Everything you need to know about the coming 2022 Canadian Grand Prix

The 2022 Formula 1 season will continue, as the Canadian Grand Prix returns to the calendar after a two-year absence created by the Covid-19 pandemic. The race in Montreal will be the ninth round of the 2022 World Championship.

Verstappen & Red Bull lead the championship

Max Verstappen and Red Bull enter the weekend leading both the World Drivers’ and World Constructors’ championships. Sergio Pérez is now second in the WDC, 21 points behind his teammate and with little chance of actually fighting against the Dutchman.

Ferrari is coming off its first double-DNF due to mechanical failures since the 2008 Australian Grand Prix and that has left Charles Leclerc third in the championship, 34 points behind Verstappen.

Leclerc has now suffered two mechanical failures on his car while leading Grands Prix, which has cost him more than possible 50 points. Max Verstappen has also had two retirements due to unreliability from his car, but he was second on those two occasions, losing fewer points than the Monegasque.

FIA to intervene to solve porpoising effect

Mercedes (George Russell and Sir Lewis Hamilton) continues to be unreliable in terms of performance, with the team still a long way behind Red Bull and Ferrari, both on Saturdays and Sundays.

Sir Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes W13 during the Monaco GP on Saturday May 28, 2022 (Photo by Mark Sutton / LAT Images)

Moreover, their drivers, as well as many from other teams, continue to struggle with the seemingly unfixable bouncing on these cars of the new generation, with Hamilton even struggling to get out from his W13 after last weekend’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

The FIA has recently informed that the organisation will intervene and take steps in order to reduce “porpoising in the interests of safety”:

“A Technical Directive has been issued to give guidance to the teams about the measures the FIA intends to take to tackle the problem. These include:

1. Closer scrutiny of the planks and skids, both in terms of their design and the observed wear
2. The definition of a metric, based on the car’s vertical acceleration, that will give a quantitative limit for acceptable level of vertical oscillations. The exact mathematical formula for this metric is still being analysed by the FIA, and the Formula 1 teams have been invited to contribute to this process.

In addition to these short-term measures, the FIA will convene a technical meeting with the Teams in order to define measures that will reduce the propensity of cars to exhibit such phenomena in the medium term.

The FIA has decided to intervene following consultation with its doctors in the interests of safety of the drivers. In a sport where the competitors are routinely driving at speeds in excess of 300km/h, it is considered that all of a driver’s concentration needs to be focused on that task and that excessive fatigue or pain experienced by a driver could have significant consequences should it result in a loss of concentration. In addition, the FIA has concerns in relation to the immediate physical impact on the health of the drivers, a number of whom have reported back pain following recent events.”

How does the rest look in F1’s Constructors’ Championship?

McLaren (Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo) sits fourth in the WCC with 65 points. The team is coming off a weekend where both cars scored points, with Ricciardo finishing eighth and Norris ninth.

After scoring points with both cars, Alpine (Esteban Ocon and Fernando Alonso) is now fifth in the WCC, surpassing Alfa Romeo (Valtteri Bottas and Guanyu Zhou). The French team now has 47 points and should be able to compete with McLaren for fourth, as Alonso has been competitive in the last three weekends.

Daniel Ricciardo, McLaren MCL36 from above

AlphaTauri had its best result of the year with Pierre Gasly finishing fifth in Baku ( the team, with Gasly and Yuki Tsunoda, has 27 points).

Haas (Kevin Magnussen and Mick Schumacher) remains eighth in the WCC with 15 points, but the team hasn’t scored points in the last four races.

Aston Martin (Sebastian Vettel and Lance Stroll) had its best result of the year in Baku as Vettel finished sixth, bringing the team’s tally of points to 15, equalling Haas (but Haas ranks higher because of Magnussen’s fifth place in the first race.

Williams (3 points - Alex Albon and Nicholas Latifi) round out the positions of the World Constructors’ Championship.

2022 Canadian GP Facts & Figures

Sunday’s race will be the 57th Canadian Grand Prix in history and the 51st race held as part of the Formula 1 World Championship.

The first Canadian Grand Prix was held in 1961 and was a sports car race. The first Formula 1 Canadian Grand Prix happened in 1967, with Jack Brabham winning at Mosport Park with his Brabham car.

From 1967 to 1970, the event alternated between Mosport Park and Mont-Tremblant, two fast circuits with elevation changes and many challenges for drivers and cars. Safety concerns with Mont-Tremblant left the track out of the calendar, and the Canadian GP continued at Mosport Park until 1977.

The event moved to Montreal in 1978 and the then Île Notre-Dame Circuit (today’s Circuit Gilles Villeneuve). Legendary Canadian racer Gilles Villeneuve won the first event at Montreal, as he put his Ferrari in first place, ahead of Jody Scheckter’s Wolf and his teammate Carlos Reutemann.

The win was Villeneuve’s first of his career, in his first full season in the sport.

Williams’ Alan Jones won the race in 1980 to seal his only World Drivers’ Championship and the first for the team. In that race, Renault’s Jean-Pierre Jabouille crashed heavily and suffered leg injuries that ultimately ended his Formula 1 competitive career.

The 1982 event saw Nelson Piquet win for Brabham, but the race was marked by Riccardo Paletti’s death in only his second F1 race. The 23-year-old Italian crashed against the stalled Ferrari of Didier Pironi at the start of the race and died shortly after.

In recent history, some of the most memorable Canadian Grand Prix include Jean Alesi taking his first and only Grand Prix win in 1995 while driving a Ferrari with the number 27 on top of it, bringing memories of Gilles Villeneuve to the Italian crowd.

Monaco GP winner Olivier Panis suffered a career-altering crash at the 1997 event, which left him with leg injuries and caused him to miss seven races. That was the seventh event of the 1997 campaign, and Panis was third in the WDC with his Prost car.

In the 2001 event, Ralf Schumacher won for Williams with his brother Michael sitting second, which was the first time in F1 history that siblings finished 1-2 in a race. Both repeated the feat in Canada in 2003, with Michael winning the event.

Robert Kubica crash at Canada 2007 F1 GP

Sir Lewis Hamilton took the first of his record 103 Formula 1 victories in the 2007 Canadian Grand Prix, as well as the first of record-setting 103 Pole Positions. That event is also remembered for BMW-Sauber’s Robert Kubica heavy crash heading to the third-sector hairpin, which caused Kubica to miss the following US Grand Prix, despite many expecting bad news after such a horrific accident.

In the 2008 Canadian GP, Kubica returned to the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve and won the race, which was his first and only Grand Prix win in F1.

The Canadian round wasn’t part of the 2009 calendar but it returned to Formula 1 in 2010 after a new 5-year deal was signed between organizers and the racing series’ management.

Hamilton won again in 2010 before his then McLaren teammate Jenson Button won a crazy race in 2011 (the longest in F1 history) as the rain created dramatic scenarios throughout the race, including red flags.

Hamilton gave McLaren its third consecutive win at Montreal in 2012 before Sebastian Vettel and Daniel Ricciardo gave Red Bull consecutive wins in 2013 and 2014 (Ricciardo’s win was his first in Formula 1).

Hamilton dominated from 2015 to 2017 before Vettel won for Ferrari in 2018 (the Scuderia’s first win at the track since 2004). The 2019 race was controversial, as Vettel was given a five-second penalty for re-joining the track unsafely after a mistake in Turn 4.

The British driver was following closely and was going to take advantage of the German’s mistake, but Vettel’s unsafe return to the track forced Hamilton to back off to avoid a collision, prompting the penalty for the four-time champion.

Vettel and Ferrari fans were completely against the penalty and there’s still outrage from media members about it.

Michael Schumacher and Lewis Hamilton lead the all-time table in terms of wins at Canada with seven apiece. The German won once with Benetton (1994) and six with Ferrari (1997, 1998, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004). On his side, Hamilton won three times for McLaren (2007, 2010, 2012) and four with Mercedes (2015, 2016, 2017, 2019).

Among teams, McLaren leads Ferrari 13 wins to 12, while Williams is third with seven wins in Canada.

Circuit Gilles Villeneuve Track info

The Circuit Gilles Villeneuve is a 4.361 km with 14 corners that is definitely tough on brakes and has a fantastic dynamic of medium-speed ‘chicanes’, with the last one having the “Wall of Champions” on the exit, an infamous place where several World Champions have crashed through the years, and three former champions (Michael Schumacher, Damon Hill, and Jacques Villeneuve) crashed in 1999.

The first F1 race held at Montreal came in 1978, with the aforementioned win of Gilles Villeneuve in a track named Île Notre-Dame Circuit. Since 1978, Montreal has hosted the Canadian GP, with 40 Grands Prix celebrated at the place since 1978.

In 1982, shortly after Villeneuve’s tragic death at Belgium, the track was renamed after the Canadian legend.

The layout of the circuit has had two big changes since entering F1. The position of the start/finish line was placed shortly after the hairpin (which was Turn 19 at the time). Then, the start/finish line was moved to its current place in 1988, and the track had 17 corners after changes were made to the final sector. The first part of the circuit has remained similar since the circuit entered Formula 1.

In 1996, an acceleration zone was added after the hairpin, making that part of the track a straight, creating some overtaking opportunities before the final chicane (Turns 13 and 14). Since then, only small changes have been made to the layout, only being shortened from 4.421 km to the current 4.361 km, after changes made to the pit-lane exit due to safety concerns.

The lap record at the track is held by Valtteri Bottas, with a 1:13.078 min in the 2019 race.

2022 Canadian Grand Prix - Tyres

The dry tyres for the 2022 Canadian Grand Prix will be the C3 as P Zero White hard, C4 as P Zero Yellow Medium, and C5 as P Zero Red soft, which is Pirelli’s softest choice for 2022.

Pirelli explained its choice with a press release: “After a two-year absence, Canada is back on the calendar: again with the softest tyres in the range, as was the case for Montreal in 2019 and also for the last two races this year (Monaco and Azerbaijan).
In other words: the C3 is the P Zero White hard, the C4 is the P Zero Yellow medium and the C5 is the P Zero Red soft. In 2019, the winning strategy was a one-stopper: starting on the medium and finishing on the hard.

Montreal has some elements in common with Baku, thanks to its heavy traction and braking demands on a rapidly-evolving surface, but with lower speeds and cooler weather.

The weather has often been a major feature of the Canadian Grand Prix: the 2011 race is still the longest in F1 history, thanks to six safety car periods and a lengthy interruption that neutralised the action for several hours. It's never easy to predict the conditions, and there’s also a reasonable chance of rain. .”

Mario Isola, Pirelli’s head of motorsport, further explained Pirelli’s tyre choice for the 2022 Canadian Grand Prix:

“Canada will pose a number of question marks for the teams: the weather is often variable, all previous data is three years old, and we have a completely different range of tyres with new compounds and structures, on a track that is hardly ever used – which will lead to a very high degree of evolution.

Compared to their last visit to Montreal, the drivers should find compounds that are more stable with a wider working range, enabling them to push harder throughout each stint with a much lower risk of overheating.

One interesting aspect to Montreal is that it has one of the lowest pit lane time loss penalties on the calendar, meaning that a car can be in and out of the pit lane in less than 20 seconds. This could open up a few options in terms of strategy.”

The minimum starting pressures for the tyres will be 23.0 PSI (front) and 20.5 PSI (rear).

2022 Canadian Grand Prix Weather Forecast

Friday, June 17th - FP1 & FP2
Conditions: A P.M. shower in places
Max. temperature: 24°C
Chance of rain: 44%

Saturday, June 18th - FP3 & Qualifying
Conditions: Cool with occasional rain and drizzle
Max. temperature: 16°C
Chance of rain: 61%

Sunday, June 19th - Race
Conditions: Partly sunny
Max. temperature: 21°C
Chance of rain: 1%

Who will be on the 2022 Canadian Grand Prix Podium?

The Canadian Grand Prix has had two winners since the 2015 edition: Lewis Hamilton (four times) and Sebastian Vettel in 2018. Both drivers even clashed for victory in the previously mentioned 2019 event, which was the most recent Canadian round of Formula 1.

2019 Canadian F1 GP podium: 1. Hamilton, 2. Vettel, 3. Leclerc

However, the 2022 event isn’t likely to give us a vintage fight between Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel, as they do not have the tool to fight for a win under normal circumstances.

This time, Ferrari will be trying to end a winning streak from a rival (as they tried in 2019). Red Bull has won the last five Grands Prix in 2022, with Ferrari going win-less since the 2022 Australian Grand Prix, which was celebrated on April 10th. Even though Charles Leclerc has been on Pole Position in the last four GPs, the Monegasque has only finished one of those races in the podium, as two retirements and strategic mistakes have cost him.

In terms of the Red Bull drivers, Max Verstappen will be looking for his first win at Canada, where he has achieved a podium before, in the 2018 event. Sergio Pérez, on his side, hasn’t finished on the podium in Canada since 2012 (with Sauber) and could certainly be in contention for it this weekend, although a win might be off the table for him.

The top three predictions for the 2022 Canadian Grand Prix is 1. Max Verstappen, 2. Sergio Pérez, 3. Charles Leclerc.

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