Canada seems to be a favourite place for drivers to score their maiden Grand Prix win. Since its appearance on the Formula 1 calendar in 1967, the Canadian Grand Prix has bestowed that honor upon six drivers.
While the race alternated between Mont-Tremblant and Mosport from 1967 to 1977, Montreal and the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve has permanently hosted the event from 1978 until this day.
F1i looks back at the six men who savoured victory for the first time in Canada, and how their most memorable win was achieved.
Gilles Villeneuve - 1978
Gilles Villeneuve would be 67-years-young if he was still with us today, and we're pretty sure he'd still be driving the wheels off anything he could get his hands on.
For that is how his legend was built, through bravado, fearlessness, extraordinary skill and an abundance of opposite lock.
The 1978 Canadian Grand Prix was the season's curtain-closer and Villeneuve was hoping to finally lift that gleaming winner's trophy in his first full year of Formula 1 in which he had paid a heavy tribute to Ferrari's unreliability.
Race day dawned cold but dry, with Villeneuve sitting P3 on the grid behind Jean-Pierre Jarier and Jody Scheckter. The Frenchman, drafted in by Lotus to replace the late Ronnie Peterson, stormed off into a commanding lead at the start.
Villeneuve drove a conservative opening stint before unleashing his fervor. Scheckter was dispatched on lap 24, but Jarier was well out of sight until the Lotus suffered a terminal cracked oil cooler.
The crowd roared as their local hero assumed the lead, delighted at the prospect of witnessing a Canadian win a world championship race for the very first time. Villeneuve ticked off the laps and even the Ferrari's howling V12 was hardly a match for the partisan crowd's incessant clamor.
But Villeneuve did it.
"To win a Grand Prix is something," he said as he hoisted the maple leaf-topped winner's trophy.
"But to win your first Grand Prix at home is completely unthinkable. This is the happiest day of my life."
