FORMULA 1 CANADIAN GRAND PRIX

The Canadian Grand Prix is three days of Formula One in late May on Île Notre-Dame, an island in the St Lawrence a few minutes from the middle of Montreal. The circuit is named for Gilles Villeneuve, who won the first race on it and never won a championship.

The island was built for a world’s fair, and the basin beside it for the Olympics. The race was fitted in between.

The Island

Île Notre-Dame was built in ten months, from fifteen million tons of rock dug out for the Montreal Metro, to hold the pavilions of Expo 67.

In 1975 most of the pavilions that remained were pulled down to make room for a basin for the rowing and canoeing of the 1976 Olympics. France’s pavilion became the city’s casino, and a corner of the circuit is named for it.

The Canadian Grand Prix had been run in Ontario and at Mont-Tremblant since 1967. It came to the island in 1978, and Montreal has held it ever since, except in four years.

Between races the circuit is a road around the park. From spring to autumn, Montrealers cycle it, run it and skate it.

Villeneuve

Gilles Villeneuve was a Quebecer who drove for Ferrari. The first race on the island, the last of the 1978 season, was his first win, taken when the Lotus in front of him stopped.

He was killed in qualifying at Zolder, in Belgium, in May 1982, having never been champion; he had been second in 1979. The circuit took his name that year. His son Jacques was champion in 1997, the first Canadian to win it.

The last chicane ends at a wall that for years carried the words Bienvenue au Québec. In 1999 three world champions hit it in the same race, Damon Hill, Michael Schumacher and Jacques Villeneuve, and it has been the Wall of Champions since.

In 2011 rain stopped the race for two hours, and it ran to four hours and four minutes, the longest in the championship’s history. Jenson Button went down the pit lane six times and took the lead on the last lap.

Lewis Hamilton won his first race here, in 2007. He and Schumacher have won it seven times each.

What to Know

Friday is practice, Saturday qualifying, and the race is on Sunday afternoon.

The Metro runs to Jean-Drapeau, beside the circuit, and it is the easiest way in.

A seat above the hairpin sees the cars at their slowest. A seat at the final chicane sees the wall.

A lounge suit in the Paddock Club. The grandstands dress for the weather, which can turn.

In 2026 the race moved from June to May, paired with Miami before the European season, and Kimi Antonelli won it for Mercedes.

The mistake is to come only for Sunday. Friday has the same cars on the same island, a smaller crowd, and time to walk round it.

The Court

The Canadian Grand Prix is not the Court’s own. The Paddock Club, and grandstand seats above the hairpin, are sought on a member’s behalf, and the Court arranges the whole of it: getting there, where to stay in Old Montreal, and the table afterward.

How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.