The track characteristics have the opposite effect on championship leaders McLaren, whose car is the best in the field at managing tyre temperatures.

As a consequence, McLaren have been struggling to make it operate at its best in Montreal.

Championship leader Oscar Piastri is third on the grid behind Russell and Verstappen but his team-mate and title rival Lando Norris could manage only seventh, admitting that he had made two mistakes in the final session of qualifying.

Norris said: “I think we can go forwards anyway, but not a lot. You know, it’s not like we’re easy one-two, like we have been on other tracks.

“It’s just very low grip, first of all is one of the bigger things. And therefore the car balance just never comes together as much as what it does in other tracks.

“Probably just low grip and some of the kerb-riding and bumps, which just hurts us, it seems, more than some others.”

Norris was using a revised front suspension layout that was designed to increase the feel from the front axle of the car, the lack of which the Briton believes is important in the flip in form between himself and Piastri between last year and this.

Norris said it was “tough to say” whether this had improved the feeling coming from the car.

“This track, everything just feels different,” he said. “So I think it’s something we’ll have to wait and see on the next few races through Austria and Silverstone and so forth to understand and maybe back-to-back tests between them both.

“It’s nothing that I’ve felt just yet. But it’s more that when you go to a new track, it’s hard to remember everything perfectly relative to other tracks. So we just need a bit more time to understand if it’s any better or not.”

Piastri stuck with the old layout, saying: “It’s not an upgrade. It’s a different part. It changes some things, some things are better, some things are worse. I have been happy with how the car has been this year.”

Team principal Andrea Stella said: “From Lando’s point of view, there were no downsides. If anything, despite the result that we had in Q3 with Lando, pretty much right away, Lando has actually been competitive, especially compared to Oscar throughout the weekend.

“So we think that the experimentation of the front suspension is a successful one, and it’s a preference, it’s a set-up option in a way, that might be even different across drivers depending on their requirements from a driving point of view.”