet first practice in Canada
Elaborating further on the challenges faced during the mixed weather, the British driver added: “I felt confident in these conditions. You need to have faith in the car beneath you to push the limits when it’s constantly changing lap after lap, and I did, to be honest.
“So I think we are in a good place if the conditions continue tomorrow. If it’s fully dry, honestly we have no idea, but as I said, first view is the car is feeling good.”
However, given the lack of learning available from Friday’s weather-affected track time, Russell admits that the approach heading into Saturday may differ slightly to the usual.
“In FP3 you usually focus on your qualifying runs, but we’ll have to focus a bit on our race runs, then focus at the end of the session on our quali runs, then very quickly in between the two session to make changes, because in all honestly there’s not a lot that any driver or team learned today,” the Mercedes driver conceded.
“But there’s a chance the weather will be similar tomorrow, so perhaps…”
