14/06/2004

Olivier Panis reflects on Montreal

I like Montreal very much both the place and the people. We always get many many spectators every day and they are so clearly enthusiastic. That always makes for a good atmosphere. This year with Jacques Villeneuve not driving I think many people suspected that the numbers and the enthusiasm would drop but it wasn't the case at all. The Canadians like their Formula 1 and I think most of it goes back to Jacques' father Gilles who was such a hero to them. It was Gilles who won the first Grand Prix on the Ile Notre-Dame track back in 1978.

Almost every year we seem to have a different kind of race here. It is quite a difficult place from which to recover a car that has had a problem and there is also a tight first corner so you often have Safety Car periods. Actually that's one factor you also bear in mind when you are thinking about strategy. Even if the mathematics show that more stops is the optimum way you always have to think about the likelihood of interruptions. It's almost a race apart a bit like Monaco in a way. Except that you can pass of course!

I had my bad accident in Canada back in 1997 which was the worst accident I have had in my 149-race career. I've had some big accidents in F1 but fortunately without injury. That was actually caused by a broken rear wishbone and I could do absolutely nothing. It was Turn 4 the one that is flat-out and you really don't want anything to break! The car was on three wheels and I was just a passenger.

My legs are now completely normal. I can do everything I did before ? football tennis everything. I didn't damage any articulation and so there is no stiffness in winter or anything like that. It's like the kind of clean break that you have on skis. I was lucky. The worst thing about it was that it happened in a season when I was running so strongly and fighting for podiums at almost every race. I even led in Argentina that year. But c'est la vie as we say in French!

I did a very good test in Monza before the Canadian Grand Prix. Monza is also a low downforce circuit so it was excellent preparation for Montreal. Everybody at the factory is working so hard to try to have the new car ready for Hockenheim next month so things are moving in the right direction all the time.

The car handled quite well over the race weekend to be honest. If you look at my qualifying time I was just four hundredths of a second behind Cristiano and with a heavier fuel load so given the strategy that we took for the race (involving just two pit stops) it gave me a tough task in qualifying but I did a good lap to get 13th place. The strategy looked like a good option here because the tyres looked so consistent on longer runs.

On lower downforce tracks the car has less stability and feels more skittish under braking. More loose. Over the bumps it moves much more and the grip levels feel lazier with the car sliding more. This is the biggest problem in qualifying. You want to push but if you lock up you can easily lose half a second. It's not easy especially when you have a lot of fuel on board. You need to be very precise. But I managed that and I was actually very pleased with my lap.

Unfortunately we had a combination of bad luck in the race and after it! There was a lot of confusion at the first corner. The Jaguars and a McLaren were involved and I lost time. I did all that I could for the rest of the race and then came the team's problem with the brake ducts. That was unfortunate but we can't change it and I feel sorry for Cristiano and the rest of the team about losing a point.

This week I am staying close to Montreal a nice place about an hour away with a lake jet skis quad bikes and all the crazy things! I will stay there for three days with some friends and just train and have some rest before flying down to Indianapolis for my 150th grand prix.