Canadian GP Preview: Facts & Stats

As we approach the halfway point of the 57th World Championship season, Formula One makes its annual swing through North America, opening in Montreal and continuing next weekend in Indianapolis.

Canada is always a popular stop on the calendar, and Montreal plays host for the 28th time, at the circuit on Ile Notre Dame, the man-made island that played host to Expo '67 and was the base for the rowing events at the 1976 Summer Olympics. As if to pay homage to the circuit's heritage, there used to be an annual raft race between the F1 teams, the last of which was won by Jordan in 1994.

The first Montreal race was in 1978, as previous Canadian Grands Prix had been held at the demanding Mosport Park and St. Jovite circuits. Mosport came first, hosting the inaugural championship event in 1967. In drizzly conditions, Jack Brabham took victory, the eighth and last F1 win for the three-litre Repco V8 engine that powered him to the 1966 title and teammate Denny Hulme to the '67 crown.

In 1968, the race went to the St. Jovite circuit for the first of what would prove to be just two visits (the other one was 1970). Those races were the longest Canadian races ever held, at over 383 kms, compared to the modern-day average of around 310 kms. With a relatively slow lap speed, both races took in excess of 2 hours and 25 minutes despite being held in full dry conditions - longer even than Monaco.

While St. Jovite quickly fell off the calendar, its main statistical claim to fame is that the 1970 race was the first in which a Tyrrell started from pole position - Jackie Stewart taking the honours. Of the 14 pole positions earned by the team, the Scotsman, who went on to win the Canadian GP in both 1971 and '72, took the first 12.

Mosport 1973 will always have a place in F1 folklore for the chaotic debut of a safety car. In that era, before electronic timing and scoring, the safety car managed to pick up the wrong leader, and this ultimately meant Peter Revson emerged victorious from a race that everybody thought Emerson Fittipaldi had won.

It is a race also significant as being the last Grand Prix start for both the Tyrrell drivers. Francois Cevert's collision with Jody Scheckter was what brought out the safety car, and it was in qualifying for the next race at Watkins Glen that Cevert was to lose his life. Stewart then withdrew from the US race, leaving Mosport '73 as the last of his 99 starts, in which he took 27 victories - a record tally which stood until Alain Prost surpassed it at the 1987 Portuguese GP.

McLaren took a hat-trick of victories in the mid-70s using the same chassis (the Ford-powered M23) but with three different drivers. After Revson's slightly dubious '73 win, Emerson Fittipaldi was the 1974 victor, and after a year off the schedule, James Hunt won in his 50th GP start in 1976.

Mosport's last bow as an F1 venue came in 1977, as Jody Scheckter took the last F1 win for the Canadian-owned Wolf team on home soil, and the locals had another reason to cheer as Gilles Villeneuve made his first start for Ferrari. A year later, and the race was moved to Montreal in Villeneuve's home province of Quebec.

In truth, the 1978 race belonged to Jean-Pierre Jarier, who was stepping into the Lotus vacated by Ronnie Peterson after the Swede's death at Monza. Jarier took pole and led the first 49 laps, and looked set for a first win at his 77th attempt when an oil leak caused his retirement. This handed victory to Villeneuve, who became the first Canadian to win in F1, while Scheckter made it a Canadian 1-2 of sorts by following him home in the Wolf - the team's last podium.

Villeneuve played a central role every time he appeared in Montreal. In 1979 he lost a titanic scrap with Alan Jones in the Williams, while in 1980 he hauled the recalcitrant 312T5 chassis up from 22nd to a fifth place finish by the end, on a weekend in which his Ferrari teammate Scheckter failed to qualify. Gilles's last appearance came in 1981, when he again battled his own machinery - finishing third in the wet despite driving most of the race without a front wing.

Gilles Villeneuve (Ferrari 312T3) takes his first win, in the 1978 Canadian Grand Prix at Montreal © LAT

That race was won by Jacques Laffite in the Ligier, which would be their last victory until Olivier Panis won the 1996 Monaco Grand Prix.

Despite the inherent dangers posed by both Mosport and St. Jovite, it is a bitter irony that the only fatality in a Canadian GP came at Montreal in 1982, when Riccardo Paletti slammed into the back of Didier Pironi after the Frenchman stalled at the start. Coming just a month after Villeneuve's death at Zolder, it further dampened the mood, and overshadowed Nelson Piquet taking BMW's first ever F1 victory, in the back of the Brabham BT50. He added a further win two years later, in a race he led from start to finish.

Montreal was missing from the schedule in 1987, owing to a dispute over sponsorship, and when it returned in 1988 it was on a revised circuit, with the pits moved from the original location to its present one.

The 1989 event is notable as being the first victory for both Thierry Boutsen and for Renault's normally aspirated V10, which was to go on to dominate F1 in the 1990s. The heavy rain of that afternoon helped spring more surprises, as Derek Warwick led Arrows' first laps since the 1981 Long Beach Grand Prix, and Jonathan Palmer set his only career fastest lap in the humble Tyrrell.

Most F1 fans will remember 1991 not as being the end of Ayrton Senna's record-breaking run of wins to open a season, or even for Stefano Modena hauling a Tyrrell-Honda to a second place finish. Rather, it is Nigel Mansell's dramatic last lap retirement that lives in infamy, as for whatever reason, the car broke down while the Englishman was waving to the crowd.

The race remains the only one in history in which a driver has led every lap except the last one, and just to rub salt into the wound, the beneficiary was one of Mansell's arch-rivals, Nelson Piquet.

Piquet's 23rd and last career win was also the last for the Pirelli tyre company, and with the similarly-shod Modena in second, it is the only time Pirelli has finished 1-2 in a Grand Prix since the end of the 1957 season.

Andrea de Cesaris was able to "celebrate" his 200th Grand Prix without a victory when he lined up for Sauber at the 1994 race, and he continues to hold the record for futility to this day, at 208. Jean Alesi would have joined him in the 200 race/0 win club, but for that memorable afternoon in 1995, when on his 31st birthday he had a long-awaited win fall into his lap when the race leader hit mechanical trouble - just as had happened to his hero Gilles Villeneuve 17 years earlier.

Mika Hakkinen (McLaren-Mercedes MP4/14) wins the 1999 Canadian Grand Prix at Montreal © LAT

On this occasion, the race leader was the previous year's winner Michael Schumacher, who had taken the 100th pole position for Renault engines the day before. When Damon Hill added his name to the list of race winners in 1996, it meant that the Canadian Grand Prix had been won by a different driver for 8 consecutive runnings (Boutsen, Senna, Piquet, Berger, Prost, Schumacher, Alesi and Hill).

Given that statistic, it's perhaps a little surprising that ever since then, this race has been the exclusive domain of the Schumacher family, or the Finnish McLaren drivers.

Mika Hakkinen won the 1999 race on a day when three world champions hit the same retaining wall at the last corner (Damon Hill, Michael Schumacher and Jacques Villeneuve), and after Heinz-Harald Frentzen's big crash at turn three, the race became the first and so far only event to reach the chequered flag while under a safety car period.

Michael Schumacher took Ferrari's 150th F1 win in 2002 and became the first driver to win a single event seven times when he took victory in 2004, while his brother beat him in 2001 (the first time siblings have ever finished 1-2). Ralf also followed Michael home in 2003 and 2004, although he was disqualified from the latter event.

Kimi Raikkonen's win last season was the second year in a row that the race winner came from outside the top 5 on the grid. It was also one of three Grands Prix that the Finn has won in the past two years while starting outside the first three rows. In addition to winning Montreal from seventh, he also won the 2004 Belgian Grand Prix from tenth and the 2005 Japanese Grand Prix from 17th.