Maybe it’s the recent Winter Olympics, but there seems to be even more love for Canadian sportsmen and women at the moment. We have always been proud of anyone who represents our country, and the exploits of the Olympians wearing the maple leaf had the whole nation cheering on.
Motorsports is more of an individual practice, of course. There is a wide range of people working for the two drivers on each F1 team, but the glory still tends to go to the driver alone. That doesn’t mean that we don’t like to get behind the Canadian drivers, however, and that is always the case when the Canadian Grand Prix comes around each year.
Most of the best Canadian sportsbooks will have drivers from the UK or the Netherlands favorite to take the Drivers’ Championship crown this season, but Canadian fans can still hope. A site like MyTopSportsbooks has all the information you will need, as we eagerly await the beginning of the F1 season in March.
The Canadian Prix, held at Montreal’s very own Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, will be the seventh race of the F1 season. But can we really dream of a Canadian victory?
Canadian Hopes
F1 might be an international competition, but at the current time, we only have one Canadian driver to pin our hopes on. Still only 27, Lance Stroll is already approaching veteran status in the sport, having started 193 F1 races since his debut at the Australian Grand Prix in 2017. He made his maiden podium finish later that season.
Stroll began his F1 career with Williams, but switched to Racing Point in 2019, the team owned by his father. He has remained with the team after the rebrand to Aston Martin and now partners with the great Fernando Alonso. Although he is not predicted to win many races this season, he is on course to count the 2026 Canadian Grand Prix as his 200th start in F1. We can’t think of a better time for the Montreal native to take his first checkered flag and win on his home circuit.
Local Champ
If Stroll were to win the Canadian Grand Prix this year, he would be just the second from this country to do so. The only current local champ is arguably the greatest driver this country has ever seen, whose name now adorns the racetrack where the Grand Prix will be held in Montreal.
Gilles Villeneuve raced in F1 for six years and was the first Canadian driver to ever win a Grand Prix. Also born in Quebec, Villeneuve made his debut in 1977 at the Canadian Grand Prix and went on to become a regular starter the next year for Ferrari. It was in his second year of driving when he won the Canadian Grand Prix and won three more races the next year to finish runner-up in the Drivers’ Championship.
Villeneuve would record two more career F1 wins before it was cut tragically short after a collision in practice in Belgium in 1982. He was a much-loved Canadian driver and is still fondly remembered by everyone in motorsports. The Circuit Ile Notre-Dame was renamed Circuit Gilles Villeneuve after his tragic death, and now every young Canadian driver grows up dreaming of emulating his exploits.
Top Canadian Drivers
Although Gilles is rightly remembered as a Canadian sporting hero, it was his son who went even better in F1, ending an illustrious career with 11 Grand Prix wins. Jacques Villeneuve also held the record for most starts by a Canadian until Lance Stroll came along, during an 11-year F1 career that brought 23 podium finishes.
Jacques Villeneuve finished runner-up in his rookie season of F1, and then claimed the Drivers’ Championship in 1997. Although he never took the title again, his driving style attracted a legion of fans, and he was always a popular driver on the circuit. He departed F1 in 2006 but has continued to race in a number of other formats and is always the center of attention when the Canadian Grand Prix comes around.
The first Canadian F1 driver was Peter Ryan, back in 1961, and there has been good representation – especially from Quebec – ever since. The most recent was Nicholas Latifi, who raced from 2020 to 2022, joining Stroll as a fellow Canadian driver for a while. In three years of racing for Williams, his highest finish was 17th in the Drivers’ Championship.
More Local Heroes Needed
Canada – and Quebec in particular – has obviously had a long and successful history of producing elite drivers across a range of different motorsports. F1 is the most prestigious, however, so the aim must be for more to come through from the ranks now to join Lance Stroll competing in Grand Prixs all across the world.
There have now been 15 Canadian drivers in the history of F1, with the Villeneuve family obviously dominating the honor board. With a racetrack named after his father, it is a shame that Jacques was never able to take the checkered flag in Montreal, with that second-place finish on his debut in 1996, his best-ever performance.
The odds will be against Lance Stroll racing to victory this year, but if he is able to pull off a memorable win, there is no doubt that he will become the inspiration for a whole new generation of Canadian drivers. Canada has a rich history in the sport, and it feels as though this is the right time for a hometown winner – even if many experts may think otherwise.