Villeneuve: 1997 glory and the regrets that followed

When Jacques Villeneuve qualified on pole position for the season-opening Australian Grand Prix by 1.7 seconds, you could be forgiven for not expecting the 1997 world championship to go to the wire seven months later.

But from the moment he was wiped out by Eddie Irvine in the opening seconds of the race the following day, Villeneuve was on a collision course with Michael Schumacher that would conclude in the most controversial of fashions in an epic final-round decider at Jerez.

The Canadian, runner-up to Williams team-mate Damon Hill as a rookie in 1996, entered the year as the clear championship favourite with the potent Renault-powered FW19, the last of the team's cars designed by Adrian Newey. After the disappointment of Australia he bounced back with victory in Brazil, but things were less straightforward next time out.

Rather than flying back to Europe ahead of the next race in Argentina, Villeneuve headed north with Mika Salo and chilled out on a beach. But when he arrived in Argentina, he "didn't feel right". He had picked up a stomach bug. He couldn't eat. He couldn't sleep.

Somehow he managed to snatch pole position, eat a steak and chips on Sunday morning and then drag himself into the car and win the race by less than a second from Irvine after spending the final 10 laps with the Ferrari on his gearbox. It was that kind of fight, in the face of adversity, that characterised his season.

"That was a really tough weekend," says Villeneuve, reflecting 20 years on. "Once you have your belts on, you're sitting in the car, all the aches and pains go away. Your body shuts everything up.

"Once the race got going and I was out in front, I just paced myself because physically I couldn't push. I was so run down. It felt as if it had been as hard race as in Malaysia, but it wasn't anywhere near that hot.

"I shouldn't have been racing, but when you have a championship at hand you just go for it. It made that win a little bit special. Somehow the race fixed me, it killed the bug. It just emptied everything.

"When I got out of the car, I didn't feel too bad. It must have been the adrenaline of winning. But it wasn't long until exhaustion set in. I was just so tired."

That weekend was just one of a series of hurdles that threatened to derail Villeneuve's title campaign. He won seven races, but also retired four more times after the Melbourne disaster, suffering gearbox woes at Imola, hitting the barrier in a wet Monaco GP, crashing at home in Montreal and spinning out at Hockenheim.

Things didn't turn controversial until later in the year when he was disqualified from the penultimate race of the season at Suzuka, setting up the famous showdown with Schumacher at Jerez.

His first battle, though, was to beat his team-mate. Heinz-Harald Frentzen had been drafted in by Williams to replace reigning world champion Hill, who ended up at Arrows. While Villeneuve admits he did feel threatened by Frentzen, it was "only before the season started".

"When Williams signed him, they announced that he was their champion," he says. "That didn't go down well with me. So my first goal was to destroy Frentzen. That's what I had to do and that's what I did all winter. I would wait until the last five minutes of testing to do a quick lap and finish one tenth ahead.

"All day he thinks he's quick but goes to bed feeling down. That was the game we played all year. It was the same in qualifying. In Australia he was around 1.7s slower than me and that really got to him.

"Had Williams not acted that way when they signed him, I probably would have been nicer with him and then I might not have seen it coming, so it's a good thing they did that."

Frentzen's high point in 1997 was winning in San Marino before taking pole in Monaco at the next race. But from there, Villeneuve gradually broke him and Frentzen ultimately managed just over half his team-mate's points.

"When he got that win at Imola, it gave him hope," Villeneuve says. "He got pole in Monaco as well - but that was it. I wasn't going to let him get in the way."

Newey was off to McLaren and not around to shape the development of his final Williams design, and the team started to make mistakes that Ferrari took advantage of. As a result, Schumacher led the championship for 10 of the 17 races.

"We started the year so strong that nobody realised Ferrari could catch us," Villeneuve says. "That's always the danger when you start super-strong - you relax and you lose your way. You have to react and the team did, which was amazing.

"It was tough, though, because the way Frentzen was psychologically at this point, he wasn't a big help developing the car either. Jock Clear was my engineer at the time and we were kind of in our corner doing our own thing.

"That's the way I always worked. With Damon, we were sharing a lot more and I was learning from him. I was happy to see what he was doing and what I could do better. But in 1997, it changed, I was working on my own. Part of the development we would do was to make sure it would be bad for the other, but that is counter-productive for the team and that almost caught us out at the end of the season.

"But that was the only thing we had available to make sure the fight wasn't with my team-mate."

Villeneuve trailed Schumacher by a point with three races to go. He capitalised on the German's first-corner accident at the Nurburgring and engine failures for both race-leading McLarens to take what would be his seventh win of the season and move nine points clear with only 20 left on offer.

But having arrived in Japan with a suspended one-race ban for ignoring yellow flags earlier in the season, Villeneuve was caught out again in Saturday practice and punished for the same offence, triggering his ban. He raced under appeal but could only finish fifth, while Schumacher won. The appeal was subsequently withdrawn, leaving Schumacher one point ahead going into the decider.

"It was extremely harsh, especially when it was six of us who didn't slow down in a straight line," Villeneuve says. "To us, it sounded like they were trying to give the championship to Ferrari. But it made winning the championship even more exciting.

"It was a tremendous race in the last event, instead of winning it easily in Japan. We had to come from behind. I guess we can only thank them for making it more difficult to us because it's now a championship to remember."

At the Jerez finale, remarkably the title contenders and Frentzen all qualified on the same time of 1m27.072s. Villeneuve took pole through setting the time first, but he slipped to third off the line, with Schumacher assuming the lead. Once Frentzen had let Villeneuve into second, the world championship would be decided by a straight fight for victory, but the battle only reached lap 48 of 69.

After stalking Schumacher for so long, Villeneuve finally launched his attack into the Dry Sack hairpin. The Ferrari turned in on the Williams, and the resulting collision left Schumacher in the gravel.

"My first thought was he did it badly," says Villeneuve. "I knew it was coming. We had spent a month talking with the media about Michael's past behaviour, just to put pressure on and encourage him not to do it. When I overtook him, his first reaction was to turn away, then his second reaction was, 'Oh no, I have to take him out'.

"We collided, which broke the battery holder on my car. I shouldn't have finished the race. After the incident, I mellowed my driving to the point that I didn't see the McLarens coming back."

Villeneuve limped home third, behind first-time winner Mika Hakkinen and David Coulthard, but it was enough to win the title.

"I wasn't going to fight the McLarens," he says. "I didn't care. I just needed that one point. I would have preferred to have won, but my focus was to get what I needed for the title."

Villeneuve looks fondly on that period of his life: winning the Indycar title and the Indianapolis 500 in 1995, and fighting for the world championship in his first two years of F1.

"It was amazing and the end of a long season of work," he says. "It was the continuation of 1996 and of winning Indy - the ball hadn't stopped rolling. It was my ultimate goal. That's why I was racing, to reach that point.

"Somehow I knew it was mine. But I was also aware at the time how critical that season was."

Villeneuve's feeling that he might only get one shot at the title ultimately proved to be correct, with his career quickly going downhill after 1997. His title defence was a damp squib as Williams struggled following the withdrawal of Renault, meaning it was left with outdated Mecachrome-badged engines in '98. Villeneuve failed to win a race and ended the year with just two podiums and 21 points to show for his efforts.

MISSING OUT ON McLAREN - 'DIFFICULT TO DIGEST'

Decisions made during his year as reigning champion had a dramatic impact on the direction of Villeneuve's career. He was working with then-manager Craig Pollock to form a new team, British American Racing. Villeneuve was committed to leaving Williams at the end of the year and focusing on the new project, in which he would have a stake.

But then came a phone call, while he was having dinner with Pollock, that could have transformed his career.

"Adrian Newey [who was now in place at McLaren] called me and told me not to sign [with BAR]. He said, 'We want you'.

"It was easy to chat in those days. But when he called me, I was sitting next to Craig. I could not have a proper chat. I remember where we were - in life, you have a few memories, like winning the championship - and that one call, from someone like Adrian, is an important memory.

"We were in a restaurant in Monaco. Had Craig not been there I would have had a longer chat and Adrian would have probably been able to convince me to join. But there wasn't an opportunity for that. Things in life turn on a second. It was one call and it didn't go any further than that. They ended up winning championships [in 1998 and '99]. That is difficult to digest."

Villeneuve was committed to BAR. The first season was a disaster, with the team failing to score a single point and Villeneuve only finishing three of the 16 races.

He says he doesn't regret the decision, especially as the team he helped build has since morphed into the title-winning Mercedes outfit, but he admits he did not always make good calls.

"BAR was my project and it is what Mercedes is today, with the same factory and some of the same people who I was working with," he says. "I don't regret my choice. After winning the world championship, another step was building something amazing. The first year was OK, but back then we were destroyed in the media as only the top six got points.

"Our form wasn't as bad as the perception. But then politics started and it was mayhem. Craig wanted it to be hidden that I owned a chunk of the team. He said it would protect me, but it was the opposite. That was another mistake."

In the summer of 2000 Villeneuve received an offer from Flavio Briatore to join Renault. He was paid handsomely at BAR, but Renault was offering the same terms. After consideration, he chose to commit to BAR again. Villeneuve admits it was a "very costly mistake" and arguably signed the death warrant for his career.

"I stayed out of loyalty to Craig," he recalls. "At the time I had a contract with Flavio, it was a copy of my BAR contract. I was about to sign with Flavio. But Craig was in tears, going, 'Oh no, if you do that I lose my job'. Psychologically it was difficult but it was wrong to stay because of that.

"That is the one decision in my career that I've made that I didn't do what I wanted. I didn't follow my instinct. I was on good terms with Flavio but I burned bridges there. The fans and media thought I was just staying for the money.

"People lost respect for me, they saw a weakness of being loyal to Craig, rather than doing what was best for me. I had built up respect, but that image was damaged. I protected Craig and that's what finished me. That's the price you pay when you take risks."

When Pollock lost his job and was replaced by David Richards, whose Prodrive company in 2002 was awarded a management contract to run the team, it was the beginning of the end for Villeneuve. He no longer felt comfortable at the team that had previously been built around him.

With no contract for 2004, Villeneuve was moved aside for his replacement Takuma Sato in the final race of '03 in Japan, and he resigned himself to a year out. Briatore came calling again to give him a seat for the final three races of '04 to replace Jarno Trulli at Renault.

It was not an inspired comeback, with Villeneuve struggling to get on the pace alongside Fernando Alonso on unfamiliar Michelin tyres. He landed a two-year deal with Sauber for the following season, but he was replaced by Robert Kubica mid-way through 2006 when BMW had taken over the team. His final F1 race - that year's German GP - ended in the Hockenheim barriers.

Villeneuve's instinct that 1997 could be his only chance to be world champion proved to be spot on. His downfall, perhaps, is that he did not always follow his gut.

"When you win you think, 'OK I'll win many more' but at the same time you may only get one chance and I knew I could not mess it up," he says.

"It's crazy that it happened nearly 20 years ago because it doesn't feel that long, maybe because it was such an important moment in my life. It feels like it was only last week."