10 days ago, the approximately 1.2 million kilos of Formula 1 equipment were in Monaco. Today, they are there, in front of us, in the paddocks of the Gilles-Villeneuve circuit.

It’s very, very hot Wednesday morning at the Gilles-Villeneuve circuit. Around 48 hours before the first free practice session for the Canadian Grand Prix, employees of the 10 Formula 1 teams are busy setting up all their equipment in the garage reserved for them. In the Red Bull pit, at the very front of the pit lane, music is playing loudly. We expected nothing less from the reigning champion manufacturer.

The entrances to the garages, and the cars hidden there, are all protected by signs to prevent a possible visitor from seeing what the mechanics are working on. Only parts of cars, like front wings, are lying here and there in front of the garages.

In other words, it is he who, since 2019, has ensured that all equipment sent by air, sea or land arrives safely at the Gilles-Villeneuve circuit. He also presents himself to us as a “logistics freak”, a logistics maniac!

It’s hard to believe that virtually all the equipment around us will then head to Spain for the Grand Prix on June 23.

And yet.

“It’s the pinnacle of logistics,” says Levasseur. There’s nothing bigger than that. Yes, there are the Olympic Games, events like the World Cup or the Super Bowl. You bring things to a site and it happens there. For us, in three days, it’s gone again and there’s nothing left. »

What happens if equipment, such as a car for example, arrives late at a circuit? “That’s not an option,” simply tells us Christian Pollhammer, who has been responsible for event logistics for F1 since 2017.

That says a lot about the efficiency – and expectations – of F1 and DHL.

For Mathieu Levasseur, a race rhymes with a month of preparation on the circuit. After the Miami Grand Prix, at which he also worked, he returned to Montreal for the arrival of the first equipment on May 14.

In total, no less than 100 trucks traveled to Quebec from Miami – these contain equipment that does not need to be moved to Europe for races on the other side of the ocean . A total of eight fully loaded planes arrived from Europe. And equipment used during the Japanese Grand Prix in April reached Canada by sea.

“Cargoes traveling by air must have arrived in a safe place 48 hours before being delivered,” explains Christian Pollhammer. It’s a requirement [in Canada]. The canine squad then comes to search before we load everything. »

“Once the plane arrives, it takes about an hour to drive [to the circuit],” Levasseur continues. “There’s a lot of construction, so we have to talk to Transport Québec to find out which route we can take, or not, if there’s an unexpected situation.”

After the race on Sunday, everything will be packed in record time. Your La Presse representative won’t even have time to write her article and the teams will already be hard at work.

“All the critical equipment, so the garages, the cars… It will be gone on Monday,” says Levasseur. Crews will pick everything up in about seven hours, then we’ll start filling the trucks around midnight Sunday. »

“For us it’s a lot of time pressure to get out of here because two weeks later we’re already racing in Spain,” says Pollhammer. Teams must return to their factory, wait for their containers to arrive, transfer them back to their trucks, then travel 1,500 km to Spain. »

A race after the race, in other words.