Grapevine: Paddock Life: Montreal edition

AUTOSPORT brings you its regular column of life inside the paddock. This week: Montreal

You could sense the spring in everyone's step as they boarded the flights from home to Montreal.

The return of the Canadian Grand Prix to the calendar was undoubtedly been one of the best pieces of news regarding the F1 schedule for many years - and its absence last season made everyone realise just how much the sport loved it.

For although Montreal's facilities will never be a match for the mega-venues like Abu Dhabi, Shanghai and Bahrain, the Canadian GP makes up for it with a very tricky track, a great location near a brilliant city and, more importantly - passionate fans who packed the grandstands on all three days to make the weekend not just a race but a proper sporting event.

Monaco may have its harbour. Abu Dhabi may have its Marina, but Montreal has something that no other track has - an Olympic rowing lake.

The lake was constructed for the 1976 Summer Games and runs along the back of the paddock - providing a lovely waterside setting for the teams as they go about their business.

For some people that meant a spot of fishing - and Renault even cheekily had a sign up outside its catering unit offering to sell sweet corn bait for $2 a bag.

Jenson Button felt the lake would provide the perfect opportunity for some extra training before his appearance in the London Triathlon later this summer - so he donned a wetsuit and swam 1500 metres. "The water was actually a lot cleaner than it looks," smiled Button.

But the real highlight for many was the mechanics' rowing race that took place on Saturday evening - although only Williams and Lotus opted to lodge entries.

Williams obviously showed that experience counts for a lot in F1 when mechanic Mark Pattinson crafted a fine ship out of a front wing travel case. Skippered by his team-mates Matt Webb and Nick Matthews in the race, the craft proved much quicker than Lotus' machine - which developed a steering problem and seemed to spend more time going sideways than along the course.

The Williams duo even managed to avoid a sabotage attempt from the Lotus boys - who steered into them and jumped onboard to capsize them - before coming home in front and claiming the Grove-based team's first victory of the season.

If you walked down the paddock at any point from Friday afternoon onwards, you could not help but notice small huddles of mechanics and team staff all gathered around television sets.

Yes, F1 got taken over by World Cup fever once again - as the battle of the nations tended to dominate most conversation in the paddock, and more than a few football shirts started appearing in the paddock.

The big talking point of the weekend was the England v USA encounter, which took place just 30 minutes after qualifying had finished on Saturday afternoon.

As the clock ticked down immediately after Lewis Hamilton had grabbed pole position, you could sense a huge effort by a lot of people in the paddock to get their post-qualifying work done as soon as possible to leave as much of the afternoon free as they could.

While some teams were forced to ban their mechanics from watching it - as there was still a race to get prepared for - most of the hospitality units were crowded with people all trying to keep up with the events from the game.

Even some of the drivers were keen to get their post-qualifying work done quickly - although Robert Kubica said he couldn't care what happened in the World Cup since Poland never qualified for the finals.

Jenson Button was one of many who said he would do all he could to try and watch the games.

"I'm very patriotic and I'll always support my country," he said. "I get very excited by international sport, so I'm looking forward to it.

"It's an amazing event because the whole world will be watching, and everyone becomes so competitive and so patriotic. I love it. It's such an important thing, and I'm sure the whole of England is going crazy with excitement at the moment."

It was a shame then that the English had to spend the rest of the weekend being politely asked if their team wanted to borrow a new goalkeeper...

F1's love affair with Montreal, and the laid back attitude of the city, obviously brushed off on paddock people over the weekend.

Just before first practice on Friday, Lewis Hamilton glanced up from his car to find all his mechanics had sported clip-on earrings - after the former world champion had added the jewellery items in Turkey a fortnight ago.

Another man having a pretty chilled time was former champion Jacques Villeneuve, who was on hand in Montreal as an ambassador for electronics giant LG. He joined a special pre-grand prix party on Saturday night, shortly after LG had shown off some of its new high definition and 3D television sets and viewing experiences

The current technology appears to point towards 3D being a step too far for F1 at the moment, and Villeneuve - a man who loves his technology - agreed that there was still a way to go before it became good enough for use at home.

Knowing that Villeneuve loves his games, we suggested to him that it would actually be brilliant for the racing title rFactor - which the 1997 champion is known to play a lot.

"Oh, I wouldn't want to make it too real," said Villeneuve about his gaming experiences. "I want to keep it a bit low definition, so it's like a computer game."

We enquired therefore what size screen Villeneuve used to ensure it didn't feel real for him. "Oh, I have three of them all linked up..."

So Villeneuve's own version of 3D then!