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Added on the 10/06/2010 03:36:29 - Copyright : Auto Moto EN
Canadian Grand Prix - F1 meets World Cup
Just one week on from the race in Azerbaijan, the Formula 1 World Championship is back on track for the Canadian Grand Prix, which returns to the calendar for the first time since 2019. As usual, the race is run on a track made up of the perimeter roads on the manmade island of Notre-Dame, in the Saint Lawrence river estuary. It is a semi-permanent facility named in honour of the great Gilles Villeneuve and the track is both attractive and strange in many ways. It features long straights interrupted by a series of chicanes and slow corners. The right set-up therefore involves finding a good compromise that delivers stability under braking and excellent traction, without ignoring what is an important detail at this track, namely the need to able to ride the kerbs.
Despite this being a very difficult time in Italy and indeed in the rest of the world, because of concerns about the spread of Coronavirus (Covid-19), the Formula 1 World Championship will start as planned in Australia and Scuderia Ferrari, the only team to have taken part in every year of the series, will be there. The 71st season of the Formula 1 World Championship gets underway at Melbourne’s Albert Park Circuit on Sunday 15 March. The venue has been the scene of the opening round on 22 occasions and this will be the 25th Australian GP to be held here. With a further eleven races in Adelaide from 1985 to 1995, it means this will be the 36th running of this race.Nine wins. Scuderia Ferrari has nine wins to its name in Australia, the first courtesy of Gerhard Berger in Adelaide in 1987, the last back in 2018 with Sebastian Vettel. The Maranello squad also has a further 16 podium finishes, eight second places and eight thirds. A Ferrari has started from pole six times and set the fastest race lap on nine occasions.Three DRS zones. The 5.303 kilometre-long track features 16 corners and the race distance is 58 laps. Albert Park is a street circuit, therefore the grip level gradually improves, the more running the cars do, thus rubbering-in the surface. There are three DRS zones: the main straight and the sections between turns 2 and 3 and 12 and 13.
It’s time for the Japanese Grand Prix, one of the most popular events on the calendar for enthusiasts and F1 folk alike. Suzuka first featured on the World Championship trail almost four decades ago and along with two races at Fuji in the mid-70s and again in 2007 and 2008 and with two Pacific Grands Prix in the Nineties, the Land of the Rising Sun has played an important part in the history of the sport. Suzuka is special, not just because of the beautiful figure-of-eight track, but also because of the electrifying atmosphere around the circuit, the grandstands packed with local fans, both young and old who love to dress up in race suits, often wearing the most bizarre home-made caps made to look like the race cars, as they wander around the track and even in the paddock.If the 18 corners that make up Suzuka circuit could talk, they would tell the tale of some of the most memorable moments in the history of the sport. So many world championships have been decided here, many of them in favour of Scuderia Ferrari. In 2000 came the “Red Dawn” as the tifosi called it, when Michael Schumacher won the race to clinch his first title in red, repeating the feat in Japan in 2003. There were also moments of disappointment for the Prancing Horse, in 1990 when Alain Prost was beaten to the crown by Ayrton Senna and in 1998, when Schumacher was bested by Mika Häkkinen.
Formula 1 arrives in Australia for what will be the first race this year to be held as usual on a Sunday, after the first two rounds of the season were run on Saturday in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. Australians love their motorsport and Ferrari is particularly popular here, making for a very special atmosphere. The Albert Park circuit is spectacular and everything points to it being an interesting weekend. Carlos Sainz is expected to be back in the car, having had to miss Jeddah with appendicitis and he and team-mate Charles Leclerc will most likely be fighting at the front of the field, as they have done in the first two rounds.The circuit. The Albert Park track made its first appearance on the Formula 1 calendar in 1996. It features plenty of medium to high speed corners, with four DRS zones to provide plenty of excitement. Turn 1 is a quick chicane with walls on one side and a gravel run-off on the other, making it one of the trickiest sections, especially as it is followed by a long straight, before drivers brake heavily for turn 3, a favourite overtaking spot, as it comes at the end of a DRS zone, but mind out, here too there’s a gravel run-off area lying in wait. Turns 9 and 10 are definitely among the quickest corners on the track and overtaking is possible here, although drivers can also opt to stay in the slipstream and then give it their all to pass into turn 11, where overtaking carries a bit less risk.
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