Always among the hundreds of thousands of attendees at the Canadian Grand Prix every year is a population of small rodents which are always a potential hazard when Formula 1 cars come to town. Groundhogs, or marmots, depending on who you ask, live on Notre Dame Island which for a few days each year, hosts the Canadian round of the F1 World Championship.
Organisers do their best to catch as many of them as they can in the weeks and months leading up to the race every year, moving them temporarily off the island and to safety. Naturally, though, there are always a few which slip through the net and, as a result, there have been plenty of examples of the woodchucks making their way onto the track.
They are small enough creatures to be able to make their way into danger, and large enough to also cause a problem if an unfortunate strike happens. Alex Albon found that out himself on Friday when he crashed in the first and only practice session, hitting the wall after running over a groundhog which sadly chose the wrong moment to make a dart across the track.
He isn’t the first and won’t be the last. Albon is an animal lover who will be devastated to have killed the poor little creature, even though there was nothing he could do about it. And the same was true for fellow zoophilist Lewis Hamilton when he hit a groundhog at this event last year, causing significant damage to the floor of his Ferrari during the race. He was more “devastated”, though, about having hit the animal.
Speaking on the Up To Speed podcast ahead of this weekend’s event, former F1 racer David Coulthard explained why it is difficult for organisers to prevent the groundhogs making their way into danger. “The groundhogs come out when the Grand Prix is on and sadly we have lost a couple of groundhogs,” he said.
“It’s a risk and a hazard of the Canadian Grand Prix. They do have obviously holes in the bottom of the walls so that the water can run off the track, because otherwise the whole thing would build up like a swimming pool. So, how do you stop the groundhogs, or marmots as they’re sort of officially termed, from running on? There is, as I understand it, a mesh behind that so that the water can still run out, but the marmot can’t run on.”
Clearly, though, that is not a foolproof solution and, despite the best efforts of the organisers, a few groundhogs do tend to, quite literally, slip through the net. The unfortunate consequences this time were the death of one of the marmots, and a massive repair job for the Williams mechanics to get Albon’s car ready for Sprint qualifying.
Kimi Antonelli finished top of the timesheets in that practice session, which was extended by 19 minutes in total as a result of the first two of three red flags which interrupted running. Four minutes were added because of the time it took for Liam Lawson’s car to be recovered when the Racing Bulls driver stopped on track, while Albon’s crash caused a more significant 15-minute stoppage.