Montreal Grand Prix Betting Preview

The picturesque setting for the Gilles Villeneuve circuit is an island in Montreal bay. Ingeniously this island was created from the earth excavated from beneath the city when the underground was installed creating a peaceful sanctuary for the inhabitants to enjoy for most of the year. Peaceful is one thing F1 certainly is not and the Canadian fans are some of the most enthusiastic in the world.High speeds, low downforce set ups, high kerbs and heavy braking make this one of the more challenging circuits facing the teams and drivers this season. Essentially the track is long and thin joined by two hairpins art either end to create the lap, with a good few chicanes thrown in for good measure. The low downforce settings make the cars skittish on the kerbs and require the driver to be fully concentrating if he wants to avoid a hard impact with the walls lining much of the track (in particular exiting the final chicane onto the pit straight with this wall getting the best of many of the great drivers over the years.Montreal is the first true low downforce track of the season and hence it is the teams' first chance to compete against each other in this trim under 2005 regulations. As always any oddity such as this can throw up an unlikely result but so far this season it seems the established teams have coped with every scenario thrown at them better than the lesser teams with only Red Bull Racing really shaking the form book on occasion.The big news from the last round at Nurnburgring surrounds Kimi Raikkonen and Mclaren's decision to continue the race on a badly flat spotted tyre which eventually created a vibration pattern of such magnitude it damaged the composite of the suspension leading to a failure, pitching Kimi into retirement yards from the finish and gifting the win to Alonso. Kimi had shown tremendous resolve to carry on with the tyre in such a condition for so long, although it was more a case of when, not if, the car would fail. It is a racers world however and he has openly admitted he would make the same decision again should it come to that, F1 favours the brave usually. Leading on from this, Kimi has declared that his tactics for the rest of the season centre around an all out attack on the championship, nothing else will do. The Mclaren appears to be enjoying a performance advantage at this point in time so the team must make hay whilst the sun shines if they are to catch the 32 point gap to Renaults Fernando Alonso. This sounds like a healthy lead but all it takes is a couple of bad races for Alonso for things to tighten up significantly. Few believe Alonso's luck can hold for much longer. BAR made their return to F1 at the Nurnburgring and were miles off the pace. Quite why seemed to be a complete mystery to all in the pit lane who expected Button to figure highly with very little to lose. Ferrari seems to be treading water and is making no significant inroads towards the fastest teams of 2005. It's a mystery as to what has really gone wrong although credit must be given to Schumacher who is wringing the neck of the car in an attempt to figure out the problem. Unfortunately for the reigning champion, time is running out for all but a miraculous comeback.Renaults other ace, Giancarlo Fisichella is something of a Montreal specialist. Quite why he has suffered such an appalling run of luck to date is a mystery to everyone but this would be a good venue to turn it all around. Fisi has scored several notable podiums here in rubbish machinery, surely with a title contender car beneath him he can aim higher.Looking to qualifying and it could well be time for Montreal specialist Giancarlo Fisichella to put his recent run of bad luck behind him and at 20/1 for the pole it would be a great time to do it.The race is almost inevitably going to be between Raikkonen (13/8) and Alonso (10/3). Going on recent form it has to be Kimi for the top step of the podium come Sunday afternoon.Check out all our free bets on the race!