Stats show that Formula 1 legends Michael Schumacher and Lewis Hamilton are the Kings of Montreal, where this weekend the 41st running of the Canadian Grand Prix takes place, Round 8 of the 2023 F1 World Championship.
Sunday will see the running of the 52nd Canadian Grand Prix, the 42nd held on the Ile Notre Dame, the site of Expo 67 that since 1978 has hosted Formula 1. That first race was won by Canada’s favourite racing son – the late Gilles Villeneuve driving for Ferrari – the venue now named after him.
Of the 41 races held on the man-made isle, seven-time F1 world champions, both Schumacher and Hamilton have seven Montreal victories to their names. Notably, no other driver on the grid this season has more than one win at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, with Nelson Piquet the next best with three wins at the venue.
Indeed, Montreal provides Hamilton’s incredible CV with some incredible milestones including it being the place where he won his first Grand Prix, driving for McLaren in 2007, his rookie year in F1 and his first visit to the track; his sixth race in the top flight.
In 2017, Hamilton tied the record of 65 pole position starts held by his idol, Ayrton Senna. Since then the Briton has upped the record to an incredible 103 F1 career top spot starts.
Victory in Sunday’s race will make Hamilton the winningest F1 driver in Canada
Schumacher’s 13th F1 race in 1992 was also his first Canadian Grand Prix. Driving for Benetton he finished second to winner McLaren’s Gerhard Berger. Schumi’s first win of seven, in Canada, was in 1994, and thereafter included a hat-trick of victories from 2002 to 2004; Hamilton also has a hat-trick of Montreal big trophies to his name, doing the business in 2015, ’16 and ’17.
However, despite the tie for wins, an analysis by The Action Network revealed the top points scorers in Montreal are of course Schumi and Lewis, the German with 288 of his total F1 career points scored in Canada, 72 more than Hamilton. The following methodology was used for the analysis:
- The results of 41 races held at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve from 1978 to present were scraped;
- As F1’s scoring systems have changed over the years, for uniformity, points were assigned as per the current scoring system to all 41 races and 213 drivers; for example, only the top six scored points, we gave points to the top 10 finishers as per the current scoring system;
- After assigning points to all drivers based on their results, we generated the leaderboard; access the raw data in this sheet>>>
Verstappen biggest obstacle in Hamilton’s quest for eight win in Canada
Ahead of this weekend in Montreal, it would be foolish to bet against last year’s winner Verstappen claiming his second GP victory in a row on the isle. The Red Bull #1 driver – winner in Spain and Monaco – is the outright favourite to do the business again.
But history shows that Montreal is a fickle place in terms of climate and attrition, and among the most ‘anything-can-happen-and-often-does’ venues on the F1 calendar. Thus for Hamilton, with an apparently resurgent Mercedes at his disposal, it could be win number eight at the Canadian Grand Prix, which would mean a rewriting of the record books, come Sunday.
