07/06/2017
NEWS STORY
Situated on the man-made Ile Notre Dame in the St Lawrence river, the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve is a true high speed challenge with the cars averaging 130mph over the course of a lap. This race is a firm favourite on the calendar due to its unrivalled atmosphere. Montreal becomes a party town during the race weekend and the locals create a fantastic atmosphere from the grandstands. The team has secured seven wins in Canada to date, with the last coming in 2001 with Ralf Schumacher at the wheel of the FW23.
Paddy Lowe: After spending last Friday celebrating the team's great heritage at Silverstone, we now look forward to getting back to the job in hand this weekend as we head to Canada. Montreal is a big favourite amongst the Formula One teams. The crowds are fantastic; Montreal turns into a party city for the weekend with a real feeling of excitement in the air. And the race itself rarely disappoints, delivering a large number of historic battles over the years including the longest ever F1 race in history in 2011.
The Circuit Gilles Villeneuve is one of the most famous F1 circuits and has hosted Grands Prix since 1978, nearly 40 years ago. It has unique characteristics including long straights interspersed with various quite challenging slow corners and a few notoriously unforgiving walls. The long straights and slow corners generally drive us towards lower downforce levels on the cars, and make it one of the toughest circuits on the calendar for brakes. With the narrower temperature window of current generation tyres it is particularly hard to get them in the right condition, especially for qualifying.
This is Lance's home race so it will be a very special weekend for him. We were encouraged by his performance in Monaco so he can build confidence from that and have a good race here. Of course Felipe has raced here many times before, and our car should go better at this type of circuit than we did in Monaco, so we will do our very best to secure positive results this weekend and to put on a great show for our North American fans.
Felipe Massa: I'm really looking forward to going back to Montreal because it's such an amazing place to be. It's a race where our car normally has good performance, so I really hope we can show that again this year and have another good race. I also love the city of Montreal. The fans there really are in love with Formula One. It's also Lance's first home Grand Prix so it will be a very special weekend for him.
Lance Stroll: Montreal is going to be amazing for me, as this is not only my home race but it is also held in my home city, which is buzzing while the race is on. I grew up about 20 minutes away from the race track, so this will be something special and not many people will get to experience that feeling. As a kid I attended the race pretty much every year, then missed a few years while living in Europe, but was back there last year. For me it is a pure racing event. It is not the flashiest Grand Prix, as the paddock is small, but it is cool, unique and old school. The fans are really close to the track, the grandstands are huge and the run off areas are not massive, but I love that and hope it doesn't change.