Rich heritage for Canada in Formula 1 racing
This year, 2017, is the 50th anniversary of the first Formula1 Grand Prix of Canada. The Canadian International AutoShow is marking this occasion with a special exhibit featuring a selection of Grand Prix cars — including the one that Jacques Villeneuve drove to the world championship in 1997 — as well as historical films, photographs and other memorabilia.
That first Grand Prix was held on Aug. 27, 1967, at what was then called Mosport Park, north of Bowmanville, Ont., and was geared specifically for Canadian motorsport to celebrate the country’s Centennial.
There were Canadian Grand Prix races held previously, starting in1961, but those races were for sports cars raced by predominantly local drivers, not for the lightning quick, nimble oh-so-powerful Formula 1 cars driven by a cast of international drivers in competition for the world championship.
And although this is the 50th anniversary year, the Grand Prix du Canada that will go to the post in Montreal in June will only be the 48th, as there were three years in which no races were held because of tugs-ofwar between sponsors (Canadian brewers Labatt and Molson, in the early years) and money (when former F1czar Bernie Ecclestone would periodically flex his muscles.)
To date — and this doesn’t count Lance Stroll of Montreal, who hasn’t officially turned a wheel yet in a Formula1 race —11Canadians have been good enough to drive and qualify F1 cars for world championship Grand Prix races. Of those 11, only seven have raced in Canadian Grands Prix; the other four raced in F1 Grands Prix in countries other than ours.
Here is the story of the Canadian Grand Prix and the officials, drivers, mechanics and engineers who made it happen.
The first race Following the Second World War, sports car road racing became a popular spectator sport at airport circuits across the country. The Canadian Automobile Sport Clubs and the Canadian Racing Drivers Association were formed and they were always aggressive in planning, promoting and presenting automobile racing. Right from the beginning, these organizers of Canadian racing were “thinking big,” so why not go after a Formula 1 Grand Prix?
That first one, in1967, was the result of years-long efforts by the CASC under the direction of its executive director, Bob Hanna. To recognize the efforts put forth by Quebec motorsport regulars, the second Grand Prix was held a year later, on Sept. 22, 1968, at Le Circuit Mont-Tremblant in the Laurentian Mountains north of Montreal.
The idea was to alternate the race between Mosport and Le Circuit. However, the Laurentian racetrack fell into disrepair following the 1970 race — there were problems with both ownership and financing — and Mosport became the “permanent” home of the race until 1978 when it was relocated to Montreal’s Ile Notre-Dame. It has remained there ever since.
An aside: Following the 1977 race at Mosport, Labatt had sought to move the race to a circuit at Exhibition Place in downtown Toronto, an idea first suggested a decade earlier by race driver George Eaton and John F. Bassett, son of newspaper publisher John Bassett.
Toronto city council, in one of the most shortsighted decisions in the community’s history, voted against holding the race. The next day, Labatt approached Montreal mayor Jean Drapeau, who said yes immediately. But Drapeau had two problems: who to manage and promote a Grand Prix and, more importantly, where to hold it.
Roger Peart, now president of ASNFIA Canada, the sport’s governing body in Canada and then an executive of the CASC, was the person who hit on the idea of using the then-abandoned arterial roads around Ile Notre-Dame, site of Expo 67, for the circuit. The promoter Drapeau hired was Normand Legault, a businessman with ambition who organized and presented the Grand Prix for 30 years, from 1978 to 2008, and was president and CEO from 1996 to 2008, after which Francois Dumontier, president and CEO of Octane Racing Group Inc., became organizer and promoter.
Subsequent races 1967: The first F1 GP featured legendary drivers such as two-time world champion Jim Clark and Graham Hill driving for the mighty Team Lotus; Chris Amon drove a Ferrari; Jackie Stewart was in a BRM and there was Jack Brabham, Denis Hulme and Dan Gurney.
Clark won pole with a time of one minute, 22.4 seconds — slow by today’s standards. A crowd of more than 50,000 jammed themselves into the Mosport facility and just as the race was about to start, it started to pour rain. They started the race anyway and drivers and cars were going every which way. Clark slid back in the field as water was getting into his car’s electrics and bogging it down.
But then the rain stopped and the track began to dry. Clark put on an exhibition of speed and skill that had rarely been seen by Canadian motor racing fans previously. He not only caught the leaders but was heading for victory. Sadly, the rains came again, and that was it for Clark. It was the last time he would race in Canada. He was killed in a Formula 2 race at Hockenheim, Germany, on April 8, 1968.
Jack Brabham won that inaugural F1 Canadian GP, with teammate Denis Hulme second and Dan Gurney third. It was a wonderful beginning for F1 racing in Canada — if only the weather could have been better. 1968: The first Grand Prix du Canada was held at Le Circuit Mont-Tremblant on Sept. 22. The weather was perfect and the autumn colours in the Laurentians made it a paradise for a motor race. Denis Hulme won in a McLaren after Chris Amon had led most of the race before his Ferrari’s gearbox packed it in.
What was significant about this particular race, however, was that it was attended for the first time by a sitting Canadian prime minister. Pierre Elliott Trudeau not only showed up, but arrived in grand style aboard a Canadian Forces helicopter that landed right on the race track. Trudeau emerged with a date (this was pre-Margaret Sinclair Trudeau, mother of our current prime minister) and not only stayed to watch the Grand Prix but actually waved the Canadian flag to start it. 1973: A pace car was used in competition for the first time during a Formula 1 race. It was raining when the Grand Prix started. Jody Scheckter and François Cevert crashed, resulting in the safety car — driven by Canadian racing champion Eppie Wietzes — being sent out. The problem was that Wietzes pulled in front of the wrong car. (“I just did what I was told,” he said years later. “They said to go in front of that particular car, so I did.”) This error resulted in several cars — one in particular driven by eventual winner Peter Revson — being able to gain a lap on the rest of the field. There was great confusion at the finish with Peter Revson, Emerson Fittipaldi and Jackie Oliver all thinking they had won. It took awhile, but Revson was declared the winner, with Fittipaldi second and Oliver third. A safety car did not become an official part of F1 racing until 1993. 1977: This was the last race held at Mosport Park before it was moved to Montreal. There were two things about this race that were historically significant. It marked the first race in a Ferrari for the legendary Canadian F1 star Gilles Villeneuve and his first appearance in a Canadian Grand Prix. He finished-12th among 22 drivers who started the race. The race was won by Jody Scheckter, driving a car for a team owned by Canadian Walter Wolf, the first time a Canadian owner had won a Grand Prix. 1978: Gilles Villeneuve won the first Grand Prix of his career at the first Grand Prix to be held in his home province of Quebec. It was the first time a Canadian won a Grand Prix. 1982: The race was moved from the fall to the spring because of the potential for better weather. It was a race without Gilles Villeneuve, however. The patron saint of Canadian auto racing had died a month earlier at the Zolder circuit while qualifying for the Belgian Grand Prix.
To make things worse in ’82, Italian pilot Riccardo Paletti died as the result of injuries suffered in a start-line accident when he crashed into the rear of the Ferrari being driven by Didier Pironi, who had stalled. It was Paletti’s one and only Grand Prix and involved Villeneuve’s bitter rival at Ferrari, Pironi. 1994: Michael Schumacher, driving for Benetton, won the first of his seven Canadian Grands Prix. He won five of the others while driving for Ferrari. 1996: Gilles Villeneuve’s son, Jacques Villeneuve, began his F1 career driving for Williams. His teammate, Damon Hill, was the son of a former world champion.
The competition between them was extreme. At Montreal, Villeneuve had the pole until the last second when his time was pipped by Hill’s. The race was a repeat, with Hill winning and Villeneuve finishing second. Unfortunately for Jacques, this result was his best in the 10 Canadian Grands Prix he contested. 1999: This might have been the worst Canadian GP for property damage ever held. There were four crashes in Turn 13 and the safety car was deployed four times.
It was the first F1 race to finish behind a safety car as the result of a massive crash by Heiz-Harald Frentzen with four laps to go. Three of the drivers who crashed at Turn 13 were previous world champions and the retaining wall there became known as the “Wall of Champions.” 2001: Ralf Schumacher and his brother Michael became the first siblings to finish first and second in an F1 Grand Prix when they finished in that order in Montreal. 2005: The Grand Prix du Canada, which was won by Kimi Raikkonen in a Ferrari, set a TV ratings record and was the most-watched (and remains the most-watched) F1 Grand Prix in history. In fact, it continues to rank as the third most-watched TV sports event ever, behind the first Super Bowl and the UEFA Champions League Final. 2006: Alex Schnaider, a land developer from Toronto, bought the Jordan F1 team in 2005 and renamed it Midland for the 2006 season, during which he sold it to Spyker cars. 2007: Lewis Hamilton became the first visible minority driver to win an F1 Grand Prix. Robert Kubica survived a violent rollover accident in which he suffered only an ankle in jury and a concussion. It was the most spectacular crash in the history of the Canadian race. Kubica recovered and won the Canadian race the following year. 2011: This Grand Prix, which took more than four hours to run, wound up being one of the most exciting - if not the most exciting — in the history of the race. Jenson Button, after crashing into other cars twice and restarting 21st and last following the second one, fought his way back through the field and forced leader Sebastian Vettel into making a rare mistake with a lap to go before passing him for the victory.
It was the finest race of Button’s lengthy F1 career. It took so long to finish because it was raining when it started and then was interrupted for more than two hours by a downpour. 2013: Tragedy struck the Grand Prix when track marshal Mark Robinson was killed when he was run over by a mobile crane that was taking away the car of driver Esteban Gutierrez which had been abandoned by the side of the circuit late in the race after spinning out. Robinson’s death was the first since the Australian Grand Prix in 2001 when marshal Graham Beveridge was struck and killed by a wheel that flew off Canadian Jacques Villeneuve’s car. 2017: The 50th anniversary of the first F1Grand Prix of Canada.
Canadian drivers The first Canadian to race in a Formula 1 Grand Prix was Peter Ryan of Mont-Tremblant, Que. Because of a win in the sports car Canadian Grand Prix at Mosport in 1961 over international stars Pedro Rodriguez and Stirling Moss, Team Lotus founder Colin Chapman offered him a drive in the 1961 U.S. Grand Prix at Watkins Glen, where he finished ninth.
He signed a three-year contract with Lotus and was sent to the Formula Jr. Ian Walker Racing Team for the 1962 season. At Rheims, France, in July of that year, Ryan crashed and was killed. Initially a ski racer, he was famously quoted for saying, “In skiing, you can only break your leg.” He was 22 when he died.
A German native who held both Canadian and American citizenship, Peter Broeker entered the 1963 U.S. Grand Prix driving a homemade Stebro F1 car. He finished seventh, but he was 22 laps behind the leader at the finish.
Two other Canadians, Ernie de Vos and Ludwig Heimrath, were entered in that race, also in a Stebro, but didn’t compete because the car never arrived at the Watkins Glen circuit-Broeker died in1980 in Ottawa at age 54; de Vos was killed in a cycling accident in Florida in 2005 at age 63.
John Cannon was born in England but raced as a Canadian citizen. Active in many forms of racing — he was Formula 5000 North American champion in 1970, won a Can-Am Series race at the Laguna Seca circuit in California in 1968 and placed second in the second Indy car race, also in ’68, at Le Circuit Mont-Tremblant (under U.S. Auto Club sanction) — he made his one and only Grand Prix start in the U.S. GP at Watkins Glen in 1971, finishing 14th. He was killed piloting an experimental aircraft in Florida in 1999. He was 66.
Allen Berg was a Canadian from British Columbia who drove a halfseason for the Osella F1-team in 1986, starting at the U.S. Grand Prix in Detroit, the first race after Canada.
Unable to raise sponsorship to continue-in F1-after his time at Osella, his racing pedigree includes winning the championship of the Tasman Formula 3 Series in Australia and New Zealand and winning the Mexican F2 championship and the Indy Lights Panamerican title.
Canadian drivers in F1-Canadian GPs There were two Canadians in the first F1 Canadian Grand Prix in 1967. Al Pease, a champion amateur Canadian racer, entered the race as did Eppie Wietzes, a young Canadian professional with promise.
Pease, driving his own Eagle-Climax, had his battery die just before the start and was well behind the rest of the field by the time he got going. Midrace, it went flat again out on the course. Pease walked back to the pits, got a second battery and a couple of wrenches, and walked back out to his car where he exchanged it for the first one.
He was 43 laps behind when the winner, Jack Brabham, received the checkered flag. Pease tried again at Le Circuit Mont-Tremblant in 1968 but wasn’t fast enough to start; in 1969, he was disqualified for being too slow.
Wietzes, a Toronto auto dealer, was No. 1 driver of Ford GT40 racing cars for the famous Canadian Comstock Racing Team of the 1960s. Comstock owner Charles (Chuck) Rathgeb arranged for Wietzes to drive the spare third Team Lotus car.
Jim Clark had an “off” in his primary car and took over Wietzes’, which put the Canadian at more of a disadvantage (until that time, he’d never driven a racing car without a roof ).
Toronto city council voted against holding the race. The next day, Labatt approached Montreal mayor Jean Drapeau, who said yes
He didn’t do well in the race because water got into the car’s electrics, as it did in the case of Clark and the other Lotus driver, Graham Hill. In the end, Wietzes stalled and received a push to get going again, which earned him a disqualification.
In 1974, race sponsor Labatt rented a spare car from the Brabham team for Wietzes to drive, but he didn’t do any better. Transmission failure put him out of the race and he once again failed to score points.
In 1968, for the race at le Circuit MontTremblant, Toronto auto dealer and Lotus distributor Bill Brack — a three-time Canadian driving champion who was voted one of the 10 best Formula Atlantic drivers of all time — arranged to rent the infamous spare Lotus. Practice had gone well for Brack but not for Graham Hill.
Unbeknownst to the Canadian, Hill’s car had a vibration that the team traced to a wonky halfshaft, so they put the bad one into Brack’s car and Brack’s good one into Hill’s. At the start of the race, Brack — who was near the back of the grid — started to pick off cars but 18 laps in, the halfshaft broke, putting him out of the race. Hill went on to finish fourth.
In 1969 at Mosport, Brack again rented the Lotus and this time finished eighth — his best finish in Grand Prix racing. In 1972, this time in a BRM, he spun off and retired, eventually being classified 20th out of 24 entered.
The 1969 Canadian Grand Prix saw three Canadians start the race — Pease, Brack and John Cordts of North Bay, Ont. Cordts participated in numerous racing cars and series but was particularly known for being a steady performer in Can-Am sports cars and the Trans-Am series. Through the auspices of Toronto auto dealer Paul Seitz, he qualified a Brabham 19th on the grid but an oil leak put him out of the race after only 10 laps. There are some who say that Cordts could have done very well in Grand Prix racing if he’d had more chances with better equipment.
The first Canadian to become a member of a Formula 1 team was George Eaton of Toronto, who raced for BRM in 1969, ’70 and ’71. Eaton raced in the original CanAm Series in 1968, ’69 and 1970 and was top Canadian in the Can-Am in 1969. He raced Formula A cars in North America in 1969 and 1971 and also ran several U.S. Auto Club Champ Car (Indy car) races.
At a time when entrants had to qualify to race in F1 events, Eaton started 13 world championship GPs for BRM starting late in the season in1969. He made the top 10 in the 1970 Canadian GP. He ran one USAC Indy car race in 1972 at Phoenix before retiring.
The first Canadian to race full-time in Formula 1 was Gilles Villeneuve of Berthierville, Que. He qualified for his first F1 GP in the summer of 1977 at the British round while driving a one-off for McLaren. When McLaren passed up an opportunity to sign him to a long-term contract, Ferrari snapped him up.
His first race for Ferrari was in the Canadian Grand Prix at Mosport that same year. He drove for the Scuderia for a little more than four years. He became the first Canadian racing driver to win a world championship Grand Prix when he won his home Grand Prix at the first race held in Montreal in 1978. He won six Grands Prix in total, and was on the podium 13 times. He finished second in the world championship in 1979. In the five Canadian GPs he contested, he finished 12th, first, second, fifth and third.
(His brother, Jacques Villeneuve Sr., attempted twice to qualify cars for the Canadian Grand Prix but wasn’t successful either time. He also tried, but failed, to qualify for the Caesar’s Palace Grand Prix in 1981.)
Villeneuve was killed while attempting to qualify for the 1982 Belgian Grand Prix at Zolder. A nation went into mourning, and the government sent an armed forces plane to bring him home and the prime minister and other government and opposition politicians attended the funeral.
In 1982, the circuit on the Isle NotreDame was named Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve in his honour. A statue of him stands in a park named for him in his birthplace of Berthierville.
He was inducted into the Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame in 2003 as well as the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame. A stamp has been issued in his honour by the Canadian Post Office. The Villeneuve family is working on establishing a museum in Montreal to honour his legacy and that of his son, Jacques.
Peter Ryan was the first Canadian to race in a Formula 1 Grand Prix; George Eaton was the first to race in F1 as a team member; Gilles Villeneuve was the first Canadian to win a world championship Grand Prix. But in 1977, Jacques Villeneuve became the first Canadian to win the world championship of drivers.
Jacques Villeneuve had an amazing year in 1995, winning the Indianapolis 500 after being down two laps and fighting back, and the CART season championship. As a result, he was invited by Sir Frank Williams to drive for the legendary Formula 1 team, and he started off with a bang. He won the pole for his first race in F1at Australia in March1986. Only a bit of bad luck (an oil leak) kept him from winning his debut race.
In only his fourth Grand Prix, at Germany, he won. He was first in three more races and the title went down to the wire in Japan. His opponent for the championship, Damon Hill, went on to the win the race while Villeneuve didn’t finish because his right-rear wheel came off — an unlikely occurrence at the best of times.
In 1977, Villeneuve took seven victories and 10 pole positions but had to fight bureaucracy as well as an aggressive opponent, Michael Schumacher.
At the second-last race in Japan, Villeneuve was told to start last for going through yellow flags during qualifying. Williams appealed and his starting spot on the grid — fifth — was reinstated, but it was all for naught as he was disqualified from the race afterward.
Then, at Jerez, the final race, archrival Schumacher turned into him when Villeneuve attempted a pass late in the contest. Schumacher paid for his sins by bogging down and becoming stuck in a gravel trap. Villeneuve recovered and babied his car to the checkers, where he finished third. The points were enough to give him the title — the first for a Canadian racing driver.
Because of bad luck and bad advice, Villeneuve’s career as a racing driver did not go as well after 1997 as it had before. He eventually retired from F1in 2006.
In 10 Canadian GPs, his best finish was second in his rookie year, 1996. After that, he retired or crashed six times and finished 10th in 1998, 15th in 2000 and ninth in ’05.