Who was Villeneuve
The following article has been published with kind permission of “Gazzetta dello Sport”
Who was Gilles Villeneuve? A madman you might say at first, taking him at face value. A champion who came out of nowhere, according to others. Or maybe a miracle in human form who, when all was said and done, decided to leave, aware he was becoming a legendary figure. In all probability, Villenueve was all three of these things, with the awareness that he could not live an ordinary life and therefore put up with the consequences. It was as if every step, every gesture, every exuberance was a chapter in a book, the book that was his life. In this respect, he was similar to another champion he could never have known, but whom he loved, thanks to the tales told him by Ferrari: Tazio Nuvolari. Different backgrounds, but almost identical destinies. Tazio came from a well to do Mantua family and he was very wealthy even before he started racing, but from that point on, he set about doing a thorough job of building the legend, with a series of feats that pushed the boundaries of what is possible.
Villeneuve did the same, almost as though there was a parallel consciousness guiding his decisions. Let’s talk about him being mad. How else can one describe someone who, as a snowmobile racer, lived in a metal motorhome with his wife and children, with the water turning to ice in the pipes during the terrible Canadian winters? He would go out at night in just a T-shirt, to fix the problem, heating the pipes with a welding torch. And that’s just one of the terrifying tales told me back then by his wife Joann. She was his angel, his private secretary, manager, cook, mother to his children, his rock during the worst times, the woman with whom he always found solace. Indeed, it is a fact that, at one point, Gilles lost his head over another woman, but it did not lead to a break up. Maybe time would heal everything and so it turned out. It took time and it was slow, difficult and painful for Joann, Jacques and Melanie.
Villeneuve’s life was like an action movie, full of spectacular, exciting, diabolical scenarios. There were racing incidents that could not be repeated today, given that now, the slightest error on track is analysed by inflexible stewards who reason with the mentality of intransigent policemen whose job it is to enforce the rules of the road. For the duel with Arnoux at Dijon, Gilles would have been banned for a year. For his three-wheeled lap of Zandvoort or the one with the wing hanging off at Montreal, he would have been disqualified for a few months. And since the governing body can also call on the pretext of intervening in matters of driver behaviour outside the circuits, what sort of judgement would have been passed on Villeneuve when he used a helicopter to buzz Scheckter’s red Ferrari on the motorway, aiming nose down like a guided missile, missing the car by just a few centimetres?
A madman, exactly. Only a madman could have contemplated entering the sophisticated world of Formula 1, where everyone was already flying First Class or in private planes, turning up with a mobile home behind a truck, to live day and night in the garage, woken by the strident cries of the rebuilt engines being fired up just a few hours before going out on track. Him, the family and an Alsatian dog. Just crazy. That was one Villeneuve. But, as soon as qualifying for a grand prix was over, he would be off to play with toy cars with his kids, while his wife Joann, did the cooking for the Ferrari mechanics. It was another time, a time that no longer exists, that stopped at that moment in the life of Gilles the comet. It was in his motorhome that the hero of the impossible came to life, ready to rouse the crowds. It was within these four walls of steel that the warrior put on his armour and kissed his children before stepping into the arena. This is where the deeds of a driver who feared no one began. He had the courage to say of Lauda, “I can take half a second a lap off him on any track in any car.” He harboured an almost religious respect for Ronnie Peterson, but commented, “he is my idol, but if I want I can brake twenty metres later than him into every corner…” These things were said unconsciously rather than with arrogance, backed up by the fact that his level of car control has never been seen since in F1.
Cleary this did not find favour with his colleagues. He probably only had three real friends: Patrick Tambay, Jody Scheckter and, only in some ways, Bruno Giacomelli. It was Tambay who, having met him in Can-Am races in Canada, offered him hospitality and helped him settle in when Gilles moved to the South of France when he joined Ferrari. Scheckter, in his early days in F1 was as mad as he was, a true brother and a tough and true team-mate. Giacomelli was the last to share with Villeneuve the unreal outings in Tullio Abate’s powerboats on the Cote d’Azur, with the boat coming back to harbour requiring scrapping rather than repair, so bad was the damage. But the others did not like Gilles and how could they? For the Italian drivers, and at that time there were plenty of good ones, he snatched their chance of a Ferrari drive. As for the others, Gilles always seemed to be selfish, heading straight down his chosen path, not giving a damn if he put the lives of others at risk. And it has to be said there were sound reasons why they were not completely wrong. However, the appeal Villeneuve had for the general public has remained without equal. Because at a time when the economy was going well and there were no stock market crashes, no workers on a minimum wage, or worries of any kind, he shattered this cosy feeling of wellbeing, by going to the very edge in showing that there could still be a life consisting of self-made risks and improvisation, that, in short, life could be a gamble. With him around, every race was a new film with a fresh script. Villeneuve who was the very first to dominate with the Ferrari turbo at Monaco, Villeneuve who held off a wild pack of champions at Jarama, Villeneuve pulling off impossible overtaking moves everywhere. He was a show within the show. Then there was Villeneuve challenging an F104 jet at Istana airport, Villeneuve who could cut the mustard on water too, winning a speedboat race at Cernobbio, Villeneuve who spun his Ferrari 328 in a tunnel on the Autostrada dei Fiori, overtaking a truck, just to frighten Scheckter who was alongside him. Or Villeneuve who, in a completely insane challenge on the streets of Sao Paolo on the morning of the Grand Prix, takes off over the pavement in a green Fiat 850, lands in the middle of a crossroad and, with a kamikaze move, avoids the cars coming toward him from all sides to emerge “victorious,” leaving the man who had challenged him, the journalist, Enrico Benzing, a competent driver but not as uninhibited as the Canadian, completely dumbfounded.
In every way, Gilles lived his life to the extreme. Even in the way he secretly tried to become an accomplished trumpet player, taking the instrument everywhere with him. One evening, in a restaurant in Zeltweg, he pulled it out of a case to delight Forghieri, Regazzoni, the writer and a colleague, Nestore Morosini. In moments like these, he was adorable, even if usually, he was reasonably cold, closed into his own little world, in which at one point entered an element unknown to him, namely money, which required setting up a financial company in Lichenstein for investments.
When he died, everyone had already been resigned to it for a while. There was something in the air that meant it could have happened at any moment. Few people went to say their final farewell at the hospital in Lovanio and you could count the drivers on the fingers of one hand. And so, at precisely the moment when this life ended and mutated into a legend, in the pits there was an icy indifference. It was as though the paddock had freed itself from a troublesome element that was hard to swallow. No one realised that without Villeneuve, F1 would be a different thing altogether.
Pino Allievi
http://www.ferrari.com/English/Formu...illeneuve.aspx
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Originally Posted by Greig
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