page_title: Sports in Canada
section_title: Motorsport
hierarchical_section_title: Sports in Canada / Individual sports / Motorsport
caption_attribution_description: English: The start of the 2015 Canadian Grand Prix Français&#160;: Le départ du Grand Prix du Canada 2015
context_page_description: Sports in Canada consist of a wide variety of games. The most common sports are ice hockey, lacrosse, gridiron football, soccer, basketball, curling and baseball, with ice hockey and lacrosse being the official winter and summer sports, respectively.
  Ice hockey, referred to as simply "hockey", is Canada's most prevalent winter sport, its most popular spectator sport, and its most successful sport in international competition. Lacrosse, a sport with Indigenous origins, is Canada's oldest sport. Canadian football is Canada's second most popular spectator sport, being the most popular in the prairie provinces. The Canadian Football League's annual championship, the Grey Cup, is one of the country's largest annual sports events. While other sports have a larger spectator base, Association football, known in Canada as soccer in both English and French, has the most registered players of any team sport in Canada. Professional teams exist in many cities in Canada. Statistics Canada reports that the top ten sports that Canadians participate in are golf, ice hockey, swimming, soccer, basketball, baseball, volleyball, skiing, cycling and tennis.
context_section_description: The Canadian Grand Prix Formula One auto race had been conducted every year since 1967, and since 1978 had been held at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal, apart from 1987 when a dispute arose between brewers Labatts and Molson over sponsorship, and again in 2009 when the race was not on the FIA calendar for one year. The track was named for Canada's first Grand Prix driver, the late Gilles Villeneuve, whose son, Jacques, won the Formula One World championship in 1997.
  Several Canadians have starred in American Championship Car Racing, most notably Jacques Villeneuve, who won the 1995 CART championship and Indianapolis 500 before moving to Formula One, and Paul Tracy, who captured the 2003 CART title and collected 31 race wins. Races were held in Mont-Tremblant and Mosport road courses and on street circuits in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Edmonton. In 2008, Champ Car merged with its long-time rival, the Indy Racing League (since renamed INDYCAR), under the banner of the latter body's top series, the IndyCar Series. The Edmonton race was transferred over to the new series immediately, and the Toronto event was added for 2009.
  CASCAR (the Canadian Association for Stock Car Auto Racing) was the country's governing body for amateur and professional stock car racing, and the CASCAR Super Series was the highest-level stock car racing series in the country. In 2006, NASCAR purchased CASCAR and rebranded the Super Series as the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series, now known as the NASCAR Pinty's Series; nevertheless, the series remains Canada's top-level stock car racing circuit. In 2007 the Castrol Canadian Touring Car Championship was formed.
  Because Canada is NASCAR's largest market outside the United States, NASCAR brought the NAPA Auto Parts 200 Busch Series (now Xfinity Series) race to Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in 2007. The race remained on the schedule until being discontinued after the 2012 season. Beginning the next year, NASCAR brought the Camping World Truck Series to Mosport with the Chevrolet Silverado 250.
  Canadians have combined to win 53 races in American Championship Car Racing (Including 1 Indianapolis 500), 17 races in Formula 1 and 7 races in NASCAR's top 3 divisions (1 in the Cup Series).
caption: The opening lap of the 2015 Canadian Grand Prix. The auto race has been held since 1967.
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