Montreal 'is my kind of track', says Ricciardo

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Red Bull Racing's Daniel Ricciardo is very much looking forward to next week's Canadian Grand Prix at the Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve.

He says that the 4.361km (2.71-mile) temporary street course on the man-made Notre-Dame island in Montreal is the sort of place that he loves to race.

"I love the Canadian Grand Prix and it’s my type of track," said the 27-year-old from Perth, Australia. He said that it had much in common with Monaco, where he finished on the podium last week.

"It’s another street circuit where you can get close to the walls," he explained. "It’s also a tricky track to get right. Although there aren’t a whole lot of corners, they are all quite complex.

"I’ve had a race win there and it’s great fun both on and off-track. What’s not to love?"

Ricciardo's previous victory in Canada was actually his first Formula 1 Grand Prix career win. It came in 2014 during his first season with Red Bull, having just taken over the race seat from his compatriot Mark Webber.

However, last year didn't go so well for Ricciardo. Although he qualified in a strong fourth place, he lost out to his team mate at the start. He subsequently had to make an extra pit stop after locking up his tyres, dropping him to seventh place.

"I was pretty happy with my qualifying lap last year," said Ricciardo. "And the last chicane was fun. But it would be really great to get back on the podium."

A key factor could prove to be the weather. So far the forecasts look quite reasonable. However, Montreal was the venue for the longest world championship Grand Prix in history - four hours, four minutes and 39.537 seconds - after a rain delay caused the 2011 event to be red flagged.

"Last year it was also freezing cold and to be honest that sucked," said Ricciardo. "You would just about warm up after a few laps in the car, so hopefully it will be a little bit warmer this year."

"I will definitely spend some time in the US before heading to the race," he added. "I’ve got some friends coming with me. We will probably go to California first and maybe I will go on a little road trip after the race weekend.

"But first, let’s hope we can get a good result in front of those mega Canadian fans."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.