A huge part of Formula One is played out in the minds of the drivers, and never more so than at Montreal. This is where Robert Kubica suffered a horrific accident last year, although it barely seems to have registered with him, while world champion Kimi Raikkonen arrives having admitted that he has considered early retirement and Lewis Hamilton is in a world of his own after winning in Monaco.

It’s a heady mix, particularly when you factor in the challenges of the Gilles Villeneuve circuit, with its unforgiving walls and guardrails and the constant threat of the safety car. It’s a slippery surface that has been known to break up in places, and is tough on brakes. On top of all that, the forecast is for hot, steamy weather later today.

To start with Raikkonen, it is surely unprecedented for a driver in his position to fail to deny the possibility of retirement. He’s the world champion, fighting for this year’s title, driving the best car on the grid, earning huge amounts of money, still only 28 and with few family commitments. What’s not to like? I have to say that I admire him for admitting: “I’m still enjoying driving but there are things about F1 I don’t enjoy and if they begin to outweigh the positives, I might stop.” Raikkonen is such a party animal that I suspect he would be safer staying in an F1 car than retiring.

It is interesting that this comes on the back of a poor performance at Monaco. He is generally being out-performed by his teammate Felipe Massa, a man whose stock in F1 is half a notch behind the likes of Raikkonen, Fern-ando Alonso and Hamilton, but when drivers are not fully committed they lose their mojo completely. We saw the same thing with Damon Hill in 1999, when he had already mentally checked out early in the season.

When Raikkonen left McLaren without a championship to his name he was browbeaten and hadn’t enjoyed his time with the team, but he quickly thrived at Ferrari, winning the world championship, and during the off-season he was transformed, happy and chatty. He has probably the best management team in the business keeping his life simple, so it’s difficult to see what has changed so suddenly. I believe he will race for a few years yet.

One man who will have been delighted to read Raikkonen’s views is Hamilton, who will be thinking: “Great. I’ve got you exactly where I want you.” You can never write off Raikkonen, but clearly Hamilton is psychologically in a much better place. How quickly these things change. It is only a few short weeks since Hamilton was in a trough. He admitted that he put too much pressure on himself in Malaysia and had a poor run there, which hurt his confidence going into Bahrain, where he had a shocker.

At Barcelona he put together a strong drive, following it up in Turkey with what he described as his best ever race. This puzzled me, because to me his outstanding drives so far were his wins last year here in Montreal and in the rain of Fuji, races he won from the front under intense pressure while handling the safety car restarts superbly.

In Turkey he finished second, splitting the Ferraris. Hamilton said the race was special for him because he had been forced into a three-stop strategy, which he thought would mean the race was a write-off, but he nearly won it. He proudly recalls that every in and out lap was faster than his teammate’s, his consistency was perfect, and he was happy with his overtaking.

He carried that confidence to Monaco, where he won, albeit slightly luckily by tagging the barriers and forcing an unsched-uled pit stop that then fuelled him perfectly for a change to dry tyres later. But he was supremely fast on a heavy fuel load and that made the real difference.

He arrived in Montreal full of puppy-dog enthusiasm about the racetrack. I walked the track with him on Thursday and as we arrived at the hairpin where Kubica suffered his accident last year, I asked Hamilton if he thought the Polish driver would reflect back when approaching the corner. I knew the answer but had to ask the question, and Hamilton, as expected, said: “No, it won’t even register, especially for us young guys.”

They have changed the wall profile since last year but essentially the drivers are still heading at 200mph into a cul-de-sac.

How can you possibly not think of it, you may ask? I have had enough big shunts in my time to know that what Hamilton said is true. I almost died at turn four at Interlagos and raced there for two years afterwards, never giving it a second’s thought. Yet if I, or any other road or race driver, suffered an accident on the public road, at a roundabout, say, then we would treat it with more respect thereafter. So what’s the difference? It’s the necessary intense focus, pressure, dedication and personal determination to succeed. It is in the nature of the job that you are going to have accidents, it’s just a question of when, so you’re not shocked when they happen. If the car has failed, your engineers can demonstrate to you why it won’t happen again, or if you have made a mistake, you can convince yourself you won’t make that mistake again.

There’s every chance of incidents here, and the race is likely to involve safety cars. It’s a park circuit, surrounded by the St Lawrence Seaway, the former Olympic rowing channel, and a casino. There’s nowhere to go if you crash. You always end up in close proximity to the track and in the firing line of the cars.

For the next race they are rehearsing a solution to the refuelling problem - under the current rules, if the safety car is deployed the pit lane is temporarily closed. If you have to come in to refuel you receive a 10-second stop/go penalty, which is completely unfair. Your race is ruined because of somebody else’s accident.

Hopefully this race will put F1 back in the spotlight for the right reasons, following on from the continuation of the Max Mosley story. He won his FIA vote of confidence and you would assume the FIA and F1 are big enough to cope with the uncertainty and credibility issues the affair has created. This is an absolutely crucial time. If Mosley has done such a great job, why hasn’t he received universal support inside the FIA and the motoring bodies? Why is there a lack of support for him in the paddock among the teams, manufacturers and the media? There’s a reason for that. The sexual stuff is absolutely irrelevant, it’s just an ideal catalyst to vent the bad blood that has built up around him.

I was delighted in 1991 when Max got the FIA presidency because I thought he was one of “us”, a racer. Over the years it has turned out he’s not, he’s a politician. Given the encounters I have had with him over the years as a driver, as chairman of the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association, as chairman of the board at Silverstone, and on the receiving end of his legal writ as a commentator, despite his good work in many areas he doesn’t get my support. It’s time for a change.

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