Montreal's Circuit Gilles Villeneuve - a modern classic

Here's a little task for you. Go around your friends (those who like F1) and get them to name their favourite circuits on the current calendar. Spa is likely to come up a lot, as are Suzuka, Silverstone and Monza, while many of a certain persuasion may select Monaco and Singapore.

But there is another track that, despite not having the most immediately obvious qualifications to be included among this haughty group, despite appearing rather incongruous with the others mentioned, would be right up there in the forefront of people's minds too. Perhaps it would be cited more commonly even than any of the venues that I specified. This is the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal, the scene of the Canadian Grand Prix.

Daniel Ricciardo and a typical
Montreal backdrop
Credit: Nic Redhead / CC

Why is this so? As I said it doesn't appear to have a great deal of overlap with the other popular tracks cited. It isn't the major driving challenge with fearsome turns that Suzuka and Spa are; it doesn't have Monaco's or Singapore's glitz and glamour; it hasn't been around since the year dot like Monaco, Spa, Monza and Silverstone have. But perhaps inadvertently we've gone some way to answering our own question. In my view, a central tenet of Montreal's appeal to the F1 fan is that it is different. Very much so.

The track is sited on a man-made island barely 150 yards across in the Saint Lawrence river (and TV pictures really don't give the full sense of the extent that the track is squeezed onto an island), and is surrounded immediately by lush parkland and flower beds, dusted with quirky, other-worldly architecture, with an exciting, vibrant, international city just a short metro ride away and providing the backdrop. The weather is usually wonderful, though there is just enough of a threat of rain to keep things interesting. The walls are close, meaning the passionate and knowledgeable fans - always there in great number - are close too, almost overhanging the track, while the local welcome is warm. Yes dear reader when the F1 circus pitches up in Montreal it certainly could not be mistaken for being anywhere else. And somehow when F1 is there for once everything feels right with the sport.

Perhaps also the passing of time and the parallel shifts of the F1 itinerary, with the sport's move to new (and sometimes tepid) venues mostly at rather identikit and cold Tilke-dromes, has added to Montreal's legend. Its status as a venue like no other, a venue with a quirky and refreshing sense of the distinct, as well as one with a warm, vast and passionate crowd in attendance, has got more acute over the years. It has now reached the point that as far as almost all of the sport's fans are concerned an F1 calendar without Montreal on it would be a greatly diminished one. The Circuit Gilles Villeneuve can truly be said to be a modern classic.