What to Expect from Canada 2018?
This Sunday the 49th edition of the Canadian Grand Prix will start on Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal. It's the home race for Williams driver Lance Stroll.
The 2018 F1 season is tuning out in one of the few season with 3 title contender teams and drivers. In the first 6 races until now, 2 races are won by the top 3 drivers and teams of this 2018 championship season: Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes), Sebastian Vettel (Ferrari) and Daniel Ricciardo (Red Bull).
Race number 7 in Canada might be a break through for one of these three drivers. Who has the most chance to win? We will tell you at the end of this article.
Ricciardo showed a flawless drive in Monaco. He had to manage all kinds of problems and won his second Monaco GP in his F1 career and holds P3 in the drivers championship.
2018 Canadian GP Facts & Figures
The track that represents the Canadian GP this weekend is circuit Gilles Villeneuve. the circuit is build on a man-made island in the St. Lawrence River. The most of the island was originally built up for the Expo in 1967.
The circuit is driven clockwise and has 14 turns. 6 of those turns are left-handed and 8 are right-handed. The slowest corner is turn 10, which is a big hairpin. The cars go around 80 km/h. The quickest "turn" is no.12 which is more like a straight and the cars get up to there highest speed up 350 km/h around this track.
The lap record of 1:13.622 min is already 14 years old. It's set by Rubens Barrichello back in 2004 with the almighty Ferrari F2004 that was fitted with a 3.0L V10 engine. Last years fastest lap on Circuit Gilles Villeneuve was 1:14.551 min. It was set in lap 64 by Lewis Hamilton in the Mercedes W08.
Michael Schumacher won 7 times on this track and hold the record of most wins.The German driver won 1 race for Benetton and 6 for Ferrari.
5 of the current 2018 F1 drivers won the Canadian F1 GP. Lewis Hamilton won the most with 6 and the 4 other drivers; Ricciardo, Vettel, Alonso and Raikkonen. He can equal the amount of Schumacher this weekend. He also won his first Formula one race here back in 2007 for McLaren and won the last 3 venues. If he wins on Sunday he will be the only driver who won 4 consecutive races in Canada.
Daniel Ricciardo won in 2014. This was also his first race win in a Red Bull. Sebastian Vettel won once for Red Bull in 2013 and Fernando Alonso won in 2006 for Renault.
If Hamilton scores his 75th F1 pole position here he will set the record of 7 poles. He now equals Schumacher with 6. Chances are big that he will. He started the last 3 race from pole.
Kimi Raikkonen can also break a record in Canada. He and Schumacher hold the record of most fastest laps here, with 4.
McLaren has won the most races in Canada. The British team won 13 races in total. Ferrari is runner-up and won 11.
Sebastian Vettel is the only current driver who has finished in the points on all 10 races he attended to in Canada.
Canada 2018 Tyres
Believe it or not, but Pirelli brought exactly the same three tyre compounds to Montreal as were used in Monaco 2 weeks ago. The P Zero Red supersoft, P Zero Purple ultrasoft, and P Zero Pink hypersoft have been selected. This should lead to plenty of on-track action throughout the weekend.
Reason for this is probably the lack of asphalt grip over here. The grip is more or less the same as Monaco. How the tyres will behave is still a mistery, Montreal contains much higher speeds and different corners than Monaco.
The Circuit Gilles Villeneuve is a semi-permanent facility infrequently used outside the grand prix, so track evolution from Friday to Sunday tends to be particularly high.
Last years 2017 Canadian GP
Podium Lewis Hamilton, Valtteri Bottas & Daniel Ricciardo Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, Montreal, Canada.
Sunday 11 June 2017.
Hamilton and Mercedes had a very successful race last year. He won the triple crown; Won the race from pole and also scored fastest lap. To make things even better. His teammate Valtteri Bottas finished 2nd to make it a Mercedes their 37th 1-2 finish.
In the first ten laps Hamilton was chased by Max Verstappen who was very fast in the Red Bull. The Dutchman started from P5, but turned into 1 corner as 2nd! Verstappen even almost passed Hamilton after the first safety car restart in lap 3.
Unfortunately Verstappen's Renault engine failed duty again, which made him retire in lap 10.
We saw a huge fight between both Force India drivers Sergio Pérez and Esteban Ocon. This fight made it possible for Sebastian Vettel to recover from his front wing replacement. Vettel passed both drivers who lost a lot of time battling each other.
In the last laps Kimi Raikkonen had huge braking issues and Fernando Alonso again had a Honda engine failure.
Hamilton drove to victory quite easily. Hopefully this year Mercedes will have to fight a lot harder to win their 4th consecutive race win in Canada.
Montreal Weather Forecast
2018's weather forecast for upcoming weekend in Montreal shows us that the weather will be fairly the some for 3 days.
On Friday it will be partly clouded. During 1st practice It will be around 18ºC and dry with no wind. During 2nd practice it will be a bit warmer, with 22ºC with still no wind and a rain change of 0%.
On Saturday and Sunday we will see almost the same weather as on Friday, with winds picking up a bit.
Who will be on the 2018 Canadian podium?
Lewis Hamilton 1st?
Mercedes seem to have big issues with the new pink Hyper soft tyres. In Monaco the tyres on the Mercedes W09 car already showed blisters on the Hyper softs after 5 laps around the Monaco street circuit.
We will find out quickly if Mercedes has fixed the problem during practice and when they have fixed the Hyper soft issue they probably will win the race again. Circuit Gilles Villeneuve is one of the favourite tracks of Hamilton. He won his first race here. So he will put in an extra fight to get his 7th Canadian win here with Bottas as second, just like last year.
Because Ferrari is stronger than last year. Sebastian Vettel will probably be on the podium as 3rd.
If Mercedes hasn't been able to solve the Hyper soft tyre problems, they will not be able to fight for the win and even might not be on the podium.
The Hyper soft tyres seem to fit the less powerful Red Bull car very good. As we all know the Red Bull RB14 has the best mechanical grip and the most downforce. Because of this they seem to get the most out of the Hyper soft tyre.
This could mean that they can power away from their rivals coming out of slow corners. They even might be hard to pass with DRS, because the Red Bull's will open up a gap in the first few 100 meters after each slow turn.
When Mercedes hasn't fixed their Hyper soft tyre blistering we predect: 1. Vettel, 2. Verstappen, 3. Ricciardo.
If Lewis Hamilton can finish in the points he extends the longest consecutive points finishes to 32 races.
Below you can see the tyre chooses of each driver for this weekends Canadian Grand Prix. They made this choice 15 weeks ago.
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