Some thoughtful reflections on Gilles Villeneuve.
Gilles Villeneuve, 1950-1982
He was Canada's most famous and best-loved racing driver. Twenty-five
years after his senseless death on the track, he still is.
Norris McDonald
May 05, 2007
http://www.wheels.ca/article/26307
The news came on Saturday, May 8, 1982: Canada's greatest auto racing
hero had died from injuries suffered in an accident earlier that day
during final qualifying for the Belgium Grand Prix at Circuit Zolder.
The life and death of Gilles Villeneuve is the stuff of Grand Opera.
He was a nobody from the backwoods of Quebec who went on to become one
of the most famous athletes in the world - a daredevil Formula One
racing driver employed by the best-known and most romantic of all
Grand Prix marques, Scuderia Ferrari. The victim of a double-cross by
a conniving teammate, he was intent on defending his honour when he
crashed to his death at 32 years old.
The government of Canada dispatched an Armed Forces plane to pick up
his body and return it to Canada, along with his young wife, Joanne,
and his two children, Jacques, 11, and Melanie, 8 (who filled the
hours over the Atlantic by drawing pictures and writing poetry about
their father).
The outpouring of affection and grief was nationwide. Prime Minister
Pierre Trudeau and Opposition Leader Joe Clark led the mourners at his
funeral in Berthierville, Villeneuve's hometown, and the service was
broadcast live, coast-to-coast.
Jody Scheckter, his teammate at Ferrari in 1979 and 1980 and a friend,
delivered a short eulogy: "I will miss Gilles for two reasons. First,
he was the fastest driver in the history of motor racing. Second, he
was the most genuine man I have ever known. But he has not gone. The
memory of what he has done, what he achieved, will always be there."
He was adored for one reason above all: he was a racer. He wanted to
win races and championships, yes, but more than anything he wanted to
win every lap he was out on the track, whether it was a practice lap,
a qualifying lap or the 35th lap of a 72-lap Grand Prix.
In fact, when Britain's respected MotorSport magazine put out its 75th
anniversary issue in April 1999, it had a picture of Villeneuve on the
cover - but no story inside. Explained editor Andrew Frankel:
"For this issue, we wanted an image which best described the way we
felt about the sport. No single shot can sum up 75 years of motorsport
so we looked for one which made us feel good about racing. And Gilles
in a 12-cylinder Ferrari said it all ... in the firmament of great
racing drivers, his star shines more brightly than that of multiple
world champions. The explanation is simple: Villeneuve knew the
difference between racing and winning and, unlike the majority of
those who drive Grand Prix cars, it was the former which provided his
motivation..."
It was always about the racing, right from the start when he drove
snowmobiles in the early 1970s. He won a world championship on the ice
and then went to Formula Ford and Formula Atlantic, where he hated to
lose.
In 1976, he did something about that: He won every race he entered
except one - a race in the rain at Westwood, B.C., where he spun off
the track and damaged the car. Otherwise, he was unbeatable. He won
the Canadian Formula Atlantic Championship as well as the U.S.
championship.
Most important, he won a race in September in Trois Rivieres, Que.,
against the cream of the F-Atlantic crop, as well as four Formula One
drivers of the day: James Hunt (who won the world championship that
year), Vittorio Brambilla, Alan Jones and Patrick Tambay.
Hunt was so impressed by Villeneuve that he got out of his car and
went to a telephone and called his boss, Teddy Mayer, who ran the
McLaren F1 team. Mayer signed Villeneuve to a contract and put him in
a car at the British GP in 1977. Villeneuve qualified ninth (of 26
starters; 36 cars were entered in total) and finished 11th (although
he could have been fourth but for a faulty oil-temperature guage that
forced him into the pits for a check).
It was a spectacular debut. But for some inexplicable reason, Mayer
opted to go with Tambay (who'd also been offered a tryout) and it
looked like Villeneuve's F1 career was over before it really started.
But in a strange twist, Philip Morris (Marlboro cigarettes), which
sponsored the McLaren team, went to bat for him (in return, of course,
for him wearing a Marlboro sticker on the front of his helmet forever
after).
They arranged for McLaren to tear up his contract and wangled a
meeting with the legendary Enzo Ferrari, el commandatore of Scuderia
Ferrari. According to author Brock Yates in his book, Enzo Ferrari:
The Man, the Cars, the Races, the old man looked at the young
Villeneuve and said to colleagues afterward:
" When they presented me with this tiny Canadian, this miniscule
bundle of nerves, I instantly recognized in him the physique of the
great Nuvolari and I said to myself, `Let's give him a try.'"
The wise and crafty Ferrari recognized a tiger when he saw one - and
Gilles didn't disappoint. He started 67 Grands Prix in a Ferrari,
finishing on the podium 14 times and winning six - including his first
at his home Grand Prix at Montreal in 1978.
His flamboyant, never-say-die racing style endeared him to the tifosi
right from the beginning.
In 1979, he finished second in the world championship to his teammate,
Scheckter. There are many, Villeneuve included, who thought he could
have won the title because in any number of races he was faster.
But Villeneuve was a man of honour. He knew Scheckter was the No. 1
driver and his role was to race hard but to hold position if the No. 1
pilot was in a position to win.
This sense of honour is what killed Gilles Villeneuve.
Two weeks before the race at Zolder, he had been leading his teammate,
Didier Pironi, in the closing laps of the San Marino Grand Prix at
Imola in Italy. The Ferrari code was that the drivers were to hold
position at that point in the race, so Villeneuve was caught
completely unawares when Pironi dove inside him at the last corner of
the last lap and stole the victory.
Photographs taken at the time show Villeneuve extremely upset on the
podium. He stayed but a moment and told friends afterward that he
would never speak to Pironi again.
In the final qualifying session at Zolder, Pironi set a time a 10th-of-
a-second faster than Villeneuve, and the Canadian had gone out in the
closing moments of qualifying to try to beat it.
The German driver, Jochen Mass, was on a slowdown lap when Villeneuve
came flying up behind him. Somehow, the left front wheel of the
Ferrari touched the right rear wheel of Mass's March and the Ferrari
was catapulted through the air. The force of the car landing nose-down
in the dirt ripped the cockpit seat - with Villeneuve strapped in it -
out of the Ferrari monocoque.
The car came to rest in pieces. Villeneuve had been thrown into a
fence and was critically injured. He was pronounced dead later in
hospital.
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Allan de la Plante, whose colour photograph is on the cover of this
section, was Villeneuve's official photographer. He started taking
pictures of the young Quebec sensation when Villeneuve was racing in
Formula Ford. He kept photographing him all the way to Formula One and
has published several books since.
Here are his words:
"Gilles was a very focused man, to the point of self-centeredness. He
didn't care about the risks, or how what he was doing affected his
home or his family. He may have thought about it, but he would not let
it get in his way.
"Joanne and the kids wanted to spend time with him, but he was always
busy. He actually was very much like most entrepreneurs. He focused on
the task at hand that propelled his business. His business was driving
racing cars. He had very little time, if any, for the family with
testing, racing and personal appearances. Any athlete suffers from the
same problem.
"He came from a family where his father was a piano tuner and his
mother was a seamstress. Suddenly he is in Formula One and he's got
all this money. He grew up a regular kid who had a lot (of love) but
also had nothing (no money). Once he had it, he spent like a crazy
man.
"Back when he was in Formula Fords and Atlantics, he mortgaged the
family home not once but twice to get the money to keep going. In the
later years, he had more money than he knew what to do with. He bought
a jet helicopter.
"He was fearless in the car. I believe this came down to a total lack
of imagination of what could happen to him. Was he blind to reality? I
doubt it. In the later years he seemed to be a bit more aware of the
possibility of a very big shunt.
"But this devil-may-care attitude made him the best. He was and always
will be the fastest Formula One driver. He had one flaw; he seldom
considered the car. He drove it like it was indestructible. He didn't
treat the car with care, he didn't ease the car to the finish if he
was in, or near, the lead.
"As a result, he was a great bleacher-pleaser. He was always wide open
or tied up at the dock. The fans loved him for that."
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The minute he stole the San Marino Grand Prix from Gilles Villeneuve,
Didier Pironi's life was never the same.
Pironi was on the front row in Montreal when the flag dropped and he
stalled his car. A young Italian at the back of the grid in an Osella,
Riccardo Paletti, slammed into him. Paletti was killed and Pironi was
forced into his backup car, finishing ninth.
Several months later, in the rain and fog during qualifying at the
German Grand Prix, Pironi came upon a slow-moving Alain Prost in a
Renault and, in an accident strangely reminiscent of Villeneuve's, the
Ferrari was catapulted through the air and crashed.
Pironi's legs were smashed and he never drove a Grand Prix car again.
He died several years later, pushing an offshore powerboat to the
limit.
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Was the speed real or for show?
Formula One medical director Dr. Sid Watkins, in his book Life at the
Limit, wrote these immortal lines:
"I once met Gilles in the lobby of the hotel in Sao Paulo and he
offered me a lift to Interlagos.
"Madame Villeneuve was with him, so when we got to his rented car, I
moved to sit in the rear, but Madame insisted that I sit in the
front.
"Gilles in a road car was frightening and when I turned to speak to
his wife, she was not visible as she had taken to the floor. She
indicated that this was normal for her and I soon found out why.
"Villeneuve believed in the `gap theory,' i.e., that there was always
a space into which he could move when faced with a high-speed
collision. He ignored all red lights, gently bouncing off parked cars
or lamposts, talking all the time and and never pausing or hesitating
in the traffic.
"At the circuit, he asked if I wanted a lift back later!
"His helicopter drill, I was told by Trevor Rowe, then-secretary of
the Grand Prix Drivers Association, was much the same - taking off
with fuel gauge at zero and flying in and out of power cables and
pylons with cool aplomb."
But was he really like that outside a racing car? Or was it just part
of his never-ending quest to cultivate and maintain his devil-may-care
image?
Said his great friend, Jody Scheckter (in an interview with writer
Adam Cooper that was published in the August, 1999, issue of
MotorSport):
"I always tell the story about driving from Monaco with him. The whole
time he drove perfectly - until we got just outside Modena and soon
the wheels were spinning and he started sliding around and everything.
That was the proof of what I felt.
"I also remember going with him in his helicopter and once again we
got over Modena and he started his tricks again. He was going down and
then up. I said you'd better stop now or I'll wring your neck." -
Norris McDonald
Gilles Villeneuve - 1950 -1982 -
05-08-2007
, 09:49 AM
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