Hi folks...
From Monaco we now go to Canada for the first of two back-to-back events in North America. Montreal is always a good location and the atmosphere should be great as the fans there are passionate about their motorsport and are big followers of
Formula 1.
It is a shame that we don’t have a local star, with Jacques Villeneuve not participating this year, but they will still flock to the grand prix. Montreal itself is a good city too - vibrant and all the people are well educated about the sport.
As for the track it is ideal in many ways as it is based just on the outside of the city and being part-street and part-permanent course it makes for an interesting locale.
It is tough on machinery however, because the braking is quite heavy. It is also quick and unforgiving with kerbs and walls in close proximity to the track. That means drivers’ can get caught out and quite often a few will have some offs, particularly at ‘Champion’s wall’. It is also a bit bumpy because of the cold winters over there and that adds to the challenge.
Last time out of course it was all about McLaren-Mercedes and while I was a little bit concerned about the race at the Principality being a little bit one dimensional, the result was pretty much as we saw it.
Of course post-event the
FIA launched an investigation into whether or not
McLaren broke the rules by enforcing team orders and I was very pleased to see that Ron Dennis’ squad were cleared of any wrong doing.
I had a number of people contact me after looking for weird and wonderful quotes but I don’t think McLaren did anything wrong. The situation was very different from what went on a few years ago with
Ferrari.
The difficulty on all these things is defining strategy, defining tactics, defining instructions and defining team orders. There is a fine line between those and once a race gets underway it is difficult to assess what is strategy and what is an instruction.
