The Circuit de Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal has been on the calendar for decades with little interruption, and it’s a fan favourite for sure.

 

In terms of the layout, you’ve got a bit of everything – medium and high speed chicanes, slow hairpins and long straights. So your setup will usually need to be medium downforce as a compromise

Here’s a general baseline dry race setup for Canada for a pad user:

• Wings – 22/24
• Diff – 10/50/50
• Camber – -3.50/-2.20/0.00/0.13
• Suspension –  39-5-15-9-25-58
• Brakes – 95% Pressure/50 Bias
• Tyre pressures – Fronts 24.0, Rears minimum

This setup isn’t perfect and can get unstable as the tyres wear (I think it’s unavoidable at this track on this game), but it’s a baseline to get started with.

More Setups Analysis

Here’s some more tips and pointers for creating a setup round here.

Wing Levels – I’ve done some testing on this track and you can experiment with the wing levels anywhere from 25 down to 20. But I wouldn’t go above 25 with the rear wing as you need some straight line speed to attack and defend against the AI in the DRS zones. Using 22/24 wings gave me decent Qualifying and race pace, but 20/22 could also work if I wanted a bit more top end speed on the straights.

Find More Pace – If you want to go more aggressive with this setup, you can bring the wing closer together (or even invert them and put the rear wing lower), raise you on throttle diff, lower your off throttle diff and increase suspension and roll bar settings. However, this will make the car tricky to control over longer races – I found it tricky even with my setup once the tyres started to wear. May be better to go for stability when starting out on this track.

Tyre Pressures – Doesn’t really seem to be an issue round here. Can definitely run them at minimum for quali laps, and probably even get away with it for races as well. Maximum pressures will give you more “pointyness” in high speed corners. I keep them on the lower side because I prefer traction and low speed mechanical grip – pressures are largely down to handling preference on this game.

Intermediate Conditions – For light rain conditions, the dry setup will work OK as it is, but I’d always adjust the wings so the rear wing is always 3 clicks above the front wing, and lower the on throttle Diff to 10 if it’s not already there. You can also soften the suspension and raise the ride height 1-2 clicks each.

Full Wet Conditions – For heavy rain full wet conditions, you definitely need the wings spaced 3 clicks apart (rear wing higher) for more stability, plus minimum On throttle diff and some more adjustments.

Here’s a starter wet race setup for Montreal for a pad user:

• Wings – 27/30
• Diff – 10/55/50
• Camber – -3.50/-2.20/0.00/0.13
• Suspension –  36-4-12-6-28-61
• Brakes – 95% Pressure/50 Bias
• Tyre pressures – Fronts 24.0, Rears 22.5

Other Setup Resources For Miami

Montreal is one of those tracks where it seems really tricky to get a setup that’s fast and easy to control.

If you’re looking for more finely tuned setups for different cars, game modes and conditions, check out these additional setup resources:

• The SimRacingSetups channel have also posted a Canada race setup, but it’ll probably need some tweaking for a pad user as they’re designed for wheel users with settings you might find too aggressive and hard to control on a pad.
• F1laps.com Canada page – Another car setup forum with pages for every track, and loads of custom setups posted, both TT and race, all cars, all conditions.
• F1gamesetup.com – An even more specialized resource with custom setups, every car and every track, wet and dry weather.

Racing & Strategy Tips

Here’s a few extra tips for racing round Montreal.

ERS Overtake (Qualifying) – Got quite of lot of extra Overtake mode to use round here – well over 10 seconds – so it’s advised to deploy it in 3-4 second bursts on all the medium and long straights for better quali times. Just aim to drain your yellow ERS bar as you finish the lap.

Tyres (Quali) – The red soft tyre doesn’t hold up so well in races, but it does hold up in Qualifying to the extent you can sometimes get two flying laps out of one set of them (outlap, flying lap, cool down lap, second flying lap). Sometimes you can get slightly better times on your second hotlap even on the same set of softs.

Traction/Rear Tyres – Lap time in Canada when using a pad seems to come down to getting smooth traction and exits out of the corners, without wheelspin or the back end stepping out. Set your wings for optimal turn in (not too much and not too little). Keep your on throttle diff low and be smooth and progressive on the input to get out of corners smoothly. It’s a rear limited track so the traction handling does get tricky here as the tyres start to wear, even with more stable setups and even on the medium and hard tyres. You just have to be slightly more progressive and patient on the power as the rear tyres start to go towards the end of stints.

Strategy – The red soft tyres aren’t really usable race tyres, as they fall off too quickly and traction gets really tricky in sector 1. You can use them for 3-4 laps in a 25% race, but then the traction starts to really worsen and you need to go straight onto the hard tyre. For 50% races, it’s a medium-hard strategy all way, and it’s probably better even for 25% and 35% races as well.

Track limits – It’s really easy to cut the track and get warnings round Canada. Having a setup which doesn’t turn in too aggressively can help with this, which I’ve tried to provide above. In online league races, focusing on consistency and accuracy with cornering can pay massive dividends round here, as if you stay penalty free you can leap-frog cars in front that rack up 6, 9, 12 or even more seconds in penalties with constant corner cutting.

Defending (Race) – With 3 DRS zones round here, defending position can be super tricky with how powerful the ERS/DRS combo is. If you can, you need to try and stop any chasing car getting into your DRS on the long back straight, because once they do you basically aren’t shaking them off with two successive DRS zones. Once they are in your DRS, you’ll have to save all your Overtake allowance for the long back straight (don’t use it anywhere else) and deploy a big chunk on corner exit to punch away from chasing cars. And watch out for the very last lap when the AI give it everything and deploy Overtake all along this straight to try and get past. Make sure you’ve got enough battery to do the same yourself on the final tour.

Mastering Montreal