Canada will be more challenging says Brawn

There are no long corners on the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, home to this weekend's Canadian Grand Prix with the combination of short, slow corners and chicanes linked by six long straights, which place an emphasis on high top speeds. As a result, the cars run in a low downforce set-up for the first time this year and the main engineering focus of the weekend is tyre and brake management.

 

To combat the track's smooth asphalt, Bridgestone brings its soft and super-soft compounds to the race, as was the case in Monaco, but the heat generated by the centrifugal forces along the straights and under braking make tyre graining an issue.

The circuit is also the hardest of the year on brake wear. The cars slow from seventh to second gear on six occasions during the lap, but the engineers are unwilling to enlarge the size of the brake ducts due to the resultant increase in aerodynamic drag. When you add the strain placed on the gearboxes - there are more gear changes per lap than at Monaco - the 70-lap Canadian Grand Prix is one of the biggest technical challenges of the year.

Honda racing is looking forward to round seven and team boss Ross Brawn is expecting the Brackley based squad to have a more challenging weekend than they did in Monaco just over a week ago.

 

"We were pleased with the pace and performance of the RA108 around Monaco last week and it was encouraging to score further points, particularly with Rubens for the first time this season," he said. "However Canada is a completely different challenge and the downforce levels required are medium to low, the opposite of Monaco. The Circuit Gilles Villeneuve is a big technical challenge, and with a combination of high-speed blasts, slow chicanes and hairpins, it can be very tough on the cars. Although I am pleased with the progress that the team has made over the last few races, we have been lacking the speed necessary to really maximise long straights, so it will be up to us to get the most from the performance that we have available in the car. I am expecting a more challenging weekend than in Monaco."

"We ran the RA108 in low downforce specification on a Montreal configured layout of the Paul Ricard circuit on the final day of the test before Monaco. Unfortunately the weather conditions were very poor which resulted in most of the day being washed out. However Jenson was able to achieve a few laps to obtain some basic aerodynamic data, which we have used along with data from previous years, to prepare our specific aerodynamic package for this race."