Coming off their best result of the season, Virgin Racing now head to Canada in high spirits as they hope to repeat the two-car finish from Istanbul where they took the honours of ‘the best of the rest’.

Timo Glock and Lucas di Grassi finished in 18^th and 19^th place respectively, placing them ahead of the Hispania team and close rivals Lotus.

But Montreal is a long way away from Turkey, not only geographically, but in the type of circuit and the demands on the car which are totally different to that of two weeks ago.

It is one of the more unusual circuits on the Formula One calendar with a mixture of long straights and low-speed chicanes making it a difficult challenge for all the drivers. One mistake and they could find themselves face to face with one of the many unforgiving concrete walls which are more familiar with Monaco than Montreal.

Due to the number of fast and slow sectors, this track requires one of the lowest levels of downforce combined with the greatest pressure on brakes. This is therefore going to be a real test for the revised Virgin car.

We have seen the car can finish at race pace, even though some reliability issues still exist; now we find out how good it really is. Will it still be able to finish on a circuit which requires much more from the car?

Pressure will be on race engineers to get the most downforce from the car which could mean we may be seeing new front and rear wings. But this year brings new problems as the cars now start the race with full tank on fuel which puts more demands on the brakes.

This will be the third time that Glock has driven at this circuit in F1, with his best result coming in his lace race there in 2008 where he finished in an impressive forth place. If he repeated that this year it would be good enough to secure the team their very first points, but no one expects that to happen.

But for his rookie team mate this will be his first time in Canada so the Friday and Saturday practice sessions will be crucial for him.

Despite this, both drivers should still be confident of a double finish where they once again beat the other new teams. It will be more difficult, but they have the momentum and are more than capable of being ‘the best of the rest’ in Canada.

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