Gilles Villeneuve: A Reflection

There hasn't been many people, in life and in death, that have captivated the world of motorsport in such a way that they become the stuff of legend. But Gilles Villeneuve can undoubtedly be included in that category.

The son of a piano tuner, Villeneuve seemed set for a career in music, had it not been for his fascination with speed and engineering from a young age. Aged eleven, he was let loose with a pick-up truck in a field close to the family's Quebec home, with the young Gilles later taking their lawnmower engine and pieces of plywood to make a go-kart. As a teenager he 'borrowed' his father's Pontiac Grande Parisienne to test its top speed, only to skid on a wet road and crash into a telephone pole. This first taste of speed's dangers did little to deter him, however, and he was soon honing his craft in the world of snowmobile racing. It was these years of sliding on ice at over 100 mph, that he would later claim helped craft his incredible capability to control cars in wet conditions.

The transition to single-seater racing was not so smooth. Living on the breadline with his young family in a pre-fab home, Villeneuve was resorting to stealing tools from local shops to save money. Only by selling the house and converting a disused school bus into a motorhome/workshop did he raise the money to compete in Formula Ford and Formula Atlantic, which he did with gradual success. It was in the latter that he beat F1 world champion James Hunt, in a non-championship event at Trois-Rivieres in 1976, and impressed Hunt so much that he persuaded McLaren to give Gilles a Formula 1 drive at Silverstone the following year. Qualifying 9th and finishing 11th in a year-old car, he would have finished much higher up the order had it not been for a faulty temperature gauge costing him precious time. Regardless, McLaren decided not to keep him on due to his lack of experience, and was instead recruited by Ferrari. In a sport where courage, determination and downright stubbornness are standard, Gilles took these qualities to a whole new level - producing some of the best racing, and some of the most outrageous actions, Formula 1 has ever seen:

His ferocious speed and questionable sanity can be epitomised with his performance at the 1979 United States Grand Prix, at Watkins Glen. On a soaking wet track in practice, Villeneuve was setting times that were up to 11 seconds faster than his rivals, including his teammate, and that year's world champion, Jody Scheckter. While others were nursing their cars so as not to crash, Gilles was pulling everything out of the car in order to try to better it and himself. These examples of commitment weren't only confined to the racetrack, however - Villeneuve seemingly didn't understand the meaning of the word 'slow'. On public roads he would drive flat-out, incurring hundreds of speeding tickets (many of which were forgotten about with a quick signed photo, especially in Italy) and he would manhandle his speedboat and helicopter at unthinkable speeds.

But behind this recklessness he was quiet and softly-spoken, a man of strong principles that always conducted himself with the utmost honesty and expected others to do the same. Indeed, it was his teammate Didier Pironi's breaking of a team orders agreement between them, at the 1982 San Marino Grand Prix, that many say cost Gilles his life. Incensed at Pironi's lack of sanctity for a promise, he headed to the next race at Zolder with a chip on his shoulder and a point to prove. On 8th May 1982, while trying to improve his time in qualifying to beat Pironi, a misunderstanding with Jochen Mass over where to move over resulted in him driving into the back of Mass' March at over 120mph. The Ferrari was thrown into the air, flipped and nose-dived into the track. The force of the impact was so great that Villeneuve, still strapped to his seat but now without his helmet, was catapulted into catch-fencing over 50 metres away. He died from critical head and neck injuries later that night.

Gilles Villeneuve has become quite special to me as a fan, as he's the main reason why I've become so interested in motorsport and Formula 1 in particular. I was given a brilliant biography of his life as a gift about 4 years ago, which describes all of the above in vivid detail (and which the info for most of this post has come from). Being born nearly 10 years after his death it gave a wonderful insight into how the sport and its stars worked back then, and was the impetus for me to learn more about its history. However, Gilles' story really struck a chord with me. His dogged determination, although often bordering on the reckless and selfish, and his passion for the sport that he loved was proof that if you could set your mind to what you want to achieve, then there's no reason why you can't. Which makes it all the more tragic that he never got to fulfill his wish and that of his many fans - to win the world championship he rightly deserved.