On this week #19: Gilles Villeneuve
On this week 42 years ago, Gilles Villeneuve was killed in a shocking accident, which started with an impossible arc through the sky and ended with an impenetrable sense of grief that was felt all over the world.
In the view of some people, it was only a matter of time. Villeneuve was a high flyer, and an inveterate risk taker. But he also flew in the literal sense, with accidents that often resembled plane crashes. Those wayward tendencies gave him a lot of critics but also a lot of awe-struck fans. Not to mention a certain sense of fatalism.
Gilles was always one to get straight back on the horse even after his most epic accidents – and then go even faster than before. This caused a worldwide outbreak of Gilles Villeneuve fever, cementing his place in history as perhaps the archetypal Formula 1 driver.
The late Mauro Forghieri, Ferrari's legendary sporting director, remembered: “He was a special case. I told him so many times that he was driving beyond the limits of the car; there are so many stories that are easy to tell but hard to appreciate. One time, for example, he arrived at Fiorano for testing in his helicopter, in fog so thick you couldn't see in front of you. Young Jacques was with him too. I said to him: ‘Gilles – are you completely mad?' And he was his usual: ‘mais quoi, il n' y a pas de probleme…' Anyway I told him that we wouldn't be testing because it was too foggy, so he just jumped into the helicopter and left again for the mountains, in the same fog. That was Gilles.”
Yet there were signs, in the year before his death, that the demons were finally being tamed. Villeneuve was still aggressive at the limit but less inclined to overreach it. His Ferrari – which up to the end of 1980 had been as inconsistent as its driver – was now beginning to emerge as a technical tour de force throughout the 1981 season, with the turbocharged machine from Maranello keeping consistent pace with all its established rivals.
The 1982 season promised much, with Didier Pironi taking Ferrari's first victory of the year at Imola, just four races in. It was a Ferrari one-two, but far from a happy one, with Villeneuve resolving never to speak to Pironi again after he felt he was cheated out of a win.
He kept his word. The Canadian arrived at the following grand prix in Belgium furious and frustrated; seething with resentment and betrayal. Friends said that they had never seen him in such a state of agitation or distress. These are exactly the situations in which anyone – even those with the mental detachment of Formula 1 drivers – can make the wrong decisions. Only most of us have much less than life and death at stake.
So a stupid accident in practice, in which Villeneuve tripped over the back of Jochen Mass – at what was one of the slower parts of the Zolder circuit – sent the Ferrari cartwheeling into the air and Gilles into the pantheon of deceased greats.
Born in 1950, Villeneuve grew up in Quebec with a passion for anything involving speed. His first love was snowmobiling, a sport in which he excelled, but once he discovered car racing, he was hooked.
He got his big break when several top F1 drivers were invited to Canada to take part in an event at Trois Rivieres in 1976. It was virtually his back garden, and he beat the visiting stars in spectacular fashion.
One of them was James Hunt, shortly to become world champion. Impressed by Villeneuve's speed and irrepressible personality, Hunt told his McLaren team boss Teddy Mayer that this young Canadian – an absolute nobody at the time – was a talent worth looking at.
McLaren followed up on the opportunity and Gilles was invited to drive a third McLaren in the 1977 British Grand Prix. A great performance in the race was spoiled by an unnecessary pit stop, triggered by a faulty gauge.
However, McLaren didn't invite him back for a full-time job in 1978 and instead took Patrick Tambay. But luck went Villeneuve's way when Niki Lauda left Ferrari for Brabham. To fill the vacancy, Enzo Ferrari took an enormous gamble on the Canadian rookie. Mauro Forghieri again: “One of the most infuriating things about the Commendatore was that he had an intuition that was almost feminine; that's how he described it himself. He would go on instinct; and about seven times out of 10 he would be right, even if all the evidence pointed otherwise…”
Villeneuve was virtually unknown in Europe at the end of 1977 when he made his Ferrari debut, with just a single grand prix start to his name (which ended badly) and no experience of Formula 3 or Formula 2. Yet there he was, replacing a double world champion in the sport's most famous team, whose fans demanded nothing less than total commitment to success. In the end, they adored him far more than his eight wins, 13 podiums, or 101 points would ever suggest.
It was on Saturday 8 May in the University Hospital of Leuwen, not far from Zolder, that perhaps the most loved driver in Formula 1 history breathed his last. He had taken his final flight, terrifyingly televised all over the world. Gilles was gone. And yet he's still with us now, in the mind of every Formula 1 fan this week.
