I remember Pierre Trudeau before he became an airport. He was Canada’s Prime Minister forever when I was growing up. Today his son Justin is the Prime Minister and Pierre is now an airport, known also as Dorval. Lots of airports are named after people, but few names actually stick. How many people say: ‘I’m flying to John Lennon’ or ‘What time is the flight to Omar Bongo?’ But if you say: ‘I’m flying from JFK to Charles de Gaulle’, people instantly know what you mean. There are only a few such airports in this category: Ataturk, Ben Gurion, Dulles and Reagan. In some ways, it is surprising that Britain has none of these and sticks with Heathrow and Gatwick, but some would say that this is because of the quality of British politicians rather than the philosophy of airport naming.

Our fly-away race weekends tend to begin and end at the same airport and so we get to know them over time. Trudeau is OK, even if the new lounge didn’t seem to have a licence for alcoholic beverages and had had to resort to alcohol-free booze. We pondered whether perhaps billions could be made in creating alcohol powder to add to alcohol-free drinks. But, like the toaster, the world has yet to find the right answer. We can put men on the moon, but we still cannot make toast instantly…

Anyway, when I left Dorval (alcohol-free) on Monday I was impressed by the level of involvement in F1 to be found in the terminal, including a simulator. It’s great when a city truly embraces F1…

When I arrived at Trudeau on the Thursday, things were rather more stressed because my plan to have an easy run to the track to interview Lance Stroll had been blown up by a late plane, inefficient immigration and slow-moving baggage. I jumped into a cab and explained to Sami the driver that I needed to be on the Ile de Notre Dame in under half an hour. The problem with this idea was not the distance involved, but rather the fact that the roads of Montreal are perpetually under construction. I don’t know why this is (maybe the weather), but it is a nightmare because there are always traffic jams. They have been for as long as I can remember. Sami asked if I minded trying something different and, with nothing to lose, we set off through side streets and suburbs and arrived on the island with a minute or two to spare. Stroll has probably never had a journalist arrive for an interview with his luggage in tow, but he handled it well…

The green notebook had a lot of notes about the calendar for 2018 but begins with a note about Williams sporting director Steve Nielsen departing to join Ross Brawn’s new crew at Formula One, where he will look after sporting and logistical matters and regulations. The word is that Brawn’s next appointee will be former Ferrari chief designer Nicholas Tombazis, who will work with the engineering team to figure out what best to with the cars to make sure that they look good, can overtake one another and can be as cheap as possible.

Cutting costs is important to the new owners of the Formula One group because they want to create a franchise system of sorts and that will need financial controls in place before it can be done.

The FIA needs to have a draft calendar this week (which means it will leak fairly soon) but at the moment the ideas are still a little fluid because of the FIFA World Cup Final. This will be on July 15, with the game being broadcast in western Europe at 3pm. This means that no Grand Prix is going to get a big audience, unless the race moves to a time zone that would allow it to be shown in the morning. Thus the plan is to avoid July 15 (which is also the Wimbledon Finals) and that means that there are problems getting all the races into the time available. Creating calendars is not an easy business because you have to worry about local problems, existing contracts, clashing sports events and so on. Monaco has a contract to be on May 27. Canada is believed to have a similar fixed date (or a choice of one of two weekends). The FIA wants Le Mans to get a free weekend and so in 2018, June 17 is gone. This is good news because last year’s Canada-Baku back-to-back was grim for the teams. The problem is that with France and Germany returning to the fold in 2018, there are too many races for the summer season with Baku, Austria, France, Britain, Germany and Hungary all trying to get dates in July. No month has six weekends. It seems that Russia will move to later in the year. Logically, this would be replacing Malaysia but that is not easy because moving the freight from Singapore back to Sochi and then out to Japan makes no sense at all. There is the additional problem that President Vladimir Putin does not want a race on his birthday, which means that the October 7 date is not possible. And things start getting cold…

There is a small chance of one of the European races moving to a date in early May to relieve that pressure. The plan is to increase the number of back-to-back events, in order to use the time more efficiently, but the logistics involved in this are very difficult, largely because of the team hospitality units, which take an enormous amount of effort. It is clear that if F1 is to increase the number of races on the calendar in the future the teams need to add more staff – or reduce the amount of equipment and people needing to be moved around. You go heavier or you go lighter…

One idea that has been tabled is that of a triple-header (three races in three weekends) but the teams are largely opposed to this, particularly if it involves the already-difficult Austria-Britain back-to-back, which costs huge amounts of money because of the need to have additional crews to cover the ground necessary. It might be possible to do Austria-France-Britain, as the distances involved are slightly less dramatic. But, let us remember that teams with money have never worried too much about the costs. There is a legendary tale of two sets of Goodyear qualifying rubber (eight tyres) being booked eight seats on a Concorde flight from New York to London, in order to be used by Ferrari…

The driver market for next year was also a big talking point in Montreal with Ferrari being the key over what happens with Kimi Raikkonen. If there is a change at Ferrari then the rest of the market will move. The current thinking is that Ferrari would go for Max Verstappen if he was able to get out of his Red Bull contract, which might be possible given performance clauses. The Red Bull team had denied this, but no-one believes the denials.

Elsewhere, McLaren won the revived raft race in the rowing basin on Saturday evening. This was stopped a few years ago because fun was not allowed in the paddock in those days and the revived event was a big hit with the teams being given equipment to design and build a raft in an hour. Three teams did not take part: Ferrari, Mercedes and Force India (great PR work, guys) but everyone else had a good time, including two crews from Formula One and one from the FIA. Ross Brawn and Sean Bratches were part of the crews, Bratches with his trousers rolled up in true bank-manager-goes-to-the-beach style. It was entertaining to try to imagine Mr Bernie Ecclestone doing something similar…

That was a bit of levity for McLaren, a team that has had little to smile about in recent times. The word continues to be that a divorce in coming with Honda and it is really a question of when, rather than if. The replacement engines would come from Mercedes and some would like to see this happen after the summer break, rather than at the end of the year. Honda is not happy about the idea, but to be fair to McLaren it has been pretty patient and Honda has not delivered the goods. The team has yet to score a point and is last in the Constructors’ Championship. It is an unthinkable situation for McLaren.

Bratches also got excited about the latest addition to activities in the Paddock Club, a Scalextric set of the highest order, which Paddock Club guests can compete on, with prizes for the fastest time of the day. This will go from Grand Prix to Grand Prix in a very large box, which needs to be bullet-proof as the detail involved in the layout is spectacular. Here, you can see Ross Brawn checking it out. He later had a go, having sussed out which was the quickest car…

There was also lots of talk of a mid-season switch of a different kind over at Renault where Jolyon Palmer’s season continues to be fairly poor. In part this is due to technical problems he has had, but getting close to Nico Hulkenberg is what is required and the word is that Renault want to give someone else a try. That someone will likely be Sergey Sirotkin. There are some romantics who think that Robert Kubica might make a comeback in F1, but that seems rather unlikely and the suggestion for 2018 is that if the team cannot afford Fernando Alonso it is more likely that Sergio Perez will come on board. This depends on what happens with Force India and Vijay Mallya. His extradition hearing in Britain has now been pushed back to December 4, because of delays in evidence arriving from the government of India. Some media reports suggest that this means that there isn’t any evidence, but if that was the case he would not have been arrested, so clearly he still has problems to solve. Indian bureaucratic inefficiency is legendary…

There was a bureaucratic screw-up in the race in Montreal when the FIA Stewards gave Danny Kvyat the wrong penalty. It was not intelligent of the team to let the Russian take up his grid position after being left behind on the pre-grid. The rule is clear. If the driver is the last car away, he starts at the back. If he gets going before the last car passes, he takes up his grid position. Generally-speaking the FIA Stewards are pretty good these days, but this time there was a mistake and Kvyat was given a drive-through penalty, rather than a 10-second stop-and-go. It might have been wisest not to try to correct the mistake and just let it lie, on the basis that double jeopardy is established in most legal systems. Once a court has punished an accused person, they cannot punish them again for the same crime. The decision was taken to give Kvyat another 10-second penalty. The Russian was not impressed and was fairly blunt in his assessment of the authorities. “They have a job to do which is not so difficult in my opinion and they cannot do the job properly,” he ranted. “They were clearly sleeping today in their office, so maybe they needed some coffee there. They should cancel this stupid rule. Who is this rule for? Are we taxi drivers here or Formula 1 drivers? I don’t understand this. It’s a circus, a stupid f**king circus.”

There was a certain amount of sympathy for Kvyat, because it was not his fault that the stewards made a mistake, but perhaps it might be wise if he were to learn the rules and not make such silly mistakes in the future. Given how much money the drivers are being paid, it is a bit surprising that they cannot find a little time to read the rules…

There is, by the way, an undercurrent in F1 circles that the drivers could soon become subject to a salary cap, as teams look for ways to reduce F1 costs. This would mean a limit on what a team could pay a driver, but sponsors could, no doubt, provide additional earnings if they wished to do so. Something that may also come up in the future is a requirement that would go with the superlicence to have drivers bound to give up a certain number of days per year to promote the sport. This is second nature to the drivers who compete in other championships but F1 drivers have long avoided promotional work if they can… The new management is not as generous in this respect as was Bernie Ecclestone. We also hear ruminations about whether or not it might be a good idea to have more than one tyre supplier in the future. Pirelli has an exclusive contract until the end of 2019 but it is no secret that Michelin would like to enter F1. A tyre war could create more unpredictable racing. However, tyre wars are expensive and can be dangerous as companies push for the limit. The traditional pattern of a tyre war is that a new company comes in and after a fight one or other becomes dominant and the other pulls out. After a period, the winner also leaves the sport because single tyre formulae offer little coverage unless the tyres fail. Pirelli has tried to use F1 to show how skilled the firm is but it has tended in recent years to be a little cautious to avoid bad publicity from making tyres that are too soft. This means that the racing is not as exciting as it could be.

Among those spotted in the paddock in Canada was GoDaddy CEO Blake Irving. He was a guest of McLaren. The company has had talks with some teams in the past but has yet to come up with the cash required. The company has been transforming itself into a global business in recent years with a focus on Asia. The company now owns one of every five internet domain names and is expecting this year to have total revenues of over $2 billion, which would be 19 percent more than last year. GoDaddy, it will be recalled enjoyed huge success in IndyCar and NASCAR, supporting Danica Patrick.

Another thing worth watching for is the Latifi Family, which controls a business called Sofina Foods Inc, which is a massive meat-producing company. Michael and Marilena Latifi are the parents of Formula 2 driver Nicholas Latifi. They were spotted spending time with both Toto Wolff and McLaren’s Eric Boullier over the Montreal weekend. These are busy people so they were probably not there just for a chit-chat…

Meanwhile, Lance Stroll ended up on the front pages of the local papers…