Canada: A popular circuit full of excitement!

By Nick Sparkes
June 24 2006

You would had thought with the damage record of the Canadian Grand Prix that many of the teams would cringe at this sight knowing their cheque book will be in regular use come Monday morning. But surprisingly for Toyota, its one of their favourites on the 2006 calendar.

Pascal Vasselon pointed out a number of areas on Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, which the team will look into in more detail in order to set the cars up for qualifying and the race. “The Circuit Gilles Villeneuve provides a very specific layout, featuring very long straights and almost exclusively slow corners. So the contrast between the two extremes of speed makes it the hardest circuit of the season for brakes. The challenge is to achieve good high speed braking stability without too much low speed understeer. In dry conditions, you tend to use tyres from the softer end of the range to favour traction. In the wet the circuit grip is very low because of the smoothness of the tarmac, it leads to the selection of compounds with very good warming up.”

Even with the long straights and slow corners, overtaking isn’t made any easier, although an upgraded aero package should help the team this weekend. “Overtaking is not easy but possible, and most moves tend to take place at the last chicane. We are planning an interesting aerodynamic update for the race so we are looking forward to having a chance to evaluate it."