The early Canadian Grand Prix was one of the premier events of the new
Canadian Sports Car Championship, a series which had been created alongside the Canadian Grand Prix at
Mosport Park near
Toronto in 1961. Mosport Park (which is still in its original layout configuration) was a spectacular and challenging circuit which had many ups and downs; the circuit was popular with drivers. Several international
sports car as well as Formula One drivers participated in the event. For the first five years, the event would be won by drivers with either prior Formula One experience, or would enter the championship after winning the Canadian Grand Prix. In 1966 the
Canadian-American Challenge Cup ran the event, with American
Mark Donohue winning. Bassett dropped the idea just as the bill was going through third reading before Toronto city council. The idea to move the race to an urban location would return a decade later. The 1969 event at Mosport Park saw Briton
Jackie Stewart climb up from 4th to take the lead, but
Jacky Ickx was coming up fast, and Stewart and Ickx battled until lap 33, when they came to lap privateer
Al Pease for the fourth time, Ickx attempted to pass Stewart, and the two cars collided. Stewart was unable to get his Matra going, but Ickx did get his Brabham going, and held onto the lead until the checkered flag. An angry Stewart complained to his boss
Ken Tyrrell about Pease, who complained to the organizers. The 48-year-old Pease was then given the black disqualification flag after completing less than half the number of laps the leaders had completed in an almost embarrassingly outdated Eagle-Climax, and became the only driver in F1 history ever to be disqualified for being too slow. The 1970 event saw Ickx win again with his Swiss teammate
Clay Regazzoni making the result a Ferrari 1–2. But the Mont-Tremblant circuit was not used again for Formula One because of safety concerns regarding the bitter winters seriously affecting the track surface and a dispute with the local racing authorities there in 1972. The alternating of the race stopped and Mosport solely continued to hold the Canadian Grand Prix from 1971. 's crashed
McLaren M19C. The crash occurred the lap after he set the pole position lap for the
1972 Canadian Grand Prix. The 1971 event saw Mosport Park flooded with rain and fog; the main event was delayed after a fatal accident at a Formula Ford support race and by the time it started, it was raining heavily. Jackie Stewart took victory easily in a Tyrrell from Swede
Ronnie Peterson in a March. 1972 saw Mosport upgraded with new safety features, and Stewart won again. 1973 was an interesting event; like the race 2 years previous it was a rain-soaked event. Austrian new-boy
Niki Lauda in a BRM took the lead from Peterson in a Lotus on Lap 3, Lauda led until the 20th lap when he came to change tires; there was considerable confusion after
François Cevert and
Jody Scheckter collided on Lap 33 leading to a bungled pace car interlude after which things became very confused as the pace car failed to pick up the leader and allowed those ahead to gain almost a lap. All this meant that Briton
Jackie Oliver ended up in the lead with American
Peter Revson second and Frenchman
Jean-Pierre Beltoise third. Of these three Revson had the most competitive car and so eventually moved into the lead and led all the way to the flag while Peterson's Brazilian teammate
Emerson Fittipaldi charged to try to make up for lost ground and overtook Oliver and Beltoise in the closing laps to grab second. For hours after the race confusion reigned but eventually it was confirmed that Revson was the winner- thanks to a lucky break when the pace car came out. The 1974 event saw Fittipaldi win while his championship rivals Clay Regazzoni finished 2nd and
Jody Scheckter crashed heavily after a brake failure on his Tyrrell. There was no 1975 event, and the 1976 event was one where Briton
James Hunt found out that his 9 points from Brands Hatch were taken away and he was disqualified; Hunt won the Canadian Grand Prix event that year, driving furiously throughout the race. 1977 was the race where French-Canadian
Gilles Villeneuve made his debut for Ferrari. But concerns about the bumpy Mosport Park's safety arose when Briton
Ian Ashley had a horrendous accident while cresting a bumpy rise. Ashley's Hesketh flipped over the Armco guardrails and went into a television tower. The German-born Englishman was seriously injured and safety operations to rescue him were inefficient and time-consuming; and the lack of safety at Mosport was underlined when
Jochen Mass lost control of his McLaren and hit a guardrail that virtually flattened upon impact.
Jody Scheckter won this race in his
Wolf, but with continuing safety concerns, a new proposal was brought forward.
Labatt, the sponsor who held the rights to F1 racing in Canada at the time, as well as the owners of Mosport Park revived the 1968 proposal to move the race to Toronto's Exhibition Place after the
FIA deemed Mosport as an unsuitable host facility going forward. Toronto city council turned down the proposal by a margin of two votes and within a few hours, Montreal mayor
Jean Drapeau had negotiated with Labatt to move the race permanently to Montreal. A plan was quickly put together to develop a track called the
Circuit Île Notre Dame on a man-made island in the middle of the St. Lawrence seaway that had been the site of the famous
Expo '67; specific roads on the island were combined and modified, and then pit facilities were built to make a temporary race track. The Canadian Grand Prix was first held there in 1978 and it has been held there ever since, with the exception of four years when the event was cancelled.
Montreal (1978–86, 1988–2008, 2010–2019, 2022–present) The first winner in Montreal was
Quebec native Villeneuve, driving a Ferrari. 1979 saw circuit layout modifications to make it faster, and Australian
Alan Jones win, and he then won the 1980 race and the Drivers' Championship that year. 1980 also saw a big startline pile-up with involved Jones's Brazilian championship rival
Nelson Piquet after he and Jones collided going into the very fast Droit du Casino corner. Piquet jumped into his spare car with a more powerful qualifying engine; but the engine blew up and Piquet retired from the race. Frenchman
Jean-Pierre Jabouille's season and F1 racing career came to an end when he crashed his Renault head-on into a tire wall. He had badly broken legs; it took the tall Frenchman months to recover. 1981 saw a rain-soaked event in which near the end of the race, Villeneuve demonstrated his car control skills when the front wing of his Ferrari was askew from a crash and he drove on to third place with the car in this condition. Frenchman Jacques Laffite took what was to be his last F1 victory, followed by Briton
John Watson and Villeneuve. won the
1978 Canadian Grand Prix. Villeneuve was killed in 1982 on his final qualifying lap for the
Belgian Grand Prix. A few weeks after his death, the race course in Montreal was renamed
Circuit Gilles Villeneuve after him. Gilles Villeneuve was one of the first people inducted into the
Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame, and is so far the only Canadian winner of the Formula One Canadian Grand Prix. The
1982 Canadian Grand Prix was a tragic event, in the shadow of the death of Villeneuve a month earlier. It saw another accident when Villeneuve's teammate
Didier Pironi stalled at the front of the grid. First,
Raul Boesel struck a glancing blow to the stationary vehicle, and then
Riccardo Paletti crashed directly into the rear of Pironi's Ferrari at over . Pironi and F1 doctor
Sid Watkins came to Paletti's aid to try to extract him from his car, which briefly caught fire. After a half-hour, the 23-year-old Paletti was extracted and flown to a nearby hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries. Nelson Piquet won the race in his Brabham. 1982 was also significant in that the race was moved from October to June with the event happening in early June ever since. In 1983, Frenchman René Arnoux scored his first race win as a Ferrari driver, and the following year Piquet won again in a BMW-powered Brabham. 1985 saw Ferrari finish 1–2 with Italian
Michele Alboreto and Swede
Stefan Johansson taking top honours from Frenchman
Alain Prost, while Lotus gained their final ever lock-out of the front row when
Elio de Angelis and
Ayrton Senna started 1–2. 1986 was a competitive race. Finn
Keke Rosberg in a McLaren charged through the field, caught and then passed British leader
Nigel Mansell. But Rosberg, like the other front runners, encountered problems, benefiting Mansell who won the race. In , the race was not held due to a sponsorship dispute between two local breweries,
Labatt and
Molson. During the break the track was modified, and starting line moved to its current position. celebrates his victory at the
1988 Canadian Grand Prix with
Alain Prost and
Thierry Boutsen.
1988 saw Brazilian Ayrton Senna take victory in the all-conquering
McLaren MP4/4 with its Honda turbo engine, and the following year he so very nearly won again, but the Honda engine in his McLaren failed and Belgian
Thierry Boutsen took victory, which was the first in his F1 career. 1990, like the year before, was a rain-soaked event, and it saw a number of accidents; Senna came out to win again. 1991 saw a dramatic finale in which Nigel Mansell's Williams failed on the very last lap only a few corners from the finish line; Nelson Piquet took his 23rd and final F1 victory in a Benetton. Austrian
Gerhard Berger won the 1992 event after the dominant Mansell spun off after a collision with Berger's teammate Senna. at the
1995 Canadian Grand Prix Alain Prost won the 1993 event while fending off a spirited drive from Senna, and in response to the Imola tragedies, the 1994 event saw the very fast Droit du Casino curve being turned into a chicane. German
Michael Schumacher won this event.
Ferrari's Jean Alesi won the
1995 edition, which occurred on his 31st birthday and which would be the only win of his career. Alesi had inherited the lead when
Michael Schumacher pitted with electrical problems and
Damon Hill's hydraulics failed. The victory was a popular one for Alesi, particularly after several unrewarded drives the year before, namely in
Italy. Alesi's win at Montreal was voted the most popular race victory of the season by many, as it was the number 27 Ferrari—once belonging to the famous
Gilles Villeneuve at his much loved home Grand Prix. Schumacher gave Alesi a lift back to the pits after Alesi's car ran out of fuel just before the Pits Hairpin. The Canadian Grand Prix race had grown in importance around this time; the demise of Grands Prix in Detroit, Phoenix and Mexico City meant that it had been the only North American Grand Prix round since 1993 and would continue to be the only round in North America up until 2000, and again from 2008 to 2011 after yet another demise of the United States Grand Prix, this time at
Indianapolis. It was also one of two races in the entire Americas, the other being the Brazilian Grand Prix, although the Argentine Grand Prix had returned for 4 brief years from 1995 to 1998. The 1996 race saw the Casino corner removed and the layout changed; the run from the hairpin at the bottom of the circuit was turned into a straight. Briton Damon Hill won this event, and the
1997 race was stopped early due to a crash involving
Olivier Panis. He was sidelined for nine races and some see it as a turning point in the career of the
1996 Monaco Grand Prix winner. The races from 1997 to 2004 (except 1999 and 2001) saw a romp of Michael Schumacher victories, all in a Ferrari. 1999 saw Finn
Mika Häkkinen win, and in
2001, there was the first sibling 1–2 finish in the history of Formula 1, as
Ralf and
Michael Schumacher topped the podium. The Schumacher brothers would finish 1–2 in the
2003 edition as well, 2001 was also noted for
Jean Alesi achieving
Prost's best finish of the season; he celebrated his fifth place by doing several
donuts in his vehicle, and throwing his helmet into the crowd. and
Fernando Alonso during the
2007 Canadian Grand Prix The
2007 race was the site of rookie
Lewis Hamilton's first win. On lap 67,
Takuma Sato overtook
McLaren-
Mercedes's
Fernando Alonso, to cheers around the circuit, just after overtaking
Ralf Schumacher and having overtaken Ferrari's
Kimi Räikkönen earlier in the race. The race saw Sato move from the middle of the grid to the back of the pack and to a high of fifth before a pit-stop error caused him to move back to eleventh. Sato fought up 5 places in the field in the last 15 laps to finish sixth. Sato was voted "Driver of the Day" on the
ITV website over Lewis Hamilton's first win. The race also saw an atrocious crash involving
Robert Kubica (who went on to win the race
the following season, resulting to be his only one in F1).
2009 hiatus On 7 October 2008, the Canadian Grand Prix was dropped from the Formula One calendar, which left the Montreal race off the list for the first time since . Since the
United States Grand Prix was dropped after 2007, this meant that in 2009 no Formula One race was held in North America for the first time since 1958 (the American
Indianapolis 500 formed part of the FIA World Drivers' Championship from 1950 to 1960, but was not run to Formula One regulations and only very rarely entered by regular championship competitors). During the Australian Grand Prix, reports surfaced that the Canadian Grand Prix could return during the 2009 season in the event that the race circuit in Abu Dhabi was not ready in time. On 26 April 2009,
Speed reported
Bernie Ecclestone as saying the FIA was negotiating a return of the Canadian Grand Prix for the 2010 season, provided upgrades to the circuit were completed. On 29 August 2009, the BBC reported the provisional schedule for the season, which had both the Canadian and British Grand Prix marked down as "provisional". The Canadian GP was originally scheduled for 6 June. The 2010 Canadian Grand Prix was eventually run in Montreal on 13 June 2010. On 27 November 2009, Quebec's officials and Canadian Grand Prix organizers announced they had reached a settlement with
Formula One Administration and signed a new five-year contract spanning the 2010–2014 seasons. Under the five-year agreement, the government pays 15 million Canadian dollars a year to host the race, much less than the 35 million a year Ecclestone initially asked for.
2010–present . The race was the longest ever F1 race to date due to rainstorms. The
2011 Canadian Grand Prix became the longest ever Formula One race to date; rainstorms delayed the race for hours; but when it got going again Briton
Jenson Button stormed through the field from last place after the restart on lap 41 and caught German leader
Sebastian Vettel; whom he forced into making a mistake, passed the Red Bull driver and the Briton took victory, in what he described as "my best ever race". The
2013 Canadian Grand Prix saw Vettel dominate in his Red Bull, but it was also to see the first Formula One-related fatality in 12 years. Thirty-eight-year-old track marshal Mark Robinson was run over by a recovery vehicle, and the accident happened while marshals were removing the Sauber of Esteban Gutiérrez after the Mexican had spun off during the closing stages of the race. Robinson died later in hospital and became the first track-side death in Formula One since that of marshal Graham Beveridge at the
2001 Australian Grand Prix. ==Wildlife==