Circuit Gilles Villeneuve
Montreal, Canada
Circuit Gilles Villeneuve is a semi-permanent track built on the artificial Île Notre-Dame in the Saint Lawrence River, alternating long straights with tight chicanes. Its low-grip, bumpy surface and unforgiving concrete walls make it a favourite for late braking and produce frequent contact right up until the final corner. The track is named after the popular Québécois driver and 1978 home race winner.
Length
4.361 km
Turns
14
Race Laps
70
Elevation
5m
First GP
1978
Lap Record
1:13.078
Valtteri Bottas (2019)
Famous Corners
Turn 13
Wall of Champions
Location
Nearest Town
The circuit sits on an island just off Montreal, Quebec's largest city and a major cultural hub of French-speaking Canada. Montreal's downtown core, with its mix of historic Old Montreal and modern high-rises, is only a short distance across the water from the track. The race has become a fixture of the city's summer festival season.
Getting There
Montréal–Trudeau International Airport is around 20-30 minutes from the circuit by car depending on traffic. The Jean-Drapeau metro station on the island itself is a short walk from the paddock, making the circuit one of the most transit-friendly on the calendar.
Circuit History & Trivia
Notable Incidents
The circuit's most famous flashpoint is the so-called 'Wall of Champions,' a barrier at the exit of the final chicane that gained its nickname after the 1999 Canadian Grand Prix, when three Formula One World Champions, Damon Hill, Michael Schumacher, and Jacques Villeneuve, along with FIA GT champion Ricardo Zonta, all crashed into the same wall during a single race weekend. The wall, marked with a 'Bienvenue au Québec' sign, has continued to claim high-profile victims since, including 2009 world champion Jenson Button in 2005 and four-time champion Sebastian Vettel during free practice in 2011. Following the fatal crashes of Roland Ratzenberger and Ayrton Senna at Imola earlier in 1994, organizers inserted a new chicane between the old Casino corner and the hairpin specifically to reduce top speeds through that section, an early example of the circuit's responsiveness to broader safety crises in the sport.
Design History
Built on the artificial Île Notre-Dame in the St. Lawrence River and completed in 1978, the track was originally named the Île Notre-Dame Circuit and replaced earlier Canadian Grand Prix venues at Mosport Park and Mont-Tremblant, both dropped over safety concerns. It has been reconfigured five times since opening; a significant change between 1986 and 1988 relocated the pit lane and start-finish straight from near the hairpin to the exit of the fast right-left chicane, and a 1996 redesign eliminated the old Casino corner entirely, turning that section into a straight. More recently, the paddock complex was demolished and rebuilt over the 2018-19 winter, and additional safety barriers were installed in 2017 to accommodate the higher cornering speeds of modern Formula One cars.
Records & Notable Races
Valtteri Bottas holds the Formula One race lap record at the circuit, a 1:13.078 set in 2019, while Sebastian Vettel's qualifying lap from the same year, a 1:10.240, remains the fastest lap ever recorded around the track. The circuit's combination of long straights and tight chicanes has historically produced close, unpredictable racing, with contact and late incidents common right through to the final corner, a pattern reinforced by the track's low-grip, bumpy surface and unforgiving concrete walls that punish even small errors.
Fun Facts
The circuit was renamed in 1982 in honor of Canadian driver Gilles Villeneuve, a popular Ferrari star who had won the inaugural Canadian Grand Prix held there in 1978 and who died earlier that year in a qualifying crash at Belgium's Zolder circuit. The island it sits on, Île Notre-Dame, was largely artificial, built up originally to host Montreal's Expo 67 world's fair. The nearby Biosphere, a geodesic dome that survives as one of the fair's most recognizable structures, still stands adjacent to the track today, and roughly half the lap runs alongside the Olympic Basin, the rowing and canoeing venue built for the 1976 Montreal Summer Olympics.