Gilles Villeneuve track talk with Robert Kubica

Montreal is one of my favourite tracks and I’m really happy that after a year’s break it’s back on the calendar. There’s always a big atmosphere and it’s a great event for the fans.

The circuit is very stop-start with lots of heavy braking and bumps, and because it’s not a permanent track, the grip builds up throughout the weekend and you can push more and more with every lap. The walls are also very close to the track so there’s little room for error, but I always enjoy these circuit characteristics. For the set-up you have to concentrate on braking stability and traction, plus the car has to be easy to drive because there are so many bumps.

Although I had a big accident there in 2007, I never think about it and I’m not concerned about going back to Montreal. In fact I won the last race there in 2008 so I’m going back as a winner. I have a good feeling about the track and I’m hoping that the R30 will be competitive. Realistically it might be difficult to get the win, but you never know…

Turn one is a corner where you brake as you are already turning into turn two. You can attack the inside quite hard, depending on your car balance, but it’s important to get a proper line into turn two, which is an annoying hairpin that is quite long and opens up on the exit. You get round the apex early and are soon on the power for the approach to the first chicane, which is one of the nicest corners of the lap.

Turns three and four feel great in an F1 car. You take the corner at about 155km/h and you can gain a lot of lap time by jumping over the kerbs, but when you do that, the kerbs unbalance your car, so you have to make sure that you land in the proper direction. The wall comes very close on the exit and if you can scrape it by millimetres then you will be 0.2secs quicker than if you miss it by two feet. You get a sense of how close it is, but you can’t get too close because F1 cars are quite fragile if you make contact.

Turns eight and nine make up another chicane, but even though it looks like a chicane, it’s actually just a one apex corner. You need to get a good exit out of there because it leads into the hairpin, which is the only real overtaking opportunity on the track. The hairpin is the slowest part of the lap and we’ve had problems with the track surface breaking up there in the past. If you take a ‘V’ line, by sacrificing your entry, you can get a good exit and that’s important to ensure you get good traction leading onto the long straight afterwards