Anthony Davidson's lap of the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve

Technically, the first corner at Montreal is a right-hand kink along the main straight. Although it's so slight that it doesn't require any thought in the car, it does require a driver to hug the inside line in order to put the car on the outside of the track for Turn One.

The track then quickens up and Five is a flat-out right-hand corner - the line should be to hug the inside all the way around Five, keeping the car firmly to the right of the track, in order to open up Six. There's a small bump coming into Six and, if you brake too late, the car can become unsettled at the rear. It's quite a tricky corner to get right under braking because it's very easy to run wide just after the apex - and if that happens in the race, you'll be out on the marbles and lose a heap of time. A tight line, though, opens up Turn Seven, which is a far more important corner than Six because it leads on to the next straight. But a driver must still be careful here because there's a wall on the outside of Seven and we've seen in the past how running wide in Six can have the knock-on effect of putting a car either close to or into the wall. Out of Seven, a KERS boost in qualifying will accelerate the cars into the long back straight, and as they head under the bridge they'll be looking out for the 100-metre board on the left-hand side of the track to gauge their braking zone for Turn Eight. They should also try to avoid the groundhogs at this bit of the track! There's an interesting kerb on the inside of Turn Eight because although you can use the first half of it going through the corner, it then becomes way too harsh to ride. Judging precisely how much you can use is vital. Again, you need a car capable of making a rapid change of direction here with minimum understeer on the exit because coming out of Turn Nine - which immediately follows Eight - the car will still be fully loaded - and with a wall on the outside of the track it's a very similar scenario to Three and Four. In the race, this is also a critically important part of the track because we're approaching one of the best overtaking opportunities on the circuit - the extremely tight Turn Ten hairpin. The car always struggles for grip in Ten and it's very easy to lock-up either end of the car here whilst slowing down from seventh gear to a corner taken, at its apex, at about 45mph. Marbles will be an issue, too, and if you run wide here during the race you will be in big trouble - not least because if you do pick up some marbles you'll have to carry them all the way down into the braking zone for Eleven. Mistakes at the hairpin are almost guaranteed to end with you being overtaken. However, if you do hook up the line correctly, the goal will be to hug the inside for quite a long way around the corner and, like at Two, to begin accelerating when you're still turning. A big chunk of KERS will then be used up on the exit to send you on your way on to a very long straight, and you really feel the speed of the car along here because the walls are so close and even the sheer length of the straight is pretty impressive. Combined with the low downforce setting that all the cars will run at this track, you'll very soon reach maximum velocity. The straight itself accounts for another good overtaking opportunity, although it's the chicane at the end which is probably the best chance of the entire lap. It's such a good opportunity that sometimes in a race you will actually save your move coming out of Turn Ten for this chicane instead. Although there are marker-boards on the left-hand side of the track, this is still a very tricky braking zone. It's also a very risky and dangerous part of the lap because the Wall of Champions is waiting at the exit of Turn Fourteen and any problems that end there will generally have started into Thirteen. On both corners, there's big kerbs on the inside and if you touch either of these too much then the car will be launched offline; even if you miss the one into Thirteen but still over-commit to the corner you'll surely run over the apex corner of Fourteen - and that's how the car is sent offline on the exit and into the wall. Knowing whether you have gone over that limit just as you turn into Thirteen is the key. If you think fast enough, you can take avoiding action and cut the chicane - which is what we see so many cars do during a race. But there is hardly any room for error around this section of the track - just a tiny bit of green-painted tarmac at the exit of Fourteen - and although a driver will more often than not come out of Fourteen thinking 'damnit, I could have carried more speed', the time you do carry through more speed you'll end up scaring yourself about just how close you are to the wall. And that brings us back onto the main straight and the end of the lap - quite an involved and fiddly lap and one which, in so many ways, demands a similar driving style to the one which has just been used in Monaco. AD