The only modern F1 driver at Villeneuve's level

For anyone of my generation, the Montreal paddock inevitably makes you think, at some point, of Gilles Villeneuve. In his tragically brief career, Gilles competed at the circuit named for him only four times, finishing first, second, third and fifth - and it was this last result, interestingly, that an old friend and I reflected on over lunch at the track one day.

This was 1980, the year of the dread Ferrari 312T5. If the previous season's T4 had been a success, with Jody Scheckter and Villeneuve first and second in the world championship, time caught up with the lightly developed T5.

Pioneered by the Lotus 79, an effective 'ground-effect' chassis was by now essential for competitiveness, and the shape of Ferrari's flat-12 engine militated against such a thing. In 1980, Villeneuve and Scheckter had good horsepower at their disposal, but not much else. As they arrived for the Canadian Grand Prix - run back then in late autumn - Gilles was 15th in the points standings, Jody 19th.

It was ferociously cold in Montreal that year, and if for everyone the abiding problem was generating tyre temperature, for the Ferrari drivers - devoid of downforce worth the name - it was doubly so. Villeneuve's acrobatic style was never more apparent as he hurled his car around, trying to get some heat into his Michelins, but his best lap was good for only 22nd place on the grid. Scheckter, eight-tenths slower, did not so much as qualify.

Come race day, Gilles was on it from first to last, combative as only he could be, and by the fall of the flag was running fifth. If virtually unnoticed by some, Montreal '80 was to my mind one of Villeneuve's greatest drives.

Fifth was worth two championship points, but points were never something to which Gilles gave much thought: what mattered was that for nearly two hours he had been at his limit - way beyond his car's - and had fought for 14th place, 10th, seventh, whatever, as he would have done for first.

It was this quality that marked him out, and the one I most admired in him, but he himself saw it as nothing remarkable. "If you don't do that," he said to me once, "how can you call yourself a racing driver?" I think of him now, and recall Mauro Forghieri's famous observation: "Gilles had a rage to win..."

So he did, and in that way the only contemporary driver to remind me of him is Fernando Alonso, who - like Villeneuve - has a way of putting his cars into positions they have no business occupying. Former McLaren boss Martin Whitmarsh made just this point.

"You get drivers who don't get the results that the car deserves, you get drivers who do get those results - and you get a very few who get better results, and more points, than the car deserves. Year in, year out, that's what Fernando does, and - apart from anything else - that makes a big difference to the end-of-season monies paid to a team.

"Ideally, you always want hungry drivers. To the day he died Ayrton Senna was like that, and although I never knew him, Villeneuve, I don't doubt, was the same way. You can't create that - it's there or it isn't - and to me by far the hungriest driver of this generation is Alonso. You could triple his net worth, and he'd still be the same - it's in his makeup.

"Actually, unlike plenty of drivers I've known, Fernando is not someone who would be moved by money - for one thing, he doesn't live in Monaco, and bloody good for him! He ain't cheap, and you wouldn't expect him to be, but fundamentally that's not why he does this.

"Fernando really loves racing - much more than some of them - and he likes to surround himself with comparative simplicity. Since he's been back with McLaren, he's had a terrible time with Honda's engines, but he never compromises his effort. Just a phenomenally bright, talented, ruthless, racing driver - to me there's no-one like him."

Felipe Massa agrees. Team-mate to both Schumacher and Alonso (as well as Kimi Raikkonen) at Ferrari, he once told me he thought Fernando better than Michael: "Although Michael was an amazing driver, I had an easier time with him - for one thing, I suffered more with Fernando because he never, ever, had an off day."

As I wrote the other week, the Alonso I saw at Indianapolis was happier than I have seen him at a race track for a long time. In part, this may have owed something to being in the limelight again after so long in the wilderness - since Fernando's last grand prix victory, at Barcelona in 2013, Lewis Hamilton has won 35 times - but more to the point was that for once he was in a competitive car. As we know, yet another Honda engine failure cost him a shot at winning the 500, but still he was glowing afterwards: "Oh, it felt so good to lead a race again..."

Alonso was classified 24th at Indy, and for that at the Victory Banquet on the Monday night received a cheque for $305,000, which sounds like a lot until you consider that his stipend at McLaren-Honda pays him that every three days.

Whatever else, therefore, it was not money that prompted Alonso to pass up Monaco in favour of the Speedway. As his Indy driver coach Gil de Ferran told me in Canada: "Fernando's always been fascinated by the 500, and he's been having a terrible time in Formula 1, where all the focus is on Hamilton and Vettel week after week.

"I don't think it was surprising he wanted to test himself somewhere else, where he could have a competitive car - and at the same time remind everyone of the ungodly amount of talent he has. It's a crime he's where he is in Formula 1..."