Gilles - 30 years on

[TJ]

Today, 30 years ago, passed one of the potentially greatest to ever drive a car. I wasnt even born yet, and yet his legend still rings proudly in F1 chronicles.

Here is his son, WDC Jacques, driving his old car today.

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Moving.

RIP Gilles.

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http://istenbizony.hu/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Canadian-GP-Montreal-8-October-1978-Winner-Gilles-VilleneuveCDN-Ferrari-312T3-his-first-GP-victory2.jpg

[fourseven]

Watched plenty on the old man. Not a fan of the son.

[TJ]

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And what is probably agree as being the greatest wheel to wheel battle in F1 of all time.

[TJ]

Watched plenty on the old man. Not a fan of the son.

Ill link you to some stuff of Jacques in CART - he was pretty damn good. Pretty much wasted his career at BAR and then gave up.

[TJ]

The moments that defined Gilles

As part of our Gilles Villeneuve celebration, Edd Straw picks out 10 moments that defined the career of one of F1's most exciting talents

By Edd Straw
AUTOSPORT's F1 editor



Villeneuve outshone the big name guests in Formula Atlantic © LAT
VICTORY AT TROIS RIVIERES

The sight of Gilles Villeneuve winning a Formula Atlantic race in 1976 wasn't unusual. When he won the late-season race on the Trois Rivieres street circuit, it was his eighth win in nine starts that year. But what was very different was the quality of the entry in Canada, with Alan Jones, James Hunt, Vittorio Brambilla and Patrick Tambay all gunning for the prize money.

Villeneuve put his March 76B on pole position by 0.360s ahead of Atlantic regular (and two-times Trois Rivieres winner) Tom Klausler and took the lead at the start. He would never be headed. As Tom Waddell wrote in his AUTOSPORT report, this was a big surprise.

"Surely this wasn't supposed to happen; there must have been an error somewhere," wrote Waddell. "Indeed Villeneuve had won his [previous] races by slowly building a lead to about 10 seconds and then holding it to the finish. But these were Formula 1 drivers he was racing against, and he wasn't supposed to do the same against them. Someone must have forgotten to tell him."

Although Jones was able to close the gap from 10.7s to 7.5s, Villeneuve responded in the final five laps to establish a winning margin of almost 10 seconds. His performance didn't go unnoticed and convinced Hunt, who finished third, of the Canadian's potential. In fact, this race played its part in Villenueve getting his F1 break in a McLaren the following year.

"I remember racing against him [and losing] at Trois Rivieres in Canada last year and being very impressed with his obvious talent and his professional approach," wrote Hunt in his AUTOSPORT column after Villeneuve's Formula 1 debut at the 1977 British Grand Prix.

Without that spectacular Trois Rivieres performance, it might have taken Villeneuve a lot longer to gain international attention.


The British Grand Prix was his sole appearance in a McLaren © LAT
GRAND PRIX DEBUT

Mention the 1977 British GP, and the first thing that will spring to mind for most will be Villeneuve's stunning F1 debut (if not the appearance of the turbocharged Renault). Driving a third McLaren, an older-specification M23 as opposed to the latest M26 used by Hunt and Jochen Mass, he breezed through what were effectively pre-qualifying trials on the Wednesday before the race and went on to take ninth on the grid, just eight-tenths of a second off Hunt's pole position.

"Throughout the Wednesday sessions, Villeneuve pushed hard, looking for the limits, the car's and his own," wrote AUTOSPORT's Nigel Roebuck. "It seems apparent that Grand Prix racing has discovered an unusual talent here. Gilles had several spins, in both testing and practice, but by the end he was quick, polished and smooth."

His race performance proved that his pace was no flash in the pan. After 169 laps of practice at Silverstone, he climbed to seventh early in the race and stayed there, according to Roebuck "with no apparent problem". But for pitting with concerns about lost oil pressure, the result of a faulty gauge, he would likely have finished fifth or even fourth rather than a twice-lapped 11th.

McLaren's chief mechanic that day was AUTOSPORT's Gary Anderson, who reckons that what happened at Silverstone played a defining role in Villeneuve's approach.

"He came in during the race complaining that he had no oil pressure," said Anderson. "But it was still running and he was told, in no uncertain terms, that if the car is still running you must keep driving. That's why you see so many shots of him with three wheels on his wagon. If it ran, he kept going. The lesson was never to give up. It was still running and the dial was faulty, and he remembered that in the future no matter what fell off!

"We were impressed by his performance. He had that total commitment and never knew he was going fast enough until he spun. It's true that he spun more or less at every corner, although he was clever enough not to do it at the corners where he might have a big accident. That's how he found the limit of the car."


Few now remember Villeneuve's performance in the tragic 1978 Italian Grand Prix, but it cemented his place at Ferrari © LAT
EMBRACED BY THE TIFOSI

Villeneuve was signed by Ferrari with two races to go in 1977 and it's fair to say that the famous tifosi, while loving his maximum-attack approach, still remained to be convinced. He headed to the 1978 Italian Grand Prix with 15 Ferrari starts under his belt and just one podium. Rumours persisted that Ferrari could drop him, with Riccardo Patrese among those touted as a potential replacement.

That race has gone down in infamy, as Ronnie Peterson lost his life because of complications arising from injuries sustained in a start crash. Villeneuve finished the race second on the road to Lotus driver Mario Andretti after leading much of the distance, with both then hit with a one-minute penalty for a jumped-start. But Saturday was an altogether happier day.

As Gerald Donaldson puts it in his biography of the Canadian ('Gilles Villeneuve: The Life of the Legendary Racing Driver'), "the tide of public opinion had definitely turned in Villeneuve's favour". This was as a result of Villeneuve posting a time just 0.346s off Andretti, over a second faster than team-mate Carlos Reutemann, who had committed to a switch to Lotus for the following year.

As Roebuck put it in his AUTOSPORT report, Villeneuve "was a new hero".


The first F1 victory came on home ground at the 1978 Canadian Grand Prix © LAT
HOME HERO

Villeneuve headed into the final race of the 1978 season with just eight points to show for his first season in a Ferrari. The Canadian Grand Prix was the first to be held in Montreal on the track that was later to be dubbed the 'Circuit Gilles Villeneuve'.

The stage was set for the home hero and he delivered, although not without relying on some terrible misfortune for Frenchman Jean-Pierre Jarier, who led for Lotus until suffering an oil leak around 20 laps from home. This gave Villeneuve the lead and, unusually for his greatest moment, he chose to take it easy.

"Those last laps were torture," he is quoted as saying in Donaldson's biography. "I could hear all kinds of noises in the car. And I didn't like it because I was having to drive like an old woman, shifting at 10,000rpm and being careful not to break anything."

Fortunately, the car held together and Villeneuve, then officially aged 26 (but actually 28), had taken his first world championship race victory in the perfect place.


The Race of Champions at Brands Hatch - Villeneuve's 'forgotten' seventh F1 win © LAT
VICTORY AT EUROPE'S 'NICEST' CIRCUIT

Villeneuve is usually credited with six F1 wins, and that's absolutely correct if you are only interested in world championship races. But there was one more, less-heralded win, which came in the 1979 Race of Champions at Brands Hatch.

The entry for the Aurora F1 Championship round was relatively modest, with only seven world championship regulars entered. But this still meant that Villeneuve had to take on Brabham driver Niki Lauda and reigning world champion Mario Andretti's Lotus. What's more, he had to drive the old Ferrari 312T3 rather than the latest T4 in which he had taken victory in the South African and Long Beach Grands Prix.

Andretti started from pole ahead of Lauda, but a slow start meant the Lotus lost out to the Austrian, who took the lead ahead of Villeneuve. Tyre troubles knocked Lauda out of the equation, but Villeneuve threw away the lead with a grassy moment on the Grand Prix loop, allowing Andretti past. The Canadian repassed Andretti at Paddock Hill Bend with 13 laps to go, winning by 14 seconds from Brabham's Nelson Piquet.

"The man who can do no wrong at present is Gilles Villeneuve," wrote Roebuck in AUTOSPORT's report. "It is a long time since anyone won three Formula 1 races on the trot, and one is left more and more with the thought that here may be the 1979 world champion."

And all this at a track that Villeneuve dubbed "the nicest circuit in Europe".


Villeneuve and Arnoux cross the line after arguably F1's most famous duel © LAT
VILLENEVE v ARNOUX

The 1979 French Grand Prix at Dijon-Prenois is remembered not for the driver who won – Renault's Jean-Pierre Jabouille – but for the incredible late-race battle for second between Villeneuve and Jabouille's team-mate, Rene Arnoux.

Villeneuve appeared to have second in the bag but was struggling on shot tyres, allowing Arnoux to reel him in. With five laps to go, it seemed inevitable that the Frenchman would make it a Renault one-two. But Villeneuve was in no mood to give up.

Roebuck, in his AUTOSPORT report, described it as "desperate in a manner we have not seen in Grand Prix racing for a great many years". It stands as some of the most spectacular footage ever captured from a circuit.

Mere words can't do it justice, so check out the remarkable battle here. Once you've watched this, you will see why Arnoux admitted after the race that "I am not sad to be third".


Villeneuve's 'never say die' approach in action at Zandvoort © LAT
PRESS ON REGARDLESS

It's typical of the capacity of Villeneuve to create motorsport mythology that one of the defining images of his career, that of him hauling his Ferrari back to the pits with the left-rear corner hanging off, was in a lost cause. The record books state that Villeneuve retired from the 1979 Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort, but what he did there lives large in the memory.

Roebuck picks up the story in his AUTOSPORT report, with Villeneuve unwittingly suffering from a slow puncture of the left-rear "on lap 47. At the new chicane, the Ferrari got out of line through the right-hand section and was gone, spinning several times up the road, wreathed in tyre smoke. Immediately [Alan] Jones provided some of his own as he hit the brakes to avoid the gyrating T4. Villeneuve controlled it all extraordinarily well, avoiding contact with anything and keeping the engine running. Quickly, he resumed, still in second place, but the Williams was beyond reach now.

"A lap and a half later, the damaged Michelin could take no more. As Villeneuve blasted by the pits, the tyre suddenly lost all its air and came apart. Somehow the little man kept the car straight, but there was no way he was going to get around Tarzan. On the approach to the corner, therefore, he spun the car, slithered down the road in a welter of sparks, sound and fury. The car finished up on the grass, just short of the catch fencing."

Famously, Villenueve backed the car back onto the track and made it back to the pits with the left-rear hanging off. But the damage was too severe for him to continue.

"Afterwards, there was understandable criticism of his three-wheeled lap, but thank God there will always be a few people in this world who simply know not how to give in," wrote Roebuck. "It was foolhardy, yes, but it came from the same pure competitiveness and spirit which has characterised all his races this year. Coast and collect is not Villeneuve's way. He likes to win, rather than not lose."


Getting this Ferrari onto the Monaco front row was a miracle © LAT
THE GREATEST QUALIFYING LAP

Villeneuve's victory in the 1981 Monaco Grand Prix was remarkable enough, but it was his astonishing qualifying lap that laid the foundations for it. The Ferrari 126CK wasn't the car to have around the streets of the Principality, yet Villeneuve turned in a stunning performance to end up within a tenth of poleman Piquet's Brabham.

Team-mate Didier Pironi's lap, almost 2.5s slower, showed what miracles Villeneuve was performing. It wasn't so much the time that illustrated the point, but the fact that the Frenchman, who had claimed pole for Ligier in Monaco a year earlier, shunted three times trying to match Villeneuve.

What better way to celebrate signing a new Ferrari contract that would keep him at Maranello until at least the end of 1982 and, Villenueve reckoned at the time, beyond?


Villeneuve resisted his pursuers for lap after lap in what would be his final F1 win © LAT
THE GREATEST WIN

As Roebuck's introduction to the AUTOSPORT race report highlights, "this one was against the run of play". The theory was that the unwieldy Ferrari 126CK didn't have a hope at Jarama, where horsepower was less important than corner speed. And from seventh on the grid, Villeneuve surely had no chance of repeating his sensational Monaco victory.

Villeneuve made a flying start, taking to the dirt off-track to run third behind Williams pairing Jones and Reutemann at the first corner. Before long, he had dispatched Reutemann around the outside of the first corner on lap two to take second. Then, on lap 14, Jones spun off into the catch-fencing at the first corner, handing Villeneuve the lead.

In the closing stages, Villeneuve was put under severe pressure. First Reutemann closed in, then Jacques Laffite in his Ligier joined the queue. Several times Reutemann pulled alongside, only for Villeneuve to reassert himself. Laffite picked up the fight after passing Reutemann around the outside but could do nothing about the leading Ferrari.

McLaren driver John Watson also joined the train of cars, followed by the Lotus of Elio de Angelis. Villeneuve defended staunchly and won the race, with the top five covered by 1.24s.

"This is my most public victory," said Villeneuve after the race. "But I don't feel it was any better than the others I've had. It's nice, of course, because I really didn't think I had much chance of winning here."

Brabham designer Gordon Murray had a different view: "Villeneuve was absolutely brilliant because that chassis is evil. He was under pressure the whole time in a difficult car, and he never made a mistake that I saw. It's the most impressive win for a long time."


The tense scene on the Imola podium © LAT
FALLOUT AT IMOLA

The 1982 San Marino Grand Prix was supposed to be a damp squib. With the race boycotted by the FOCA teams, only 14 cars participated. But with two Ferraris entered, one for Villeneuve and one for team-mate Pironi, the tifosi still turned out in their droves. What they witnessed has gone down in infamy.

After the demise of the Renaults of Prost and Arnoux, Villeneuve and Pironi had it all their own way up front. The order went out for the pair to ease off, which they did to the tune of a couple of seconds per lap. But while Villeneuve reckoned that team orders should have kicked in to allow him to win with Pironi behind, the pair swapped positions a few times and the Frenchman took the chequered flag.

"After the race, I thought everyone would realise what had happened, but no," Villeneuve is quoted as saying in 'Life of the Legendary Racing Driver'. "Pironi says that we both had engine problems and there were no team orders. What really pissed me of was that [Ferrari team manager Marco] Piccinini confirmed that to the press, saying there were no team orders. My engine was perfect and there were team orders.

"People seem to think we had the battle of our lives! Jesus Christ! I'd been ahead of him most of the race, qualified a second and a half ahead [1.303s to be precise] of him. Where was my problem? I was coasting those last 15 laps. He was racing. I think I've proved that, in equal cars, if I want someone to stay behind me, he stays behind."

Pironi claimed he was leading when Ferrari's pitboard instructed them to hold position, but Villeneuve remained furious with the Frenchman until the day he died at Zolder two weeks later.

[TJ]

I can still recall where I was when Gilles Villeneuve was killed: Safeway car park. I was eight years old, and my dad and I were listening to the news on the car radio while mum was doing the shopping. The announcer said that Villeneuve had suffered 'grave injuries' in an accident during qualifying for the Belgian Grand Prix at Zolder.

Dad, fearful that he might lose control of this situation, told me that it didn't necessarily mean the worst and there was still hope. I held a vigil in front of the television that afternoon, driving the rest of the household mad with my incessant use of the Ceefax button on the remote until, finally, bedtime came, and I was sent upstairs none the wiser.

Early the next morning, before anyone else was up I hit the Ceefax button again…

I'm told I must have gone back to bed and was not seen until late afternoon, having apparently refused to watch the grand prix – a first in my short life. I'd experienced loss in an F1 context for the first time.

Other drivers had died, and I'd been genuinely sad when Alan Jones announced his retirement at the end of 1981, but this was quite different.

Villeneuve split opinion among fans and observers, and 30 years later he still does, but the fact that he is still talked about at all is a comforting reassurance that his legend remains intact.

The debate about him centres not on his outright speed, for most of his contemporaries were under no illusion that he was the fastest, or at least more prepared to be fastest. But the crux of the contention was how he achieved it. Was it the product of rock-ape-induced wild-and-over-the-limit driving? Or was this stunning ability blended to calculated risk-taking, the likes of which had not been seen in the fast-evolving downforce era of the sport?


Ferrari works on its troubled 1980 car in testing at Paul Ricard © LAT
The answer is probably somewhere in between. As Nelson Piquet once put it: "He's somewhat crazy, but surely a phenomenon."

Of course Villeneuve knew the risks he was taking. He understood where his limit was, and what it could cost him, though he refused to contemplate it at length because he also knew what that might do to his edge.

And when he didn't know where his limit was, putting up that psychological barrier made him more prepared than some of his rivals to find out where it was in a trial by fire, at a time when that could easily mean death or serious injury.

In contrary to some modern theories, Villeneuve wasn't fearless, or crazy, but he was abnormally brave. And just like everyone, he had his own belief structure that influenced his decision-making process. It's just that it was blended perfectly for the kind of balls-out driving for which he became famous. And he had the skill, if not always the car, to carry it off. He lived in a bubble of conviction inflated by his absolute confidence that he could save any situation – which often caused problems for passengers in his road cars.

But Villeneuve wasn't immune to fear. His accident on the sixth lap of the 1980 Italian Grand Prix at Imola, for example, when he went in head-on at the right kink before Tosa following a right-rear tyre failure, left the French-Canadian blind for 30 seconds or so. It shook him up. It temporarily knocked down that wall behind which the fear was barricaded. His courage was human.

It's one of the key reasons why it was so easy to love him as a fan. That and his fantastic car control. Here was a man who, from the very moment he burst onto F1 the scene, seemed to arrive at a corner rear wheels first. Nothing, it seemed, was going to stop him except a barrier, and then only sometimes… He drove cars the way people love to see them driven, and he could do it naturally. He used spins as a method of information delivery. He wasn't embarrassed by them, they were instead a message that he couldn't brake here, or use a kerb there. He wasn't brash, and he wasn't flash, he was just expressing himself. The stuff of boyhood heroes.

Villeneuve was in love with the sport and his will to win was overriding, pure. As his Ferrari team-mate Jody Scheckter said, Gilles wanted to be the fastest on every single lap, but he wanted to win too, and on his better days he could tell the difference between those two things.

By the time Villeneuve had matured into an F1 superstar, people looked upon him as the sensational one. This was before Ayrton Senna. Before the digital-media era of mass fan hysteria.


Monaco 1981 was one of his finest victories © LAT
Twice I remember standing at Paddock Hill Bend at Brands Hatch, in 1979 for the Race of Champions and again in 1980 for the British Grand Prix, listening to the adults around me talk about Villeneuve in gasps. There were the knowing nods that if only this guy had the car he'd be the business. This was obviously someone to watch, I registered. I still remember their excitement at the opposite lock on display, and as I grew up the pieces came together in my head. He really was the business.

There were lots of crashes, there's no denying that. Six out of the first seven races he competed in for Ferrari ended with him delivering the team twisted metal. But not all of these crashes were his fault, and Villeneuve was on a fast learning curve.

His first full season in F1 was also the 27th year of his life. Even then that was late for an F1 newcomer. He was the same age as Jody Scheckter, who was considered the old hand when they teamed up for 1979. But even in that year, Villeneuve's grand prix experience was far less than any of his contemporary rivals, save Piquet and Didier Pironi, both of whom had the benefit of the European junior ladder.

Without telemetry, without vast reams of testing data, the acquisition of knowledge was done through feel; trial and error. So while Villeneuve's beginnings could be considered inauspicious – the perception was of a rookie with a propensity for crashing – it was necessary, and vital to his rapid succession to Ferrari hope, fan idol and future world champion. Of course it wasn't planned that way; had he been more cautious Villeneuve may also have been slower, and subsequently dropped in place of Eddie Cheever or Riccardo Patrese.

The accidents endeared him to Enzo Ferrari. The problem was that they also tagged him with a wild man image he never shook off. But by the time Villeneuve took his first grand prix win, in Montreal in 1978, they were receding in frequency, and by 1979 there were fewer still.

Drivers were forgiven more mistakes in those days than now. It wasn't so surprising to see frontrunners in the catch-fencing. Piquet and Jones both crashed out of the lead on multiple occasions in 1981, for example. Simply put, the cars were harder to drive. They were not subject to the same build quality as now and would even change in terms of feel from race to race. Ground-effect didn't give drivers enough feedback. Braking and suspension technology has taken a 30-year jump, and even the track surfaces were nowhere near as good. Drivers too were less tuned to the physical demands. Mistakes were made, and they were accepted.

But still many think Villeneuve was simply too wayward to have ever become a true great. And over the years the hard statistics stand as a matter of record. In this time of advanced technology and incredible reliability, results are unwisely used as an ever-more-objective barometer of ability. But in this context, six wins, two poles in 67 races is not so impressive as to suggest greatness – though it's still a 1:10 ratio…


Villeneuve's 1979 Kyalami triumph was earned through intelligence and racing nous © LAT
To look at Villeneuve's achievements through modern eyes, where telemetry, sensor readings and engine mapping have made F1 infinitely more measurable, only serves to swirl the deepening mists of time into a dense fog that makes it harder to objectively reflect on the past. You have to look much deeper than that.

Here was a guy who went from Formula Atlantic (not the traditional route) to GP Ferrari hope in a few months, the Old Man having plucked him out of near-obscurity after a bet with himself that he could make a winner out of Villeneuve. He'd also taken advice from his former driver Chris Amon, who had witnessed Villeneuve's magic in Can-Am.

"I've only known one driver in the world who had car control Villeneuve has," said Amon in Gerald Donaldson’s ‘Villeneuve: the Life of the Legendary Racing Driver’, "a guy who knew where he was no matter what; Jim Clark."

There is no way, for example, that Villeneuve could have conducted such an intelligent drive as Kyalami 1979 if he was mad. He'd restarted a rain-stopped race on grooved slicks, which allowed him to take the lead while others (including team-mate Scheckter) opted for slicks in anticipation of the fast-drying track. Villeneuve then pitted for slicks on lap 15, dropped behind Scheckter and managed his tyres as the South African's older Michelins began to fade. The result of this strategic approach gave Villeneuve a 3s advantage over his team-mate at the flag, and his second career victory.

The third win came immediately after at Long Beach, and it was perhaps his most accomplished. Having taken the first of only two F1 pole positions in his career, he dominated the race with a beautiful blend of precision and throttle-steering while managing a set of Michelins one compound softer than that of Scheckter.

This was Villeneuve's purple patch, and he followed it up with an easy win in the non-championship Race of Champions at Brands.

His famous starts, beating rivals off the line race after race – Alain Prost called them 'a trick' – were also the product of deliberate thought. He'd blast away on the warm-up lap leaving reams of smoke in his wake – 'crazy Villeneuve' – only to enjoy a perfect contact patch of rubber with which to launch on the start proper. Everyone does that these days.

He still needed work in 1979 though. While he lost the championship to Scheckter because of the South African's own speed and brilliance as much as Villeneuve's misfortune, Gilles led more races and more laps. Where he let himself down was in mechanical sympathy and experience, which Jody had in spades. We'll never know whether Villeneuve would have matured to that extent. Fate didn't allow for it.

At Monaco, Villeneuve suffered transmission failure after driving too hard over the bumps on a track he loved. Scheckter lifted, and won. They both got tangled in a shunt with Clay Regazzoni in Zolder, but only Gilles needed to pit. His resultant fightback through the order meant he used too much fuel. All those lost points would have won him the title. But he learned from those. In just 34 races he was already a four-time winner and world title contender. In 34 races, Sebastian Vettel – a modern-day phenomenon – had three victories to his name.


Villeneuve won twice with the 1981 Ferrari, but couldn't achieve miracles everywhere © LAT
And then of course it all went wrong. 1980 was a disaster, and 1981, short of those two wonderful drives at Jarama and in Monaco, wasn’t that much better. The race in Monte Carlo is still breathtaking, when you consider the fact that he let Jones go and nursed his brakes, only to come back at the Williams later on when it ran into problems. All the while Villeneuve was managing chronic turbo-lag and 8000 gearchanges. Again, beyond the ability of a rock ape.

Those two Ferraris were not worthy of Villeneuve, and it's tragic that, when he finally got a car capable of winning the championship, he would die in a crash of his own making. He'd been deeply involved in the development of the 1.5-litre turbo engine Ferrari would come to master in the early 1980s. It's a telling fact that the 126 C2 suffered just one turbo failure through 1982 – the car became the class of the field.

Villeneuve died the way he lived, flat-out. Whether he died because team-mate Didier Pironi upset him in the San Marino Grand Prix, two weeks before Zolder, I don't know. I wonder honestly whether the decision he made to pass Jochen Mass where he did, which resulted in his car catapulting into oblivion, would have been any different had the Imola dramas not occurred. That's the way he was, pushing on, never giving up. Relentless.

So when people remind me that Villeneuve only won six races, or that he crashed too often to be a champion, I don't much care. Those cold, hard realities mean nothing to me, because Villeneuve spent his adult life defying those kinds of limits. He lived somewhere in between all that, and that's where he lives on for me.

[TJ]

Villeneuve and the summer of '79

Villeneuve's heroics inspired a generation of F1 fans, among them Tony Dodgins - who recalls how his encounters with Gilles at 1979 grands prix defined the course of his life
Certain things in your life have a defining influence, and for me it was the summer of '79 and Gilles Villeneuve.

My father had once said, only half-jokingly, "You argue quite a lot, so why not do it professionally?" I enjoyed court-room dramas in any case, and so the thinking for my career was the law.

The problem was that my every waking hour was spent thinking about motor racing. It was my final year at school and, worryingly for my folks, I was still banging on about being a racing driver. We weren't wealthy and I hadn't as much as raced a kart, but no matter.

As far as they were concerned, it was like wanting to be an astronaut or play football for England – something you should have grown out of. Nevertheless, Dad had indulged me with a grandstand ticket for Silverstone in 1977, went with me and thoroughly enjoyed himself. After that, he started to rebook each year.

The summer of '79 was shaping up very well. The A levels were over, and the very day that school was out, we headed for Silverstone. I'd also always loved the look of the Osterreichring, and for my birthday my parents had arranged a Page & Moy trip for me to the Austrian GP, which was scheduled for the following month.

Then a schoolmate rang. He said his dad was taking him to the Dutch Grand Prix at the end of August, and did I want to come! So that was three GPs in seven weeks. For an 18 year old, it was heaven!

No doubt thinking ahead a bit, my parents had encouraged me to enter the Sir Williams Lyons Award for aspiring young motoring journalists, which had been promoted in AUTOSPORT. To that end, I'd managed to fix up interviews with Colin Chapman, Ken Tyrrell and Frank Williams at the '79 Silverstone GP. Having done those, I was even more hooked.


Villeneuve led the 1979 Austrian Grand Prix after a stunning start © LAT
The Austrian trip was fabulous. A highlight was looking through binoculars from the Bosch Curve and witnessing Villeneuve's bullet start from the third row that had him in front by the time he got to us!

Zandvoort, though, by necessity, was a low-budget production. My mate and his father had grandstand seats for the pit straight, and were off to meet some friends on Saturday night, while I was keen to stay late and soak up the atmosphere. I had a backpack and a piece of roll-up foam.

I'd been a Niki Lauda fan for five years, but by '79 the Ferrari days and the BT46B fan car win were all in the past, and Niki was trapped in Brabham's BT48, which, with a start load of fuel, was truck-like and unreliable to boot.

Villeneuve's F1 debut in a third McLaren had been a highlight of that first trip to a Silverstone GP, but I hadn't quite understood when McLaren opted for Patrick Tambay instead and Gilles went to Ferrari. There had been the cartwheeling shunt at Fuji, then Gilles led Long Beach '78 so impressively in the Ferrari 312T3 until he tripped over Clay Regazzoni's Shadow.

Newly teamed with Jody Scheckter at Ferrari in '79, Gilles had started mightily, winning back to back in the first two races at Kyalami and Long Beach in Ferrari's new T4. He then took the non-championship Brands Hatch Race of Champions (remember those?) in the old T3.

Scheckter hit back with wins in Belgium and Monaco, but by this stage, the Williams FW07 had arrived and redefined the standard. With a wide Ferrari flat-12 hampering any ground effect that the T4 generated, Villeneuve had no business getting Maranello's machine anywhere near an FW07, but obviously nobody had informed Gilles.

We had a strange, game-of-two-halves scoring system that year, and with the FW07 arriving late, Jody and Gilles were still one-two in the championship heading to Holland. Not that Gilles seemed to concern himself with such matters. Races were there to be won. If championships came along as well, so be it.

As in Austria, the Dutch GP grid had the two turbo Renaults and an FW07 on each of the first two rows, with the Ferraris occupying row three. If Niki wasn't going to be in it, Gilles was now the man I was firmly behind, but he'd qualified half a second slower than Jody, which was unusual.


By mid-season, the Williams was the class of the 1979 field © LAT
It was a gorgeous day, and I walked around the track perimeter while some of the supporting action was going on, took some pictures and looked for a likely vantage point for Sunday.

I had the Scheivlak right-hander in mind. When I got there, though, I found a group of Dutch fans had whacked some posts into the sand and roped off their own enclosure with electrical tape. The windbreaks were up, burgers were already on the barbie, the chilled beers were out and the ghetto blaster was doing its stuff.

Spotting my piece of rolled-up foam, they asked if I was planning to sleep under the stars, offered me a strip of sand right next to the fence and thrust a beer and a burger in my hands. I couldn't believe my luck!

A couple of hours later, I left my backpack with them, got the camera and headed back to the pits, managing to walk in unchallenged, avoiding uniformed figures with large dogs.

I spent a fabulous couple of hours wandering from garage to garage, watching the cars being prepped. I had a picture taken with Ermanno Cuoghi, Lauda's faithful ex-Ferrari mechanic. Then, as the light started to fail, I figured it was about time I started the traipse back out to Scheivlak.

I stopped at the entrance to the Ferrari garage for a last five minutes, and nobody seemed to care. Just then, my right leg was nudged by the snout of an Alsatian. It seemed that the moment had arrived when I'd be forcibly ejected.

Holding its lead, however, was not a six-foot-five-inch uniformed Dutchman, but a five-foot-six-inch French-Canadian in a Ferrari jacket. I nearly died.


Villeneuve and Jones battle at Zandvoort © LAT
Gilles plonked himself down on a deckchair, the dog at his feet, and the world's most exciting driver sat there, elbows on knees, chin in hands, just watching as the Ferrari mechanics readied his T4 for the morrow.

Once I'd recovered my composure, I wanted to know, without upsetting him, why he'd been slower than Scheckter. I politely asked if qualifying had been okay.

"Got held up on my best lap, but it'll be better tomorrow," he said with a wink, which was met with knowing smiles from the guys working on his car, who clearly revered him.

He didn't mention, as I later discovered from AUTOSPORT's report, that Michelin had some trick qualifying tyres worth about a second, and that Gilles had just the one set of them, while Jody had more.

Villeneuve used to stay at the circuit in a motorhome, with family and dog, and I felt I was at the very centre of the universe. I've no idea what time it was when I set off to stumble back through the dunes to Scheivlak in the now pitch black.

My fantastically hospitable impromptu hosts were still ploughing their way through the beer when I got back. Water was not on their radar, however, and by the time the 3pm Sunday start time ticked around, I had the biggest headache of my short life.

That was anaesthetised when Gilles made another of his fantastic starts and came through on lap one in second place, right up the chuff of Alan Jones' Williams.

I reckoned it would be just like the Osterreichring a fortnight earlier – a spirited token gesture for a couple of laps before Jones effortlessly motored into the distance. But Villeneuve simply wouldn't go away, and after 10 laps or so unbelievably outbraked the FW07 around the outside of Tarzan.


Villeneuve would not give up even on three wheels © LAT
Out at Scheivlak, we hadn't seen any of this, of course, but when Ferrari No12 arrived in front, the whole place went mad. My new Dutch friends were all Villeneuve fans as, it seemed, was everyone in the place.

When Gilles started to inch away from the Williams – one second, two seconds, three seconds – we all started to wonder whether he could do the impossible and beat the FW07.

Running further back, Nelson Piquet's Brabham had been a bit smoky from early on, but unusually, was actually destined to get to the end and allow Nelson to score his first world championship points. It was a race of attrition, however, and only seven cars actually went the distance.

Among those that didn't was Keke Rosberg's Wolf. The engine let go just as the car approached, and a healthy dose of lubricant went down on the line. The marshals did not react, and Villeneuve and Jones were due at any moment.

Everyone yelled 'oil!' as the Ferrari hove into view, with the more passionate even hurling apple cores and empty beer cans in the direction of the hapless marshals. They got the message, but not in time to alert Gilles, who had the mother and father of a twitch on the Texaco, ran off on the exit of Scheivlak. Somehow, though, he collected it all together.

By the time Jones arrived, about three seconds later, they were flagging merrily, and Alan had also seen what had happened to Gilles. It went down in history as a man pushing unfeasibly hard in a car that couldn't win, but until that point Gilles had been maintaining his three seconds and had looked comfortable. To us, at any rate!

With his lead wiped out, Villeneuve was now under pressure and, worse, doubtless his excursion at Scheivlak is what gave him the slow puncture that caused him to spin a few laps later and then indulge in his three-wheeled antics.


Already a legend among the fans © LAT
That was either heroic or foolhardy depending on your point of view. When I arrived home, my Dad's take was predictable. Parents appreciate responsible role models for easily influenced teenagers, and if there was such a thing as a responsible racing driver, Gilles was evidently not it.

"No, Dad," I argued, as usual, "you've got that wrong. I saw what happened. The TV cameras didn't, and he was obviously frustrated. He could have won. Okay, he might have gone a bit far, but you can't knock a guy who won't give up. That guy is in a different league."

The Saturday night, the Sunday afternoon… I'd come back from the centre of the universe, and it was something I had to be part of. Somehow. And 30 years on, I know I was right about Gilles.

[TJ]

Those 3 are from todays Autosport features on Gilles.

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/5Vk-kxZe8NA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

[Buckets]

We all remember Senna, Villeneuve, Clark and some of the other "big name" drivers who've died behind the wheel; they are a few of the many who got killed back when F1 was properly dangerous. There is a doco somewhere on the "killer years" of F1 and it's just shocking. These drivers from this era had a level of skill and balls to go with it that allowed them to drive cars utterly flat out that wouldn't be allowed on a grid anywhere on tracks that wouldn't be allowed to exist in this day and age. I was too young to ever watch these guys but I have maximum respect for these legends of the sport.

[pgc]

http://magazine.ferrari.com/blog/2012/05/didn%E2%80%99t-gilles-jacques%E2%80%A6/

[TJ]

On Tuesday Jacques Villeneuve marked the 30th anniversary of the death of his legendary father Gilles by driving a 1979 Ferrari 312T4 at Fiorano. I would have loved to have been there to see it, but instead I did the next best thing and dropped into Zolder, where Gilles lost his life on May 8 1982.

I had no idea if anything had been planned to mark the anniversary, and it was pretty quiet when I arrived in the afternoon. The Villeneuve memorial sculpture behind the pits was getting a quick coat of paint, which unfortunately meant it was under a tent, albeit still visible. Apparently, a local Ferrari club planned to do something at 5pm, which explained why it was being spruced up.

I couldn't stay for the ceremony, but while I was wandering around the paddock a handful of fans dropped by, like me, to see if anything was happening, and to pay their respects. There was even an English guy who had apparently been to the Villeneuve museum in Canada.

A friendly chap called Dirk, who had brought a 1/43rd Ferrari 126C2 with him, drew my attention to the fact that there was a second memorial – a marble plaque located just behind the marshals' post close to where Gilles came to rest. It was placed there to mark the 20th anniversary in 2002, although few people know about it since the spot is inaccessible to spectators, and can only be reached via the actual circuit.


The Villeneuve memorial sculpture © autosport.com
Keen to see it, I took a punt and drove out to the public road that runs outside the track, and parked close to where I thought the memorial was. Fortunately, behind the fence a couple of Zolder workmen were busy trimming trees.

Realising what I was looking for, one of them gestured to me and unbolted a small gate to let me in, so I was able to see the memorial, which could not have been more badly placed. Alongside it were some past-their-best flowers in an ugly plastic bucket – a little tacky, but better than nothing.

Later, on the other side of the track, I discovered some red roses freshly attached to the debris fence. It was a nice gesture by an anonymous fan, and it somehow made the visit worthwhile.

My pilgrimage simply seemed like the thing to do, given that I was at Zolder back in 1982 as a spectator – a young one, I hasten to add!

That was my third coach trip to the Belgian GP. In those days one could buy a paddock pass, and each year I had a glorious time taking pictures and, more importantly, chasing autographs. One that had always eluded me was Gilles Villeneuve. I was not a particular fan – at least not in the way that I had been a follower of James Hunt and Ronnie Peterson – but of course he was one of the biggest stars of the era, and as a keen reader of AUTOSPORT I'd been aware of him from his Formula Atlantic days.

Over the course of my three visits to the Zolder paddock I collected autographs of just about everybody – including guys who are no longer with us, such as Patrick Depailler and Manfred Winkelhock – but I had never even spotted Gilles, never mind got close enough to get him to sign anything.

Then, during the lunch break on Saturday May 8, I saw him striding purposefully towards me. He didn't look very welcoming – qualifying was about to start, and we'd all read about the stress in the Ferrari camp after Imola – but I took my chance and approached him with my notebook and pen. He brushed past me, but I didn't give up, and I followed him up a makeshift ladder behind the Ferrari pit. He darted into the garage, the door slammed, and a smiling marshal blocked my way. Oh well, I thought – maybe next time.


The turn where Gilles lost his life, today © autosport.com
The action was about to resume, so I left the paddock and found a spot at the first corner to watch qualifying. At one point Gilles locked up a front tyre, so he was clearly pushing on. And then later came an excited description over the PA of an accident involving a Ferrari.

There were no giant TVs so we didn't see anything, but then Didier Pironi motored past, so it was clearly not him. I've never seen it written anywhere, but I've always been under the impression that the Frenchman had somehow managed to exit the pits after the red flag – if he didn't, he must have just beaten it.

With the session stopped, I wandered back to the paddock in search of information. I was close to the back of Ferrari pits when I saw a red faced Pironi striding towards me. In one hand he held both his helmet, and that of Gilles. The latter was badly scratched and dented, as if someone had been using it as a football. Pironi climbed the steps to the Ferrari transporter and slammed the door shut.

Heading back to the hotel on the coach that evening there was much chatter about the accident, some people having evidently been close to the scene. It was only on arrival at the hotel that confirmation came on the TV news that Gilles was dead, and that I saw the video for the first time.

I had no idea then that 10 years later as a journalist I would get to know his son Jacques when he was competing in Japanese F3 and we were both living in Tokyo. Inevitably the subject of Gilles came up in interviews or in conversation, but JV was always reluctant to go there. F1 history buff Roland Ratzenberger was hugely disappointed that he seemed to know more about Villeneuve Sr's career than Jacques himself did.

Jacques was only 11 when he father died, and you don't have to be a psychologist to work out that it was difficult for him to deal with the weight of the legend, especially now that he was trying to make his own way in the same sport. And while he had a famous name to help open doors, he didn't have the advantages that come with it, in other words the sort of moral and financial support that the likes of Michael Andretti, Nico Rosberg and Nelsinho Piquet enjoyed on the way up.


Another memorial sculpture at Zolder © autosport.com
Over time JV has chilled out. His outing in the 312T3 at Goodwood a few years ago, followed by Tuesday's event at Fiorano, demonstrate that he is keen to embrace his father's memory, and to do so very publicly. A dad himself now, he is almost a decade older than Gilles was when he died.

As far as I know Jacques has never visited Zolder, although I did suggest it a few years ago when for a brief time he had a Belgian girlfriend, and found himself a base in Brussels.

As for me, I've been there many times since 1982 for everything from FIA GTs to DTM, and I even saw F1 cars of the Villeneuve era race there in a historic event, which brought back some memories as I sat on the bank at Turn One.

Even before the Villeneuve accident soured their views, a lot of F1 folk never liked Zolder, but now almost 50 years old, the place has its charms. The pine trees and sandy terrain around the back of the track, where the accident happened, resemble a little bit of the Nurburgring. Albeit rather less so since the run-off was expanded, and ugly concrete walls introduced.

That part of the facility also has some unusual landmarks in the form of a couple of little chapels or shrines, one of which – a WW2 memorial with a statue of the Virgin Mary – overlooks the spot where Gilles crashed. Standing there on Tuesday, with only the birds for company as I contemplated the passage of 30 years, was a slightly surreal experience. But one that I'm very glad I had.