Part of the ‘Papaya Army’?

Thank you, Drive to Survive. Or better yet, thanks to our triathlete friend Joanna (who was staying at our place in 2019 for the ITU World Triathlon Series), who recommended the F1 racing documentary that she said was so good! Intrigued, I binge-watched the first season of the series and was hooked! Soon after, I got into watching the F1 races and I don’t think I’ve missed any since. Jenn started watching the documentary soon after I did and now it’s something we both enjoy.

So, for my Christmas / birthday gift this year, Jenn and I left the kids at home and went away to the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal, and it was fantastic! A typical race weekend consists of two practice sessions on Friday (drivers get an hour on track to run laps and test / configure their cars), one more practice Saturday morning, then a qualifying session Saturday afternoon (basically the fastest lap time here gets pole position – lines up first – during the race, with the rest in order by lap time), then the main race on Sunday. We flew in to Montreal Thursday evening so we could watch all the sessions and get our money’s worth!

There were so many people there, it was crazy! The venue at Montreal – the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve – is on an artificial island that was originally built for Expo ’67. As such, there are only so many ways in and out. There are 100,000 tickets available per day (grandstands + general admission), which is a lot of people to make their way there via the Metro and squeeze through the three main entry points! It got busier the closer we got to Sunday’s race, but I think overall our commute was, on average, about 1.5 hours each way, including the 15 minute Uber between our hotel and the Metro. We knew it would be busy so didn’t worry too much about it… c’est la vie!

the View from Our Seats

There are a lot of different tiers of tickets and ticket packages available for the weekend. Jenn splurged a bit and got us great seats for the full weekend in the main grandstand #1 – directly across from pit lane on the straight by the start / finish – as well as additional access to the ‘CGV Terrace’, a much less busy area to get some food / drink and watch a giant screen while being trackside! We hung out there a bit when we were hungry and watched some of the other non-F1 races like the Ferrari Challenge and the Nissan Sentra Cup.

It was convenient that our seats ended up being directly across from the garage of McLaren’s Lando Norris, as he happens to be Jenn’s fave. She became more and more decked out in the team’s papaya orange (she even had her nails pre-painted – color matched to an online team photo), as the weekend progressed. I was supporting Mercedes, so by race day I was sporting a new black Merc hat and tee.

Jenn had bought a big warm McLaren hoodie on Saturday as the weather was cold (like 11°C and wet), a stark contrast to the day before when we got a bit of sunburn! We knew it would be rainy so after Friday’s sessions we hit some stores near our hotel where I bought a new rain jacket, Jenn bought about three pairs of thick socks (for her feet and hands!), a buff for her neck, and we both grabbed some cheap rain ponchos to stay dry. With her hoodie under a rain jacket and poncho, Jenn kept nice and warm (ish)! Luckily on race day she didn’t need it as we were back to warm and sunny weather, but she wore it anyway with her matching hat in full support of Lando.

Go Lewis!

Overall, the whole race weekend was pretty awesome. Friday was a great day to get accustomed to the venue and take in some good race weekend vibes in a slightly less crowded (but still crowded) atmosphere. Saturday, cold as it was, was cool (pun!) to see the cars with the full-wet tires on, zipping by and creating the big rooster tail of water as they went. As mentioned, we sat across from pit lane along the straight section where the race starts and ends, so on race day there was a fair amount of action at certain times; before the race began, all the cars were sitting right in front of us on the starting grid as they prepared to start, then ‘lights out’ (race start) was awesome (and loud), and during the race the pit stops were pretty cool to see, too! Being on a long straight, each of the 20 cars would zoom by us almost 70 times over the whole race at over 300km/h!

Ultimately, my man Lewis qualified 4th on Saturday in the wet weather and then improved to 3rd in the race, while Lando didn’t have the best weekend and qualified 14th to end up down in 15th on Sunday.

Maybe we’ll give Lando a do-over and come back next year. 😉