By Jonathan Noble Monday, June 9th 2008, 15:08 GMT
After the party excesses of the Monaco Grand Prix, the F1 circus revved itself up for Canada and another season highlight with, thanks to the demise of Indianapolis, its sole trip to North America this year.
Michael DouglasMontreal is up there with Monaco and Melbourne as one of the very best races of the year, and this year once again proved no exception.
The Circuit Gilles Villeneuve invariably delivers a dramatic race, the paddock that backs onto the Olympic rowing basin is one of the most relaxed and intimate of the season and Montreal itself is a great place to be.
And this year things got better, as the race organisers had invested a lot of money in improving the facilities in the paddock - offering a new media centre floating on the lake, and better offices for the teams.
There were not quite the number of celebrities that had graced the paddock in Monaco, but film stars Michael Douglas and Pamela Anderson were keen observers as Robert Kubica took his first victory 12 months on from his spectacular crash.
The Canadian Grand Prix always serves to refresh the batteries just as mid-season fatigue threatens to set in. The great restaurants and bars in the city, the stunning scenery and the ample shopping are great cures for those mid-year blues.
The Sacacomie LodgeAnd perhaps the race organisers were extra aware of it this year when, as well as the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve paddock upgrade, they put on a trip to a nearby lake on the eve of the weekend for a few lucky journalists to sample a bit of what real Canada is like.
It is too easy in this job to travel the world but only ever see hotel rooms and race tracks - so a seaplane journey up to the Sacacomie Lodge in the Quebec forest north of Montreal was the start of a great adventure.
A day of quad biking through stunning forests, fishing on a lake for lunch and then beaver and bear watching offered a glimpse of life far removed from the hustle and bustle of downtown Montreal - and even further from F1 politics.
And no real surprise, too, to find that on the long visitors' list who have spent some quality down town at Sacocomie were former world champion Mika Hakkinen, and Olivier Panis ? who had gone there the year after breaking his legs in his Canadian GP crash. It was also where they filmed part of Johnny Depp's 2004 film Secret Window.
The joys of Sacacomie were not good news to everyone though. F1 photographer John Townsend, a keen fisherman, had been looking forward to the trip so much that he had forgotten to change his flight to be able to come along. He turned up at the airport to be told he was leaving 24 hours later ? so he had to return home cursing his missed opportunity.
Felipe Massa's race engineer Rob Smedley is one of Formula One's genuine good guys.
In the week after the Monaco GP, Smedley and his wife Lucy raised a whopping ?53,202 pounds for the Stillbirth and Neonatal Death Society (SANDS) as a way of remembering their daughter Minnie, who they had lost last year.
A host of drivers, including Michael Schumacher, Massa, Kimi Raikkonen, Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello, had all offered items that were put up for auction on the night.
So having been so generous back home, it was no surprise to hear that Smedley had provided charity once again on his flight out to Montreal.
A woman in economy had been taken ill on his flight and Smedley, hearing of her problems, generously offered to give her his seat in business class because she would be more comfortable up there.
So Smedley duly swapped seats and ended the flight with slightly less legroom than he had begun it....
Jenson Button has always been a big fan of the wet ? and was certainly kicking himself after missing out on the opportunities the rain-hit Monaco Grand Prix had handed him a fortnight ago.
Jenson Button in MontrealBut perhaps he took his eagerness for more water a bit too far in the build-up to Montreal when he decided to take a lengthy swim in the Olympic Rowing Basin that is situated at the back of the paddock.
Donning a wet suit, Button dived in from the top end and powered himself all the way down to the bridge and walkway that the F1 personnel use to get from the car park to the paddock.
"It doesn't look very far when you are standing there, but it certainly is when you are swimming it," said Button. "I think it is something like 1500 metres..."
The bridge itself became a focus for not just Button over the weekend though. Sebastian Vettel, racing in Canada for the first time, said that Robert Kubica's accident last year was certainly not the thing he was most afraid of.
"The bridge coming into the paddock looked quite scary..."
They say bad things happen in threes ? and Lewis Hamilton's dad Anthony will be glad that his run of triple misfortune has ended so swiftly.
Anthony had arrived in Montreal fresh from wrecking a ?330,000 Porsche Carrera GT in a shunt near his house ? although thankfully he had only hurt his pride and not himself.
But worse than actually having put the car through some bushes and into a child's playground, photos of the crashed machine had been plastered all over the British newspapers.
Then, (and as some cruelly said: like father, like son) he saw son Lewis crash his car on Sunday when he ran into the back of Kimi Raikkonen as the Ferrari sat at the red light at the end of the pit lane.
Finally on Sunday evening Hamilton saw his third big 'shunt' ? when there was a huge explosion of smashing glass at the McLaren hospitality unit in the paddock as he stood in the doorway.
As the team began packing away after a hard weekend, one of the shelves in a cabinet holding glasses had given away ? smashing everything inside. The crescendo of smashing glasses turned heads in the paddock and a concerned Hamilton made sure to check that no one had been hurt.
It had been a hell of a week for him?
