Lewis Hamilton admits Ferrari's updates have made the Scuderia a genuine threat to Mercedes' hopes of victory in Canada on Sunday.
While the Briton secured his fourth pole of the year in Montreal, it proved to be the tightest qualifying of the season as Nico Rosberg finished just 0.062s behind, with Ferarri's Sebastian Vettel just 0.106s further down the road.
"It doesn't matter how far you are ahead, so long as you are ahead," Hamilton smiled when asked about the size of that advantage.
"It's great to see how close we all were. It's going to be interesting tomorrow.
"Ferrari have obviously picked up the pace with the upgrades they have brought. It's a great track to test ultimate speed, so it'll be exciting to have the race with them.
"Their long runs [on Friday] looked very strong - I don't know if they were stronger than ours, but we'll see tomorrow. I think it's great for the fans."
Hamilton added that he could have been quicker in qualifying despite securing pole, saying: "Today wasn't a great day in terms of pure speed.
"In practice [on Friday] I had a much bigger gap, but today I just didn't have the same pace.
"Obviously I got pole which I am really happy about, but I had more speed in me and I wasn’t able to extract it from the car. There was definitely more time in it - so I'm really happy considering."
