Circuit Gilles Villeneuve

Motorsport track in Canada

Montreal's Island of Straights and Walls

Laid out on an island built up for Expo 67, Montreal's circuit pairs long straights with unforgiving walls and bears the name of its first winner.

On most days the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve belongs to walkers, runners, cyclists and skaters, who share its road through Parc Jean Drapeau. The park lies on Notre Dame Island, which sits in the St. Lawrence River and was largely built up for Expo 67, and is named for the Montreal mayor who organized that fair. The exposition's Biosphere stands beside the track, and almost half of the lap runs along the Olympic Basin, the long channel dug for rowing and canoeing at the 1976 Summer Olympics. Once a year, the visitors get considerably faster.

The circuit opened in 1978 as the Île Notre Dame Circuit, taking over from Mosport Park after safety concerns there at the 1977 race. That October Gilles Villeneuve won its first Grand Prix for Ferrari, and after his death in 1982 the circuit took his name. The same year the race moved from late September to June in search of warmer weather.

The first version was a sequence of technical chicanes at modest speed; over time it became a power circuit, where straight line speed counts for most. The pits moved from the hairpin to their current site after the 1986 race, and a revised pit exit in 2002 gave the present 4.361 kilometer layout. A lap opens with the Senna S, flicks through the fast kink at Pont de la Concorde and brakes hard for the hairpin, a favorite place to overtake. The long straight that follows ends at the final chicane and its exit wall, called the Wall of Champions since 1999, when Jacques Villeneuve, Damon Hill and Michael Schumacher all found it. Few walls have collected so distinguished a guest list in one weekend.

Montreal has a talent for remarkable races. In 2011 a long rain delay stretched Jenson Button's victory beyond four hours, making it the longest Grand Prix in World Championship history. Michael Schumacher and Lewis Hamilton share the record here with seven wins each. The race was dropped for 2009 and came back the following year, and in 2026 Kimi Antonelli won for Mercedes, the 45th championship round on the island since 1978.

Every Grand Prix here

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