Circuit Mont Tremblant

Race track

Mont Tremblant, a Racetrack for the Off Season

Built beside a Quebec ski resort to fill the months without snow, Mont Tremblant hosted two Canadian Grands Prix, including Tyrrell's first race as a constructor.

Ski resorts go quiet when the snow melts, and the business owners and hoteliers around Mont Tremblant answered the problem with a racetrack. Circuit Mont Tremblant, about 130 kilometers north of Montreal and close to the resort, opened in a shorter form on the 3rd of August 1964 and was lengthened the next year to 4.265 kilometers. Its fifteen corners follow the natural rise and fall of the land. Only one circuit in Canada is older, and this one's original name was Circuit Mont Tremblant St Jovite, until it settled on its present title in the 1970s.

Formula One visited twice. In 1968 Denny Hulme won the Canadian Grand Prix with his teammate Bruce McLaren second, a lap behind, a one two for the team that carried McLaren's own name. The 1970 race saw Tyrrell appear as a constructor for the first time. Jackie Stewart put the new car on pole and then retired with a broken axle, and Jacky Ickx led Clay Regazzoni home in a Ferrari one two. After those 2 championship rounds the Grand Prix moved on, though Can Am, Trans Am, Formula Atlantic and Formula 5000 kept the circuit busy through the late 1960s and the 1970s.

The circuit also has a school with an enviable list of graduates. Its Jim Russell Racing Driver School, founded in 1969, counts Gilles Villeneuve, Jacques Villeneuve, Nicholas Latifi and Lance Stroll among its former pupils. Work in the 2000s resurfaced and widened the track and added run off without losing its character, and the present road course measures 4.218 kilometers. Club racing, historic meetings and manufacturer programs fill its calendar, and the off season the hoteliers once worried about has been busy ever since.

Every Grand Prix here

Scroll to Top