


1978 Canada
1979 South Africa
1979 Long Beach
1979 United States
1981 Monaco
1981 Spain


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 was born in Quebec on 18 January, 1950. He rose up through
snowmobile racing and Formula Atlantic. In fact he credits some of his success to his
snowmobiling days: "Every winter, you would reckon on three or four big spills -
and I'm talking about being thrown on to the ice at 100 mph. Those things used to slide a
lot, which taught me a great deal about control. And the visibility was
terrible! Unless you were leading, you could see nothing, with all the snow blowing about.
Good for the reactions - and it stopped me having any worries about racing in the
rain." In 1976 he dominated the Formula Atlantic championship with an Ecurie
Canada team so impoverished that he was forced into the role of spectator at the Mosport
race because the team couldn't afford to field an entry. This impressive performance
against daunting odds earned him a great deal of notice and a spot with McLaren.
His first F1 race (also the debut event for the turbo
Renault) was at Silverstone in 1977 partnering James Hunt and Jochen Mass. Toward the end of the '77 season Villeneuve
had established a reputation as a promising talent, Teddy Mayer, due partly to Marlboro
sponsorship considerations, declined to keep Gilles with McLaren, apparently leaving the
promising young driver high and dry for 1978. But in August of 1977 Maranello called. Enzo Ferrari said that
when he first met the diminutive Canadian, he was immediately reminded of the great Nuvolari. Ferrari's obvious interest in Villeneuve prompted Niki
Lauda to jump ship at Canada in October, and Gilles began his short but storied Ferrari
career in a less than auspicious fashion. In the Mosport race he left the course on
someone else's oil. The next race, at Fuji, saw him off again, but this time at the cost
of some spectators' lives. He would later remark that: "If someone said to me
that you can have three wishes, my first would have been to get into racing, my second to
be in Formula 1, my third to drive for Ferrari..."
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The first of Villeneuve's six F1 wins came the next year,
fittingly enough at Canada. All told he won six Grands Prix. In 1979 he finished second in
the championship to teammate Jody Scheckter, the luster of whose reputation is today
considerably duller than that of Gilles. The quality of the cars that Gilles had at his
disposal was uneven, and much of his racing was against the last of the world-conquering
Lotuses, the ground effects 79. But for these reasons he probably would have won
several more races. It can be argued that his method was not as conserving of his
machinery is it might have been, and that this contributed to his relatively low win
total.
Gilles Villeneuve's all-or-nothing approach was well known. An example: at Watkins Glen one year, qualifying on the first day on a soaked track, he left his competitors scratching their heads after turning a lap eleven seconds faster than anyone else. The author of this piece clearly remembers the first photo he ever saw of Villeneuve. Actually, it was a picture of the bottom his Ferrari as it flew off of some track somewhere.
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Gilles' signature race was
not a first, but a second. At the 1979 French Grand Prix at Dijon, Renault and Jean-Pierre Jabouille posted the first
win for a modern turbo car. Rene Arnoux, running well, looked to make it a Renault
one-two. Villeneuve, however, asserted a definite au contraire in a sliding,
wheel-banging, tire-boiling duel with Arnoux that no witness to it is likely to forget.
Villeneuve's insane insistence that his slower Ferrari could beat Arnoux's faster Renault
was rewarded, and he finished just ahead of the Frenchman. It is probably safe to say that
this was the most exciting race for second place in the history of motor racing.
Like certain other great drivers, including Clark and Senna,
Villeneuve was a curious mixture
of seemingly disparate personality types. Lauda wrote of him, "He was the craziest
devil I ever came across in Formula 1...The fact that, for all this, he was a sensitive
and lovable character rather than an out-and-out hell-raiser made him such a unique human
being". Flying, snowmobiling or driving, he was a risk-taker of classic proportions.
Yet his fellow drivers said that on the track he was scrupulously fair and did not put
anyone's safety other than his own in jeopardy. This combination of traits made him
exceptionally popular not only with fans but with teammates and opponents as well. He
still remains even today a fan favorite in Canada, Italy and in the rest of the F1 world.
Gilles' bon ami did disappear on one notable
occasion, which may have contributed to his tragic and untimely end. On the final lap at
Imola in 1982 Pironi snuck past his unsuspecting teammate, who had slowed feeling that the
race was in hand, to snatch the win. Villeneuve was uncharacteristically furious.
Still
feeling the sting and out to prove something two weeks later at Zolder, during Saturday qualifying, he came up behind
a much slower March of Jochen Mass who may have been on one of his slow down
laps and though Mass pulled over Villeneuve could not avoid his car. The resulting collision sent the Ferrari off into
a cart-wheeling disintegration. Villeneuve was resuscitated at the scene, but his injuries
were mortal. He died in a local hospital that evening.
If his death was not greeted with great shock and
surprise (everyone knew his style), that was more than offset by the profound
sadness it
produced. Even Arnoux, his adversary in the Dijon epic, confessed that he cried the day
Gilles died and the day after. In June, 1997 Canada issued a stamp
in honor of its favorite racing son. Villeneuve fils may now have more wins than
Villeneuve pere, but he has a ways to go to match his father's legend.


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