Long Beach, fast and tricky!

Long beach has several fast straights, a sharp hairpin, and quite a few tricky corners. It's a fast track, but if you screw up, regret you will have in spades!

One Lap On Montreal

Circuit Giles Villeneuve (bio of the man himself)

Montreal is a very technically complex track. It is very difficult to hit all of the corners perfectly and one often finds one wishes for the half-gear that isn't available. The best you can do is pick the gear that puts you with the best chance of ending where you want to be most of the time. This is normal doctrine in some ways, but the complexity of Montreal insures that some of the time you will miss it and pay in one fashion or another.

Montreal is known for being hard on tires and requiring frequent downshifts. It can also be hard on the cars as everyone jockeys for a small range of optimal positions to try to setup the next move. This track is far less forgiving than some and overly fragile cars or overly bad luck can end with a DNF. Pacing is critical - rushes for the front at the beginning may carry the day, but they are more likely to result in cars damaging taking one another out in tight dueling in corners.

You start along the front straight (lower left side of the track image right - travel is clockwise) racing for the sharp left-right 100 degree bend known as Senna and Virages Senna (after Ayrton Senna) which you will hit in 3rd or 4th gear from the start, possibly 5th or 6th in subsequent laps if your aim is true.

You'll likely come out of Virages Senna no faster than 3rd, hitting 4th along the straight into the combined Turn 3 and 4. Similarly 4th, or maybe 5th, will lead you to the combined Turn 5 and 6. But all of these are nasty technical corners, and if you come up short, you'll be down gears and if you come up long, your tires will be screaming and you'll probably end up down gears.

Then it is a hard push up into 5th gear, maybe 6th, then hard into combined Turn 7 and 8. Once through, accelerate up into 5th leading into the hairpin L'Epingle (rightmost side of the board). This will have you gearing down because you hit it and it is so sharp or because you missed it and are scrambling to control the damage!

Out of L'Epingle, it will be a steady run up to 5th gear along Droit Du Casino. If you hit the final Chicane before the front straight and the Pits just right, it'll be back on your way to Senna in 6th gear, breezing across the finish line and completing your lap of Circuit Giles Villenueve.

A Lap of Montreal With Nick Heidfeld (YouTube)