Sixth win

Jacques Laffite tries to concentrate in the cockpit of his Talbot Ligier JS17-Matra ahead of the 1981 Canadian Grand Prix held at Circuit Île Notre-Dame, in Montréal. Nelson Piquet (Brabham) is on pole, with title rival Carlos Reutemann (Williams) alongside him on the front row. Laffite is tenth on the grid, but remains confident.

The race was run in wet conditions, and ended after 63 of the scheduled 70 laps due to the two-hour limit. Laffite drove a storming race from tenth on the grid and won with John Watson second in a McLaren and local hero Gilles Villeneuve third in a Ferrari.

This turned out to be Laffite’s sixth and final Grand Prix victory, as well as the last for the Ligier team for fifteen years, until the 1996 Monaco Grand Prix won by Olivier Panis (Ligier-Mugen).

With his fifth position, Piquet (Brabham) moved within one point of Reutemann (Williams) with one race to go, while the win gave Laffite an outside chance of the title, to be decided on the parking of the Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas.