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“Les rouges s’éteignent et on roule!”

That will be Pierre Houde’s call on RDS when the Canadian Grand Prix starts Sunday on Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve (2 p.m., CTV, ABC, TSN1, TSN4, TSN5, RDS). It has been Houde’s signature call for every Formula One race he has worked since 1993, when RDS acquired the French-language TV rights to F1.

Houde first used the line when he was calling an endurance race at Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve in 1990. Fans seemed to love it, so he kept it and it has become his signature call for F1, just like his “Et le buuuuut!” call has become famous with Canadiens fans. Houde has been the Canadiens’ play-by-play commentator since RDS acquired the team’s French-language TV rights in 1989.

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Last Friday, the 66-year-old was announced as this year’s winner of the Hall of Fame’s Foster Hewitt Memorial Award for outstanding contributions as a hockey commentator.

Houde didn’t know much about F1 when he was program director at CKVL radio in the early 1980s. But that changed in 1982 when the station acquired the radio and promotional rights to F1.

“As the program director, I ended up planning the whole thing, co-ordinating the whole thing,” Houde recalled this week. “And then Gilles Villeneuve came to town for a promotional press conference. He ends up at CKVL for our sports talk show in the afternoon with Richard Morency and Tom Lapointe and I got to know him and he becomes like a close friend. He was hungry after the show, so we all went to the restaurant on the other side of Wellington St. — and I never saw him again. He died the week after.”

Villeneuve was killed on May 8, 1982, in a 230 km/h crash during the final qualifying session for the Belgian Grand Prix. He won six F1 races during his career, including the 1978 Canadian Grand Prix on the track that would later be named after him.

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“Co-ordinating the broadcasting from the venue in June (of 1982) I got to see for the first time in my life what an F1 car is like on the track and it was like a siren went off,” Houde recalled. “I got the drug in my veins the moment I saw an F1 car on the track and I said: ‘Wow! Gilles was the best of them! I was hit by the bug from that day in June ’82. So it’s more than 40 years now.”

Houde would take a break from broadcasting for two years in 1985 and 1986 when he became general manager of the Canadian Grand Prix.

“I got that amazing immersion in the world of F1 and dealing with Bernie (Ecclestone, the former chief executive of F1) and dealing with team managers and having drivers come into your office on the weekend,” Houde recalled. “That was pretty amazing.”

Grand Prix week in Montreal is special for Houde as he gets to catch up with some old friends in the paddock area.

Is he more passionate about F1 than hockey?

“It’s about the same,” Houde said. “I always say, first and foremost, I’m passionate about my work. So calling a hockey game for me is like a whole universe in itself. And then when I do F1, I have this little extra bond with it because I’ve seen it from the inside. It helps me in my broadcast, actually, because sometimes I can refer to situations that I’ve witnessed and I’ve dealt with when I was managing the event. So I still have an added value from that era that helps me.”

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