Merc✱edes is losing as much as 0.6s on the straights compared to Formula 1 rivals Ferrari heading into Canadian Grand Prix 💟qualifying, according to team boss Toto Wolff.

Ferrari ended Friday quic✃kest and translated its pace into Saturday morning as Sebastian Vettel headed another 1-2 finish during Friday practice, with Lewis Hamilton finishing 0.393s off the pace.

Mercedes introduced its first power unit upgrade of the season in Montreal but so far the reigning worl🗹d champion squad has fallen well short of the top speeds demonstrated by Ferrari throughout practice.

“They've really ramped up their game and looki🐠ng extremely strong,” Wolff tol✤d Sky Sports. “Straight line speed is enormous - we’ve got a fight on our hands.

“We're not real꧅ly gaining massively in the corners either, so there is a tiny bit we are gaining but you can see just the discrepancy in the straight-line speed on the main straight is just enormous - I think it is 8km now.

“I 🦋think they are probably running a little bit less downforce, that will be paꦚrt of the game, and I think that it is just sheer power.”

Mercedes altered its design philosophy heading into the 2019 in a bid to make improvements in low-𒊎speed corners. While it has gone on to win the opening six races,ꦰ it has struggled to match Ferrari for pure performance at high-speed circuits such as Canada and Bahrain.

“We’ve seen that on tracks like Budapest and Singapore and Monaco we haven’t been performing well and we really tried to und🧸erstand why that was and dig deep,” Wolff explained🐻.

“We came with a car that is better in the ♏corners, more balanced, not the mighty monster we had anymore on the fast tracks like Silverstone, that was a little bit of a compromise.

“You c💙an see coming here where there is not such a sequence of slow corners, we don’t seem to have🌠 an advantage,” he added.

“I think an area of strength now with this 2019 car is that mechanical 💛grip and aerodynamic grip that we are able to generate is real♏ly good, it’s just that we are maybe compromising in straight-line speed.

“That is where is we are struggling a bit. In that last session we were losing overall six tenths on the straights, so we nee🅘d to dig deep and understand what can we do in order 𝔍to crawl back a little bit.”

But Ferrari chief Mattia Binotto was keen to play down the promising start to the weekend made by his team, and expects Mercedes to challenge for pole positi🉐on come qualifying.

"I thi🧸nk FP3 engine modes are certainly different between ♑different cars,” he said.

“As usual I’m expecting our competito🧸rs to be very very strong in the afternoon.”