Race Recall: Canada

We dive into the Team’s history at the Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve, with a little help from Max Verstappen.

This

weekend

we’re

heading

back

Montreal

for

the

Canadian

Grand

Prix

Circuit

Gilles-Villeneuve

first

hosted

Formula

One

race

1978,

and

bar

few

hiatuses,

has

been

regular

the

calendar

ever

since.

It is a fast, low-downforce circuit that’s a big hit with our drivers. Max Verstappen says it’s like “driving a big go-kart around the track.” The track is a mix of fast flowing straights combined with lots of chicanes which require heavy breaking. which can wear out the tyres quickly and make for an interesting race strategy-wise. The most famous corner in the circuit is the final turn which is ironically known as the Wall of Champions, due to a number of former F1 World Champions all crashing at the same spot over the years. Damon Hill, Jacques Villeneuve and Michael Schumacher all hit the wall during 1999 Canadian Grand Prix, and even Sebastian Vettel put his RB7 into the wall there in 2011.

Early Days

2008 was the first time the Team saw success at the Canadian Grand Prix, with David Coulthard finishing third after starting down in P13. Ahead of him was Robert Kubica who won the race and Nick Heidfeld finishing P2. Drivers such as Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso, Kimi Räikkönen and Nelson Piquet Jr. all retired from the race, which helped DC’s campaign. At the time it was only the Team’s third ever podium.

There were lots of complaints from the drivers saying the track was breaking up and dangerous. So, the following year the Canadian Grand Prix was dropped from the calendar, but, after assurances made to the FIA that upgrades would be completed, it returned for the 2010 season.

Wet Racing

The Vettel/Webber Years

During the quadruple double world championship years, the Bulls had more impressive results. In 2010 Sebastian Vettel finished fourth with teammate Mark Webber one place behind. A year later they converted that into a double podium with Seb taking P2 and Mark in third.

In 2012, Seb took pole and fastest lap but just missed out on the podium, finishing in P4. Seb then finally took the top spot at the Canadian Grand Prix in 2013. He led the race from pole and took the win ahead of Alonso by more than 14 seconds.

Taking The Chequered Flag

Danny Ric’s first win

The 2014 Canadian Grand Prix saw young Australian driver Daniel Ricciardo claim is first win for the Team after joining at the start of the season. He’d claimed two third place finishes already, but this was the race he really began to shine.

He qualified in P6 and masterfully made his way up to P3 by lap 66, before overtaking Sergio Pérez, who was driving for Force India at the time, to take P2.With just two laps remaining he powered past the Mercedes of Nico Rosberg to collect his maiden win.

MC Daniel

Max’s Montreal

Max collected a third-place trophy at Montreal in 2018, but his greatest race there (so far) came last year.

Max took pole positionwith Fernando Alonso in second and Carlos Sainz in third. The race came to life on lap 49 when Yuki Tsunoda crashed calling for the Safety Car to be deployed. Max was in P2 behind Sainz, who pitted for fresh tyres. This gave Max the lead with Sainz just behind him. The Safety Car returned to the pits at the end of lap 54 and Max had to defend brilliantly for the remaining 16 laps. Although Sainz was on the fresher rubber, hecouldn’t catch Max and the Dutchman was able to claim his first win in Montreal, which gave him a 46-point lead in the championship at that point.

The race is probably most fondly remembered for the radio transmissions between Max’s engineer, GP and Max. At the end of each lap GP could be heard radioing to his driver: “Gap point eight,” or “gap point six.” It was a tense hearing this every lap, but Max kept his cool for the win.

Canadian First

Max recalls the race: “The Safety Car wasn’t ideal with the strategy we were running and having Carlos behind with fresher tyres meant I couldn’t make a mistake, there was pressure because he was constantly within DRS, but luckily the top speed of the car helped us.”

With the lead in the championship after the 2022 Canadian Grand Prix, it would be understandable that Max might already be thinking of that second championship, but he was only focused on the next race. “I wasn’t thinking about winning at that point,” he said. “It was the stage when it started to swing in our favour, but if you make one tiny mistake and you score 0 points it looks completely different. It was looking good at that point, but I was not thinking about winning the championship.”

Returning this year as a two-time world champion Max believes it’s still all about the car. “We’ve always been super-slow around Montreal due to top speed, it’s very important to be fast in the straights and during COVID when we couldn’t race here we couldn’t really show that, but last year we came back and had a strong race weekend, the car was good.“