Round 8 of the Championship is the Canadian Grand Prix, taking place on the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. Located on a man-made island in the city Montreal, this is a deceptively tricky circuit that can catch the drivers out. With the barriers running very close to the track, there is little room for error.
Precision Motorsports locked out the front row in qualifying, with Bono Huis taking his forth pole position this season. Ronny Hähnel qualified in 2nd and David Greco, who has now replaced Malezic at Twister Racing, set the 3rd fastest time. Fredrik Nilsson produced another impressive time to qualify 4th, and Lee Morris set his best qualifying result of the year in 5th. He will start ahead of Mathieu Prévot in 6th position.
Off the start line there was no real winners or losers and the run down into the first corner proved to be clean, the only incident coming from Dominguez who lost his front wing after braking too late. The rest of the field made their way through the first sector in single file with very few passing attempts. Lee Morris managed to get around the outside of Nilsson around the hairpin for 4th, but with a much greater straight line speed, Nilsson quickly took the position back.
On lap 2, Dennis Hirrle made a move on Prévot on the inside of the hairpin. Poniatowski tried to follow Hirrle on the inside, but contact was made, resulting in Prévot spinning and damaging his car. While trying to call for his pit crew, Prévot accidentally selected neutral, and Petter Kaasa ran straight into the back of him. Fortunately all other drivers managed to avoid the accident, and Kaasa even made it back to the pits for repairs.
At the front, Huis was still in the lead, but Hähnel was all over the back of him. Greco was slipping behind the leading pair, and Hirrle continued to move up the order, first passing Morris and then Nilsson for 4th.
On lap 8, Hähnel got a run on Huis down the main straight, and wanting to avoid a Red-Bullesque incident, Huis offered little resistance to his teammate. However only a few laps later, Huis took the position back in exactly the same manner, and then lost the position again on the following lap. Although both drivers were clearly pushing each other, they were leaving plenty of room, and maintaining the gap back to Greco in 3rd.
Fredrik Nilsson was hounding Hirrle in 4th, and after some tight wheel-to-wheel action, Nilsson eventually made it passed on lap 16. Just behind, Lee Morris’s lack of straight line speed was severely hurting the Englishman, with Poniatowski easily driving passed him for 6th place. Tali and Marques were also close behind, but after a challenge from Marques into the final chicane, Tali turned in a tad too early, and the light contact was enough to send him into the wall, where he frustratingly stalled his engine.
Poniatowski’s incredibly high straight line speed allowed him to easily pass Hirrle and Nilsson, to move up into 4th place, and Bruno Marques had now moved up into the action, passing Hirrle for 6th position.
Nilsson was the first of the front runners to pit, but the decision backfired on the Swede. He was soon held up by the trio of Puumalainen, Mikkonen, and de Wit as they battled for 7th place. Unfortunately, as Puumalainen tried to pass Mikkonen into turn 1, Mikkonen span, and with nowhere to go Nilsson ploughed into his car. It was race over for Mikkonen and the end of any chance for Nilsson to get a good result.
The stops did not go well for Poniatowski either. The SB Motorsports crew took an extra 9 seconds for his routine pit stop, dropping him back behind Hirrle and Morris.
Meanwhile Hähnel held the lead just ahead of Huis, only Hähnel had now managed to edge out a decent gap back to his teammate. The stops made little difference to the front pair, and there seemed to be no challenge for the Precision one-two. David Greco continued to run a lonely race, comfortably in 3rd position with little pressure from behind.
Marques was now in 4th place, ahead of Hirrle in 5th. Recovering from his slow stop, Poniatowski made it passed Morris to get back into 6th. Morris was clearly ruing his decision to run such high wings, being as much as 20 miles per hour slower than his rivals down the back straight. Mikko Puumalainen soon passed Morris too. Driving a clean race Puumalainen had now moved all the way up into 7th position.
Lukas Euler was another driver who was now in a strong position simply by avoiding the incidents, and when Morris unexpectedly made a second scheduled stop, Euler found himself up into 8th position.
Taking his first FSR victory in only his 8th Grand Prix, Ronny Hähnel crossed the line after a perfect, error-free race. Bono Huis finished close behind, to make it a dominating Precision performance. David Greco didn’t disappoint his new Twister team, easily taking 3rd place and Marques drove another remarkable race, gaining 9 places to finish in 4th. Dennis Hirrle performed surprisingly well after a 6 month absence, taking 5th, and Poniatowski & Puumalainen secured a good result for SB Motorsports, finishing 6th & 7th.
Huis has now taken the lead in the championship, but he is only clear of Marques by 9 points. Tali’s third poor result in a row has dropped him down into 3rd place and while Malezic remains in 4th position, it is unclear as to weather he will drive again this season. Greco has passed Mikkonen for 5th, and Hähnel’s win has boosted him up into 7th place.
Precision’s one-two has given the team the lead in the constructors, but Twister are only behind by 9 points. 3rd placed Leoncavallo failed to score points this round, but they still remain comfortably ahead of SB Motorsports in 4th. GhostSpeed’s healthy haul of points has helped them to break clear of Torrent Motorsports and Faster Than Speed.
