A lap of the Gilles Villeneuve Circuit

The Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, situated on an island in the middle of the St. Lawrence Seaway, offers a real challenge for the drivers when setting up their cars. With two hairpins, and a wide variety of slow and fast corners, traction and good braking balance are required. Straight line speed is often sacrificed for greater downforce. So, what's a fast lap like? Crossing the start finish line, the track kinks right slightly before turning sharp left. The drivers take this corner in 2nd before slowing down further for the 1st gear Pits Hairpin. Accelerating out of this tight right hander, the cars pass through a fast, twisty set of curves before slamming on the brakes once more for the 3rd gear left/right complex. The track then has a short straight before the next corner, the drivers often using the opportunity for overtaking manoeuvres. This chicane is taken in 2nd gear and helps close the field up before the final hairpin. The hairpin is the slowest point on the circuit but often causes the most excitement, opponents often driving side-by-side as they enter the final straight. The longest straight on the circuit used to contain two flat out kinks but was interrupted by a temporary chicane for the 1994 and 1995 events. In 1996, the straight ran the entire length uninterrupted once more. The final corner before the start/finish line is another fast chicane that sees the drivers slide wide before beginning another fast lap of this tough, bumpy circuit.

Circuit length: 2.747 miles / 4.421 km Race length: 69 laps (189.548 miles / 304.049 km)

What happened last year?

The Field

Winfield Williams-Mecachrome Goodyear
Things are finally looking up for Williams and its drivers. Jacques Villeneuve was able to run the McLaren drivers extremely close in testing at Monza last week and was also faster than the current top Goodyear runner, Ferrari. With Montreal 's long straights and tight corners, the FW20b should be well suited to the circuit named after the father of the current World Champion. I would expect Jacques Villeneuve to be the dominant driver of the pairing all weekend, with Heinz-Harald Frentzen not too far behind. Villeneuve says that he thinks the car is capable of a podium finish and I am fairly sure he is not overestimating it, the only question mark hangs over whether Ferrari and Benetton can keep Williams at bay.

Marlboro Scuderia Ferrari Goodyear
The Scuderia are reaching a key point in the championship. After 6 Grands Prix as the only potential challenger to the supremacy of McLaren and the best Goodyear team, Ferrari are now facing the possibility that they will be behind Williams at the Canadian Grand Prix. With the new exhaust system apparently not providing as great an improvement as first thought and a controversy surrounding their braking system, Ferrari seem to have stalled on development of the F300. That said, the car is still fast and both drivers are capable of getting the best from it so they will be battling hard for the position as second best team. Michael Schumacher will almost certainly have the upper hand over Eddie Irvine in both qualifying and race conditions and expect both drivers to be battling with the Williams and Benetton for the remaining podium spot.

Mild Seven Benetton-Playlife Bridgestone
Benetton are fast becoming the team that I believe can mount a challenge to the McLarens on a consistent basis. The car has always been good but from one weekend to the next, the one or other of the drivers has been inconsistent in qualifying and this has had a knock on effect on race day. For the last two Grands Prix, both drivers have been in the top 6 consistently and look to be capable of carrying this on in Canada. Trying to pick the top driver of the two is difficult but I will predict that Alex Wurz will end up on top as this is the first circuit he has visited in 1998 that he has F1 racing experience on.

West McLaren-Mercedes Bridgestone
Yet another race is approaching and yet again McLaren are in the position where only a 1-2 qualifying effort and a repeat performance in the race is going to be good enough to keep the sponsors happy. The Monaco Grand Prix would surely have given McLaren another 1-2 finish had the Mercedes engine in David Coulthard's car not exploded early in the proceedings. Recent tests at Monza show that McLaren are still ahead of the competition and this should carry on into the race weekend. As with the last Grand Prix I would expect Mika Hakkinen to come out ahead of his team mate as the Finn's confidence has hit an all time high and it would take a major disaster to slow him down.

Benson & Hedges Jordan-Mugen Honda Goodyear
Jordan is in crisis. Following the disastrous Monaco Grand Prix, Jordan has been searching for a way to reverse the current downward trend it is suffering. Team boss Eddie Jordan has absolved both engine supplier Mugen and the drivers of any blame on the matter moving the responsibility for the problems squarely onto the shoulders of designer Gary Anderson and his team. Luckily, the Canadian Grand Prix has less slow corners than at Monaco and it is in these that the J198 is said to suffer most. For the last Grand Prix I predicted that Damon Hill would out qualify and out race his younger team mate Ralf Schumacher and I expect the same to happen here. As to how well they will fare in comparison with the other teams, I wouldn't like to say.

Gauloises Blondes Prost-Peugeot Bridgestone
As the star of Jordan wanes, so that of Prost rises. In the Monza tests Jarno Trulli was ahead of the Sauber of Jean Alesi. Sauber are a team that so far has been at the top of the midfield teams and Prost's arrival ahead of them bodes well. The initial problems that surrounded the innovative gearbox appear to have been solved and the team and drivers have now been able to improve the speed of the car. Now the car is working better, Jarno Trulli seems to be happier and has moved ahead of Olivier Panis in terms of speed over a single lap. In race conditions, their qualifying position it the only real differentiator between the two drivers and I would expect Canada to be no different. Last year Olivier Panis broke both his legs in an horrific accident in Montreal and I would expect this to affect him slightly in terms of overall pace for the first part of the weekend at least. This and Trulli's speed over a single lap mean I would pick the Italian to triumph in the intra team battle.

Red Bull Sauber-Petronas Goodyear
I am starting to get stuck for things to say about Sauber from race to race. One or both of the cars will be in the top 10 in qualifying and, if it finishes, at the end of the race will be either in the top 6 or very close. On current form, Johnny Herbert will qualify better than Jean Alesi, but the Frenchman will make a better start and finish ahead. Reliability is good and both drivers are consistent so all that is preventing the team scoring podium finishes is their lack of pace relative to the front runners. Sadly I suspect that the same thing that has afflicted the team every year (namely lack of development) is starting to rear its head again and that Sauber is starting it's slide down the table.

Danka ArrowsBridgestone
The Arrows team comes to Canada after a good performance at the Monte Carlo Grand Prix that netted top 6 finishes for both drivers. This Grand Prix, however, should be more than a little different as the confines of the Monaco street circuit have been replaced by the fast straights of the purpose built Montreal circuit and not even the team expects to get both cars in the points here. The weak points of the Arrows are the gearbox and the engine, both suffering poor reliability and the latter being low on top-end power. The objective for Canada is for both cars to finish the race and hope for a high rate of attrition to get them into the points.

Stewart-Ford Bridgestone
After the high of Spain came the low of Monaco and it seems that Stewart is no closer to the front of the field than it was before. Neither driver seemed to be able to do much with the car in Monte Carlo and with the Ford engine not noted for it's top-end power I wouldn't expect much from them in Canada either. I expect Rubens Barrichello to come out ahead of Jan Magnussen in both qualifying and race but for both drivers to languish in the bottom half of the field.

Tyrrell-Ford Goodyear
It appears that the Tyrrell management are more concerned with getting ready for 1999 than running the team in 1998 and their apparent lack of interest in Ricardo Rosset's second consecutive non-qualification does not bode well for the team. Even though Tora Takagi is driving well he needs a fast team mate to spur him on and Rosset is clearly not able to fulfil this role. Development also seems to have halted and the Takagi is falling further down the grid while Rosset has fallen right off the end. With the Ford engine neither driver stands little chance of getting into the top half of the grid in qualifying and almost no chance of scoring any points. Rosset should qualify here but expect Takagi to be a long way ahead.

Minardi-Ford Bridgestone
More challenges for the small Italian team. There seems little to worry about with regards to qualifying faster than the 107% rule and in race trim the cars are reliable and capable of sustaining the same pace for the entire afternoon. Sadly their pace isn't quick enough to do more than keep them in touch with the backmarkers and therefore advance up the order as other cars retire. Shinji Nakano has actually been putting in reasonable performances recently (perhaps due to the fact Esteban Tuero isn't giving him the beating that Panis and Trulli did at Prost last season) and Tuero is maturing fast. Expect the Japanese driver to be ahead of the young Argentine driver but not by much.

Enjoy the race...