Gasly warned "quite late" in Verstappen Canada practice incident

Verstappen damaged his car's right side wheels when he brushed the infamous 'wall of champions' at the final chicane as he lost downforce while rapidly closing on Gasly ahead.

Gasly said he was only aware that Verstappen was coming up behind him at the last moment when the team told him over the radio to speed up.

"They told me quite late when I was preparing my lap behind Romain [Grosjean]," he said.

"When they told me I started to push and then he was five seconds behind.

"They told me he hit the wall, but I didn't exactly see what happened.

"I was trying to prepare my lap but I am sure we will see and talk about it."

Verstappen was also unsure about how the incident had played out.

He lost significant track time afterwards and ended the session only 13th, one place behind Gasly.

"I had Pierre in front of me and I think he was told to speed up, but I don't know exactly what happened then," said Verstappen.

"I arrived into the chicane, understeered, and basically in the wake of his car I understeered into the wall.

"It's a shame. We missed a bit of running because of that, but when we were running I think we looked quite decent.

"Not perfect but we still have some work to do."

Although Red Bull had a difficult day, with both drivers struggling for grip around Montreal's Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, Verstappen still reckoned there was no major drama.

"At the moment we still need to improve a little bit, but it's not like something dramatic or anything," he said.

"Just finetuning bits, also with the track being so slippery today, things are not in our favour. There is a bit of work to do."

Asked where he expected Red Bull to be over the remainder of the weekend, he said: "Well at the moment I think today we would've been P4. I think Carlos [Sainz Jr] ended up in P4, so we should be ahead."

Gasly was more cautious about the prospects of being able to challenge the pacesetting Ferrari and Mercedes teams.

"Today was a bit difficult," he said. "And we are lacking a bit of grip overall so we need to analyse a bit more tonight and try to come up with more solutions tomorrow.

"But it is only Friday and I think tomorrow we will have a lot more performance, [after] analysing everything tonight."