After a year's sabbatical, F1's return to the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal was welcomed by everyone.

It's one of the calendar's more vibrant races: a fantastic race track situated just on the edge of one of Quebec's cultural hot-spots. Come Saturday night Montreal was alive with race fans, locals and hired beauties to service all of the many requirements needed to make a Grand Prix weekend complete. The atmosphere on Saturday night was electric, its energy rolling into Sunday, presenting us with a beautiful morning in which the gladiators could do battle.

After the shenanigans of Turkey, McLaren now seemed the team to beat. Lewis in particular arrived in Montreal knowing it was his race for the taking. Pit lane misdemeanours aside, he has always showed his love of the place by revelling in the challenge this street like circuit brings to a driver. Any mistake punished immediately, but get it right, and you're away on a high of hedonistic indulgence lap after lap. Get a few other fellas to play ball and you've got one hell of a race on your hands.

With both Red Bull & McLaren opting on different race strategies, the stage was set.

Red Bull chose to start on the prime tyre, hoping that the option shod McLarens would destroy their tyres early on allowing the Red Bulls to build up a lead while the others headed for the pits.

However, the higher ambient temperatures put paid to that strategy, with the tyres laying down more rubber, causing them to slide around less. As a result, the degradation was less than anticipated, ruining Red Bull's plan.

This is all played into the hands of Hamilton, Button and Alonso who indeed revelled in the knowledge that it was going to be their use of the tyres that dictated the result, and not any strategy from the pitlane. This was going to be won by the best driver on the day.

Watching Hamilton chase Webber down bringing Button and Alonso with him made for a great finale. Hamilton showed what a brilliant talent he is by overtaking Webber into turn one and disappearing off into the ether to the waiting chequered flag, whilst managing his tyres beautifully.

Alonso will be rueing those backmarkers, they really were quite shocking today, but the major disappointment was the quality of Schumacher's driving. Yeah, it's ok to fight your cause, but that was taking the piss a bit, even for Michael.

A mention for Sebastien Buemi, the first Swiss driver to lead an F1 race in nearly 30 years. A great effort by the friendly young driver and his Toro Rosso Team.

All in all a great weekend and one a certain Gilles Villeneuve would have loved to have been involved in...

To enjoy my images from the Canadian Grand Prix, please visit the formula 1 section of my website and select Canada.

posted on 16th June 2010 12:00amview comments (2)leave a comment