Spend too long in F1 and you’ll start seeing metaphors in everything. The Canadian Grand Prix at Montreal’s Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, for example, sees the cars blaze past the largest casino in Canada. It’s difficult to see that 70 times in rapid succession and not be tempted into headlines about rolling the dice.
Certainly, this is a weekend to gamble. The cars are new this year, the race has moved forward a month so the track temperatures will be different, and – by virtue of Pirelli no longer having a C6 compound – we also have a different selection of tyres. In fact, the only thing reassuringly similar to 2025 is the weather forecast – which, as usual, is changeable.
Beyond the tribulations of the new, the Canadian Grand Prix also brings its bag of old-school challenges to the party. The circuit is bumpy and narrow; the concrete walls are ubiquitous, and the relentless sequence of chicanes pushes brake temperatures to the high point of the year. This presents an interesting dilemma: too much brake cooling and the cars are slow; too little and they don’t stop.
Montreal is a race where the teams would like to get full value from the three practice sessions – which is a problem this year because they’ve only got one, as the full house at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve is being treated to their first taste of the Sprint weekend format. It’s one practice session and then down to business with Sprint Qualifying on Friday afternoon.
So how will the teams, drivers and strategists approach the weekend? It’s time to take a look in The Risk Perspective, in partnership with Marsh, Formula 1’s Official Risk Partner and Official Insurance Brokering Partner.
The ideal set-up
Turns 2 and 10 at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve are low-speed, and Turn 5 should be high-speed – but is probably so high speed that it’s power- rather than grip-limited and taken flat-out. That leaves an awful lot of track in the medium-speed ‘Goldilocks’ zone. This incentivises the teams to set-up the cars quite stiff in heave, to keep the aerodynamic platform stable and maximise grip in the low- and medium-speed corners.
How stiff the teams choose to run their cars will be an interesting gamble on Friday. During the recent ground-effect era, with the cars benefitting from running very low and very stiff, often the fastest way around the lap was to avoid most of the kerbs, and take the long way through the chicanes. This year, with the cars not being quite so sensitive, may see cars running softer in roll, to shortcut across those kerbs.
On a normal weekend, the approach on a circuit like this – with its many bumps and track-hugging concrete walls – would be to start off with a more compliant car and gradually stiffen it up as the practice sessions progress. But with just the one session, and less desire to spend large portions of that in the garage adjusting set-up, it’s more of a judgement call.
The drivers’ perspective: Liam Lawson
The Circuit Gilles Villeneuve is a comparatively short circuit, running along the perimeter of the man-made Ile Notre-Dame in the St Lawrence River. For the most part, it is a sequence of short straights, separated by chicanes and a hairpin. It’s one of the heaviest braking circuits on the calendar, and while that often causes problems, in terms of energy, it should be a harvest-rich environment.
As such, energy management is likely to occupy the minds of the drivers a little less this weekend. “I think it’ll be less of a topic,” says Racing Bulls’ Liam Lawson. “It’s a track at which we, hopefully, can push more and have fewer issues or less of that management – but at the moment we’re really learning this weekend by weekend.”
As was the case in Shanghai and Miami, the Sprint weekend format limits the amount of learning the drivers, and their teams, can do in practice. This, in turn, places a greater onus on the work done in the simulator, with Lawson prioritising sim laps immediately after the Miami Grand Prix. The virtual world, however, can only offer so much. “On a Sprint weekend, we have to try and do as much of it as we can in advance – but we know we’re not going to get everything right,” concedes the New Zealander.
If the Canadian Grand Prix follows the same pattern as the first two Sprint weekends of the year, we can expect to see plenty of experimentation across the first half of the weekend as drivers gamble on different approaches for the Sprint, and then using the knowledge accrued to change set-up during the window between Sprint and Qualifying on Saturday, when Parc Ferme is suspended and set-up changes can be made again.
The key section
Turn 10, aka L’Epingle (The Pin) is a brilliant piece of F1 theatre. The low-speed, second gear hairpin is ringed and capped with a horseshoe of grandstands, packed to the rafters with screaming fans. Or, at least, it would be if the grandstands had roofs, the lack of which may be a problem this weekend, judging by the long-range forecast. Not that a spot of rain will do anything to dampen the size or the enthusiasm of the crowd.
Spectators are treated to overtaking at T10, but it has greater significance to lap time. Slow corners are always where time is made and lost – because, clearly, the car is in a slow corner for longer than a fast one – but the significance of L’Epingle is that it leads onto the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve’s longest straight.
Make the right choice of line, hit the braking point and carry good speed through here, and the benefits pay off all the way down the back straight to the final chicane. Get it wrong, and there’s every chance of being vulnerable to attack.
The strategists’ perspective
Since the Sprint weekend format was introduced in 2021, Red Bull have been its undisputed masters, winning 14 of the 26 short-form races. Hannah Schmitz, Head of Race Strategy there, says the format asks different questions of a strategist compared with a standard race weekend, though – as always – tyres are at the forefront of everyone’s minds.
“This is a Sprint event, and this means we’ve got only the one practice session. The most important decision to make before the weekend is what tyres we’re going to run in that session. Obviously, we want to learn as much as possible, as this is our only practice for the whole weekend, before we go straight into Sprint Qualifying – so straight into a competitive session – which makes it an intense weekend.
“We know, should we progress to SQ3, that we’re going to be using two sets of medium tyres and one set of soft tyres in that Sprint Qualifying session, so the strategy question there – and in Qualifying on Saturday – is all about looking at if our lap is fast enough, or do we need to set another one.
“In the main Qualifying session, there will usually also be a debate on whether we’re going to another new set [of soft] or can we run a scrubbed set? These are typically decisions that strategists will be making.”
The greatest race: Jenson Button wins in 2011
The 2011 Canadian Grand Prix was a record breaker – though not necessarily in a good way, depending on your view. It is, at 4h4m, the longest F1 race. It had the most Safety Car deployments with six and the most pit-stops by a winning driver, with Jenson Button entering the pit-lane six times.
The latter record has since been equalled, though the first engendered a change in the rules and thus is unlikely to be rivalled. Bernd Maylander in the Safety Car has never had another day like it – though none of these are what makes the 2011 Canadian Grand Prix great. Its legend lies in Button’s rise from last place on Lap 40 to snatching the lead three corners from home on the 70th and final lap.
If you ignore the victory – and you really can’t ignore the victory – Button had a pretty torrid Canadian Grand Prix. He collided with McLaren team mate Lewis Hamilton, he collided with future McLaren team mate Fernando Alonso, and he picked up a drive-through penalty for speeding behind the Safety Car. Between those particular ignominies however, Button did what Button does best: use that near-supernatural touch on the brakes to navigate a wet circuit better than anyone else.
He passed his way through the field, finding the grip where no-one else could, and pounced when Sebastian Vettel had a half-slide coming onto the back straight on the final lap. A few seconds later, Button’s crew, already on the pit-wall, got the surprise of their lives as he came through to take the chequered flag. Everyone else was already running for the airport.
The strategic masterstroke: Canada 2012 – the right and wrong way to run a one-stop race
In the modern era, the two-stop race in Canada has always come out on top in the dry but there have always been drivers prepared to tough it out with a one-stop. Esteban Ocon and Carlos Sainz both scored points last year with that approach, ninth and 10th respectively. Fifteen seasons ago, however, gambling on the one-stop paid out much further up the field, with Romain Grosjean for Lotus and Sergio Perez at Sauber both recording unlikely podiums.
The race at the front was a three-way battle between McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso, and Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel. Vettel started on pole and led the first 15 laps before pitting. Hamilton stayed out a lap longer to overcut, and came out ahead. Alonso kept going until Lap 19, and squeezed out just ahead of Vettel and behind Hamilton, but the race hinged on what happened later.
Hamilton pitted from the lead on Lap 50 of the 70-lap race and, critically, neither Alonso nor Vettel followed him in. “Are those guys one-stopping?” queried Hamilton a couple of laps later. “No,” came the reply from his pit-wall. “I think they’re one-stopping,” he insisted after another tour. “It won’t matter,” was the reply.
And it didn’t matter for Hamilton. He breezed past Vettel on Lap 62, at which point Vettel accepted defeat, made a second stop and salvaged what he could from his failed gamble. Hamilton then passed Alonso on 64 to retake the lead. Ferrari deemed it too late to stop, so Alonso kept going, but in the final few laps he was passed by first Grosjean, then Perez and finally Vettel.
While Alonso’s one-stop didn’t work, Grosjean, running the same supersoft to soft strategy was able to jump from P7 to P2. He pitted two laps later than Alonso – but more significantly, he wasn’t forced to push hard right out of the box.
The masterstroke, however, belongs to Perez, advancing from P15 to P3. He ran the alternate soft to supersoft strategy, went all the way to Lap 41 on his first set – making his way to P7 – but dropped back only one place with his pit stop and then had excellent pace in a lighter car to get the maximum from his supersofts across the final 29 laps.
This sort of race became the Mexican’s trademark in 2012, attracting the interest of both Ferrari and McLaren, the latter eventually securing his signature as a replacement for Mercedes-bound Hamilton.
The Risk Perspective is brought to you in association with Marsh, Formula 1’s Official Risk Partner and Official Insurance Brokering Partner.