Fans as pumped as a Pirelli racing slick
Good news is, the weekend calls for clear skies
Lewis Hamilton was looking only forward, Daniel Ricciardo was happy to look back, and the thousands of gearheads and those just curiously milling up and down pit lane on Circuit Gilles Villeneuve Thursday morning were thrilled to look … everywhere.
The Formula One Canadian Grand Prix has rolled into town, the many tents pitched around the historic Île Notre Dame race site giving the event its quite necessary circus atmosphere.
There wasn’t an engine meaningfully fired on this sunsplashed day. But that’s not to say race fever hadn’t gripped the circuit, the world’s most technologically advanced cars set to roll in practice on Friday and fans gawking Thursday at the preparations of engineers to get those machines in practice trim.
Spectators streamed onto the island site for a three-hour open house to enjoy very different things:
Many were as pumped as a Pirelli racing slick to talk about gear ratios, downforce, tire degradation and the two DRS, hammer-down passing zones on either side of this 4.361-km track on the St. Lawrence.
Others, well, they liked the colourful uniforms of the engineers and the spotless garages whose floors would be clean enough off which to eat — if only they weren’t cluttered by mechanical surgeons and technology worth millions of dollars.
Of course, there wasn’t an object, human or inanimate, that wasn’t worth a photo.
Canada’s 46th Formula One race, the 36th on this track, begins in earnest on Friday with two sessions of F1 practice and a flurry of activity in three other racing brands that support the main event.
That might be soggy fun, if damp forecasts hold. The good news is, the weekend is calling for clear skies and seasonable temperatures, not the scorching heat that tends to turn the grandstands into the world’s largest rotisserie.
Thursday was devoid of noise but for the oohs and aahs of fans both sightseeing and queued hundreds deep for a scribbled autograph from the drivers.
Some of these fans will be back for three days of speed; others simply dropped in free of charge to ogle the horsepower that still was bridled in a row of garage stables down pit lane.
Three-time Canadian champion Lewis Hamilton of Mercedes was hugely popular in the autograph session, a few minutes later front and centre among six drivers for a late morning news conference.
Beneath his fashionably flatbilled cap, Hamilton tried valiantly to push the disaster of the Monaco Grand Prix, the season’s most recent event, off his plate.
The defending world champion was called into the pits late in that one, a brutally flawed strategy call by his team that sent the erstwhile leader out in third place with neither the room nor the time to get back in front.
He would finish third, his world-championship points lead over teammate Nico Rosberg shaved to 10 coming to Montreal.
“I don’t look back,” Hamilton said, refusing to rewind to Monaco. “I’m looking forward. I’ve not thought about the last race for a long time. …
“I’ve been thinking about this next (Canadian) race, putting my mind to other things, training, trying to come back strong for this weekend.”
What happened in Monaco, Hamilton said, was “irrelevant. … There’s nothing you can do about it so there’s no point dwelling on it.”
Countless mea culpas followed two weekends ago from Hamilton’s team, and the driver has since signed a new monstrous three-year deal to race for Mercedes. So Monaco is water under any Montreal bridge you want to cross to attend this weekend’s 70-lap island dance.
“I’ve moved on,” Hamilton said. “I don’t even have to think about it. I couldn’t care less about it. I’m focused on what’s going to happen. I can’t do anything about the past. There’s a championship to be won. That’s all I’m focused on.
“It doesn’t matter how I feel, how I have felt, what I feel now,” he added, sounding almost testy as questions continued to come at him. “Actually, I don’t feel anything about it.”
As for the confidence he has in his team and the strategy calls they’ll make moving forward, having been let down in Monaco?
“Same as always: 100 per cent,” Hamilton said, twice addressing the issue. “I have full trust and confidence in the team. We’ve won (together), we’ve had pretty wonderful success together. One race doesn’t dent the solid foundation that we’ve got.”
Forty-five minutes after Hamilton had deked around questions about the most recent past, Red Bull’s Ricciardo was sitting in his team’s hospitality area, grinning, singing into a microphone, and fondly remembering last June’s Canadian Grand Prix.
“What happened last year? Refresh my memory?” the friendly Australian teased. “A Red Bull car won!
“It’s very cool to be back here. It brings back obviously a lot of memories that I’ll never actually forget. It still feels very vivid in my mind.”
Ricciardo’s work is massively cut out this weekend. He stands seventh in the drivers’ standings, his best finish through six races this season being a fifth in Monaco, and Red Bull is fourth on the constructors table, having been lapped a few times by leading Mercedes and trailing Ferrari and Williams.
“This year it’s going to take even more of an effort than it did last year to get that same success,” Ricciardo admitted, the smile never leaving his face. “Montreal has always had a bit of a style and the race never really disappoints. There’s always some excitement around it. I always stay optimistic and hope something can happen (to) spray some Champagne again.”
This city was Ricciardo’s maiden F1 victory, and his holy-heck moment came a few hours after he took the checkered flag.
“Obviously on the podium I realized what had happened,” he said. “But it probably wasn’t until I got back to the hotel that night. It’s when you switch off. You’re surrounded by people after the race, it’s non-stop, non-stop, you get in the car and get back to your hotel room, you close the door and then it’s just you.”
By now, Ricciardo had fully warmed to the subject.
“In the room, ‘Oh wow, what do I do now?’ ” he said. “I explored the mini-bar a little bit, yeah. I started off there and then we had a party with the team, so it was a good night.”
Ricciardo’s 10-minute media session was done when I leaned in to interrupt his resumed singing to ask him how much damage he really did to his mini-bar.
“To be honest,” he replied, “there was a bottle of Champagne from the hotel.”
Then playfully: “And there was maybe a little bit of Jack Daniel’s.”
The scouting reports suggest that it will be Hamilton celebrating once more on Sunday, which would put him alone in second place with four Canadian wins behind Michael Schumacher’s leading seven.
“It’s not a re-education,” he said of returning to a track he has mastered a few times, no matter his DNF with cooked brakes last year.
“But … you have to re-boost or re-awaken your mind to remember what the circuit is like. You’re always trying to improve every time you come here. You’re always trying to be faster. … I’ve generally been strong over here over the years, but I can be faster. So that’s the plan this weekend.”
Bad news indeed for anyone who doesn’t cheer for Hamilton’s team and would be happier to see how his Mercedes bends.