PWP: The Strategist makes their calls ahead of Montreal

After a strong round last time out in Spain, our top-secret guru - ‘The Strategist’ - is looking to build on that as we head to Montreal.

The Canadian Grand Prix is traditionally a tough race for strategists to call due to the high chance of Safety Cars and changeable conditions.

Currently ranked 28th in our global standings with 135 points to their name, The Strategist is hoping to reduce the 20-point gap to P1 – will you follow their tips and insights below, or go your own way?

Keep reading to discover what The Strategist has to say…

As long as there are no early incidents to draw out the Safety Car, the optimal strategy around Circuit Gilles Villeneuve suggests that a one-stop race is the quickest option, pitting between Lap 21-30. With this in mind, I’m backing Alex to “box box” around this time.

Similarly to the reasons given above, I think Logan will also pit for the first time between Lap 21-30.

Alex has pitted first in five of the seven races so far in 2023, so I’m backing Albono to continue that trend in Canada.

I’m not usually one to tempt fate, but I’m backing our duo to have a good weekend in Canada. The track suits the characteristics of the FW45 and we know how good our pace can be during qualifying.

If we can translate this into track position, I'm going to say that we’ll be making our first stop from P6-P10.

Again, the one-stop strategy is suggested to be the optimal strategy at this point… but any attrition could throw that out of the window, meaning a second stop for both drivers certainly isn’t out of the question.

With three different incidents causing Safety Cars in 2022, it’s a definite possibility that our drivers could switch to a two-stop race. I’m going to say will be making four stops between our two drivers.

As previously mentioned, there were three Safety Car periods in 2022 and the SC is a frequent visitor around this circuit. With that in mind, I’m backing there to be at least one Safety Car period.

I expect Alex to be in the fight for the points at the end of the race, so he’ll be within a decent margin of the car in front. Let’s go with 2.6-5.0s.

Similar to Alex, I expect Logan to be fighting hard with the cars around him. The American was within 1.7s of Bottas in Spain and hopefully our No2 can be in that gap fighting for points at the end of the Canadian GP – I’m calling 0.1-2.5s.