Villeneuve determined to stay in F1

"It is a very calm area at the moment," said Villeneuve of the driver market ahead of his home Grand Prix in Canada. "The earlier the better because it is something that you don't have to think about and I definitely want to be here next year."

Villeneuve is out of a contract at the end of the season and BMW are in no hurry to decide next year's line-up.

"We will have an extremely strong team of drivers once again in 2007, but a final decision on the line-up won't be made until the end of the season," said BMW motorsport boss Mario Theissen on Thursday.

Villeneuve, who this weekend will launch his first single after recording an album last winter, said he had no plans to switch to the music world any time soon.

"The future is racing," the 1997 world champion said. "The career, my job, has always been racing and I won't do anything that will take from the racing. One hundred percent of my focus is on racing, that is all."

The BMW driver admits expectations are high for his home race, but Villeneuve is not getting carried away, despite the team's recent strong performances.

"Well the expectations are high from the whole team as well," he added. "We got a different front geometry as well, which seems to work well which is the main gain.

"But you can always have a bad surprise. We thought we would have a good Monaco but we had a bad time. So you can never know."