Montreal, September 27th
I am sure most people arrived in Canada expecting the mm-st as far as thc weather was concerned, and they were not disappointed on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, whichever day on which they arrived from Britain, France, Italy, Germany. Mexico or wherever. It poured with rain and was grey and miserable but on Friday morning when practice began the sun was shining from blue skies and it was comfortably warm. “It won’t last” everyone said, but it did and it was even better on Saturday, but Sunday — oh dear!
The circuit in Montreal is laid out on the service roads around the othibition park on the long, thin island in the Sr. Lawrence river known as Ile Notre-Dame, connected to the Ile Ste. Helene by two bridges and from thence to the main part of the town by another bridge and the Underground train, or Metro, Montreal being essentially French-speaking and Franceorientated. Although the circuit is virtually flat, with two tight hairpin bends and some wiggly bits through ess-bends which are virtual chicanes, it also has some fast bits and the elongated ess over a blind brow that follows the short straight past the pits is particularly challenging. The average speed for the lap record is over 110 m.p.h and the whole thing is not at all bad. The race is sponsored by the Canadian brewery Labatt, who have been brewing beer since 1828, and the city of Montreal really went out of the, may to publicise the Grand Prix.
