By Alan MacLeod
June 7 2005

Named after one of Montréal’s favourite sons, who won his first GP here, Montreal is one of the drivers and teams favourite venues. It’s a fabulous city and the track, like Melbourne in style, is also within the city itself, unlike say Magny Cours and Silverstone.

Many drivers’ demise has been followed in later years with the “what-if?” question. This certainly applies to Gilles Villeneuve. Despite a meagre 6 GP victories to his credit, he generated such a following, that even now surveys on the “Best ever F1 driver” invariably include him close to the top of the list. It was James Hunt who spotted him racing in a Formula Atlantic race at Trios Rivieres in 1976 and implored Teddy Mayer at McLaren to sign him immediately. James’ sales pitch didn’t inspire such a commitment then, but in 1977 the Gilles Villeneuve F1 phenomenon hit the ground running with a drive in a 3^rd McLaren in the British GP at Silverstone.

 

Despite spinning at practically every corner during the course of pre-qualifying “I had a lot to learn in a very short time…. I had to find the limit," he said, "and the quickest way to do that was to exceed it - and then come back from that a fraction.” he still ended-up fastest in that session, even in the hands of an ageing M23 whilst Hunt and Jochen Mass had the M26. Gilles qualified seventh, but a faulty temperature gauge, which wrongly predicted impending doom, prompted a pit stop, dropping him way back. His subsequent flat-out drive exemplified what endeared him to his public and was well noted by Enzo Ferrari, who signed him for the following year. Thus the legend was born.

 

References to his father have often made Jacques feel uncomfortable, despite his statistically greater success. Somehow I don’t think Jacques will feel particularly comfortable this weekend either. He has always seemed a little anxious at his home (family) Grand Prix and has only managed one race finish. (2^nd to Damon Hill 1996) Since then, his debut season, he has come to grief on a few notable occasions or retired without raising much of a blip on the radar. This weekend, the combination of national expectation and additional pressure from within the team will test his noted resilience to the maximum. A number of other drivers will not have found their recent change of office particularly comfortable this year either, with a few notable under achievers to date. I’m sure that at McLaren, Toyota, Sauber, Renault, Honda and even Williams there will be highly fancied drivers hoping that Canada can help them underline why they got the gig in the first place. Silly season is almost here after all and there are a lot of younger and older (sorry DC) challengers who have a strong case that they could do a better job.

 

Circuit Gilles Villeneuve is notoriously tough on engines and brakes. Last year Williams and Toyota were somewhat “over-creative” with their solutions to overheating brakes and paid the price with disqualification. Now, in light of Kimi’s demise at Nurburgring, there will also be plenty of opportunity for flat spotting tyres at the end of each of the high speed straights into turns 10 and 13. With 55% of the lap also spent at full throttle, any slightly second-hand engines out there will have their reliability examined pretty closely. So do teams take the risk and go for power? Or do they ensure a finish and hope for low downforce, attrition and cunning to keep them at the head of the queue? It will be interesting to see how much running the leading contenders have on Friday. It’s a shame for Red Bull that their planned engine upgrade will not now be available until the US GP. The projected 0.3 seconds per lap improvement would have equated to 21 seconds over 70 laps and perhaps two or three grid places.

 

DC has always been pretty useful around here, but his luck has not always been the best. He was denied a victory in 1997 by a combination of a bodged “precautionary” (sic) pit stop and the consequences of Olivier Panis’ horrific accident. The following year he took pole and was leading with some pace in reserve when his McLaren Mercedes expired. CK says he likes Montreal and had one of his best results here last year (9th, later promoted to 7^th after the aforementioned disqualifications) and for once he qualified ahead of Mark Webber. I suspect he will be much closer to DC than VL has been of late.

 

So what of Skid Solo? Sorry Scott Speed. I can imagine his teacher saying “So Scott what do you want to be when you grow-up? ……..No seriously Scott! I mean what job you want when you grow-up?...... OK Scott whatever!” Looks like he’s made of the right stuff though and not just a great racers name. He has to be, from what coverage I have seen of GP2 so far. Second place in the GP2 championship isn't too shabby, given the desperation shown by some of his less talented competitors. Some of these guys should have been reminded to take their medication before they put their helmet on. Skid has shown he can turn in a pretty handy lap or two, so he should certainly enjoy his Friday duties. It will be an ideal experience before Indianapolis where I expect there will be a big showing of potential US backers getting the full-on hard-sell, to support him getting an F1 drive in the next year or two.

 

Alan MacLeod