The F1 rebel who defied Schumacher and won Williams’ last title

If Netflix had been around in 1996 it’s not hard to imagine a Drive To Survive-style docu-series centred on Williams pairing Jacques Villeneuve and Damon Hill. Both sons of famed fathers who died early deaths – Gilles Villeneuve while driving for Ferrari in 1982; Graham Hill in a plane crash shortly after the end of a career that had crowned him world champion twice.

Jacques, fresh from winning the 1995 Champ Car title and Indy 500, would arrive in F1 in spectacular fashion, grabbing pole position in Melbourne on his debut, before indulging in a season-long battle with Williams team-mate Damon for the world championship.

Having finished runner-up to Hill in 1996, the then 25-year-old French Canadian would go one better the following year, claiming the title despite Michael Schumacher’s cynical attempt to take him out in the season finale at Jerez – an attempt which would result in the German being disqualified entirely from the championship.

It’s now 25 years since Jacques claimed his only F1 title; 40 years since his father was lost to motorsport altogether. And while Gilles’ legacy has power-slid its way into the mysticism reserved for those who have died at the wheel, Jacques’ has followed an altogether different trajectory. He survived, won a world championship, produced those brilliant early successes followed by a tale of hopes, dreams and perhaps a little frustration.

There is a view that Villeneuve’s career somehow stalled; never quite lived up to its billing. Talk to the man himself and the sense is rather different. He remains passionate about racing, and his victories in the final two rounds of the 2021 NASCAR Euro Series were celebrated with as much enthusiasm as any grand prix win. Here is a Jacques Villeneuve who looks back on his world title success with satisfaction, but who is equally proud of having helped to establish the team that is now known as Mercedes-AMG F1.

Villeneuve has deeply held opinions about any racing subject you care to mention. At home in Milan, not a million miles from where his father Gilles entered the annals of F1 history as one of Enzo Ferrari’s most celebrated drivers, Jacques reflects on how it started: with Gilles…

Villeneuve won the world championship in 1997, but remains interested in motorsport today

Photo by: Sutton Images

In his superb autobiography Watching the Wheels, Damon Hill writes candidly about growing up in the shadow of a famous father – how he would often be introduced as ‘Graham Hill’s son’ rather than by his own name. Villeneuve somehow never gave the impression of feeling the weight of his father’s Formula 1 legacy.

“No, I never did,” he says, matter of factly, then surprises by adding, “I think I was under a shadow as long as he was alive. I was a crybaby with migraines. It was also a different era when fathers loved their daughters but were proud of their sons. It was tough to be a son back then. All I wanted was love, but that didn’t happen because I was sent to school in the mountains, living in someone else’s home, away from my family and away from my dad.”

"When I went to boarding school after he died it allowed me to grow up. I went from last in class to first within a month. And I was ski racing. Suddenly I became me" Jacques Villeneuve

If fatherly love was in short supply, the opposite was the case when it came to Gilles giving a young Jacques some completely unexpected challenges.

“He made me fly his helicopter when I was 10,” Jacques recalls. “You know, he just let it go and said, ‘OK, it’s your turn.’ You’re 10, so it’s a lot of stress, and that’s the only (kind of) memories that I have of him.”

Villeneuve realises that through being challenged by his father, doing things that few parents would throw at their children, he was perhaps being prepared for a future in racing.

“When I was four years old, there’s a picture of me on a snowmobile which was a copy of his racing one,” Jacques adds. “It was a tiny one with a real engine. It’s a picture of me jumping and I’m maybe two feet or three feet in the air. That was already part and parcel of what made me a racer. I decided when I was five years old that’s all I would do, so when people would ask I said, ‘yeah, well, I’ll be racing, I’ll be world champion’. They would laugh at me and I wasn’t even questioning it.”

Gilles Villeneuve’s death during final qualifying for the 1982 Belgian Grand Prix at Zolder impacted on an 11-year-old Jacques in ways which may surprise.

“The fact that he died saved me, I think in that aspect, psychologically, which is a terrible thing to say, but it gave me freedom,” says Villeneuve. “When I went to boarding school after he died it allowed me to grow up. I went from last in class to first within a month. And I was ski racing. Suddenly I became me.”

Jacques, pictured with his parents and sister Melanie, says the freedom he gained after Gilles' death caused him to grow up

Photo by: Ercole Colombo

That love of skiing played a role in introducing Villeneuve to the satisfaction of competing; being measured against others as well as himself.

“What I did in skiing I brought into racing,” he says. “If we would go and jump some cliffs, I would make sure I would jump a cliff that nobody else could jump just for the sake of it.”

The rhythm that is essential to downhill skiing, transitioning from one gate to the next, taught the young Villeneuve skills that would help when he turned his focus to motor racing.

“Your mind takes over your body,” he says. “You start talking to yourself through the gates and somehow you push yourself because you listen. You hear your voice, you say ‘Oh, OK, I’ll do it’ and it works. All that, I learned in skiing. You’re left on your own to beat the clock.”

The move into car racing came as the result of trying karts, followed by a course at the Jim Russell Racing Drivers School at Mont Tremblant. Outings in a Group N Alfa Romeo in Italy followed, before the break into Italian Formula 3 arrived with Prema Racing.

With funding from tobacco brand Camel, Villeneuve endured a tough baptism. To observers he appeared to struggle, but he is clear about what those early experiences taught him.

“When I started in Formula 3 in Italy I was 17 but looked 15,” he explains. “At Prema, Angelo Rosin, the father, was my engineer and took me under his wing like an adopted kid. That was very helpful, but it was tough, I had some very quick team-mates.”

Villeneuve, pictured at Macau in 1991, struggled with the scrutiny that came with his rise to the top

Photo by: Sutton Images

He knew people were watching him because of who his father was, so he found his career under close scrutiny from the start.

“Think about it,” he says. “Most drivers don’t come with a [famous] father, so you don’t see them being watched in the first two or three years when they’re learning and struggling. When do you hear about them? When they start winning, when they start saying, ‘look at this new driver’. When someone like me starts, you are being judged as though you already had years of experience!

“At half of the races I did not even qualify, because back then Italian F3 was the strongest F3 series. Year two I got a couple of podiums and was running quicker, year three: a few poles and running out in front.”

In 1994, his debut Champ Car season, Villeneuve was Indy 500 Rookie of the Year, and scored his first race win with a closely fought victory over Emerson Fittipaldi and Al Unser Jr at Road America. The following season, 1995, Jacques won the championship with four outright wins, one of which was the Indy 500

Then came some decisive moves, starting with the appointment of a former teacher from College Beausoleil in Villars, Switzerland, as his manager. Craig Pollock would remain at Villeneuve’s side for a decade and a half.

The shift to Japan to drive with Cerumo was a turning point in terms of on-track performances, followed by a move into the North American Toyota Atlantic series, in which Villeneuve finished third for Forsythe Green in 1993. The faith shown in Villeneuve by Barry Green and engineer Tony Cicale proved to be the catalyst for what followed.

“That was super important because Barry and Tony, the two of them together, had my back,” recalls Villeneuve. “Barry believed in what I could do.”

Green’s belief in Villeneuve was such that he was prepared to risk losing Player’s sponsorship if the tobacco giant insisted on supporting another driver, and it ultimately resulted in the split with Jerry Forsythe whichled to the creation of Team Green.

Villeneuve won Indycar's rookie of the year title in 1994 and went on to claim the Indianapolis 500 and overall crown in 1995 on his way to F1

Photo by: Sutton Images

In 1994, his debut Champ Car season, Villeneuve was Indy 500 Rookie of the Year, and scored his first race win with a closely fought victory over Emerson Fittipaldi and Al Unser Jr at Road America. The following season, 1995, Jacques won the championship with four outright wins, one of which was the Indy 500.

Everyone was now paying attention to ‘Villeneuve Jr’, including Bernie Ecclestone and Formula 1. With Ecclestone’s help, Pollock pulled a deal together with Frank Williams, who offered Villeneuve a Silverstone test.

“The test went well,” recalls Villeneuve. “Driving the car in testing was not really complicated. It was easy to adapt. The F1 cars had less horsepower than the Indycars at the time, but the car was lighter, much more nervous and nimble. It was reacting more like a go-kart compared to an Indycar, plus it had more G-force and was braking a lot later.”

Villeneuve soon found that team-mate Hill had the car dialled in to his driving style.

“It took me a while to get to Damon’s level in qualifying,” Villeneuve admits, despite that debut pole. “He really had a good qualifying set-up and I couldn’t drive his car. It took me a few races to get up to speed, mostly because I was used to the Indycar way where you never build a big lead, you drive within the limits because you’re saving yourself for the safety car. In F1 you drove every lap like a qualifying lap compared to Indycar.”

Villeneuve’s first F1 win came in the European Grand Prix at the Nurburgring, but three more victories followed – in Britain, Hungary and Portugal. It was at Estoril that Villeneuve produced that audacious overtaking manoeuvre in which the Williams swept around the outside of Michael Schumacher’s Ferrari at the Parabolica – a move which Villeneuve predicted to race engineer Jock Clear.

The following season, Hill now replaced by Heinz-Harald Frentzen, Villeneuve seamlessly assumed the role of team leader, winning seven grands prix – the first of which came in Brazil where Jacques claimed pole from Schumacher by over half a second (his pole margin over Frentzen had been a remarkable 1.75 seconds at the previous race in Australia, only to be taken in out in a first corner tangle with Eddie Irvine and Johnny Herbert). The Villeneuve-Schumacher rivalry built across the season, blow and counter-blow, culminating in that infamous assault by the German at Jerez.

Finishing that race third, his car’s battery only just held in place by an electrical cable, Villeneuve claimed the title and ensured his family name would finally be engraved on the world championship trophy.

Villeneuve clinched the 1997 world championship with third in Jerez after contact with Schumacher, and celebrated on the podium with McLaren drivers Coulthard and Hakkinen

Photo by: Rainer W. Schlegelmilch / Motorsport Images

“It was a big statement,” he says. “It happened after I was disqualified from Suzuka [for overtaking under yellow flags] where it gave Michael the championship lead. Everybody thought ‘OK, this is Ferrari’s championship. It’s done’. Nobody thought we would go and win it.”

The fact that Villeneuve had dyed his hair blonde mid-season also seemed to unsettle some of the Williams management, and it drew media criticism.

“A lot of them that thought that I had collapsed mentally because I went blonde just after Montreal,” Villeneuve says. “They thought I was losing my marbles. Patrick [Head] made a few comments that were tough. Like I made a mess of the season because of one race, Argentina, where I barely beat Irvine in the Ferrari. The fact was that I had not eaten for three days due to a bug.”

That Villeneuve would never win another grand prix was down to several factors, starting with both Renault and Adrian Newey moving on from Williams. The 1998 season would net Jacques just two podium finishes. Then came the momentous decision to set up an F1 team in partnership with Pollock, Reynard Racing Cars and British American Tobacco.

"At the moment of signing Craig had a collapse because it meant the whole dream team was collapsing as well. At that moment of weakness, I stayed with BAR instead. That was the first time that I did not follow my gut" Jacques Villeneuve

“It was the next challenge,” Jacques says simply. “It was masterminded by Craig originally. We had the backing, and at that point I put everything I had earned into making the team. I was heavily invested – I think I owned something like one quarter or a third of the team for a time – so I didn’t go there for a salary. It was actually my team that I built and, ultimately, it’s the Mercedes team today.”

Although BAR did not achieve its ambitions, Villeneuve points out that after a hugely disappointing debut season the team scored 10 points finishes in 2000 – results which he feels are overlooked.

Villeneuve remained with BAR through five seasons. His regret is that he had an opportunity to leave after three years to join Renault, a contract having been agreed with Flavio Briatore, but that deal was never signed.

“At the moment of signing Craig had a collapse because it meant the whole dream team was collapsing as well,” he says. “At that moment of weakness, I stayed with BAR instead. That was the first time that I did not follow my gut.”

After disastrous 1999 season, Villeneuve led BAR into the midfield in 2000 and was a regular scorer, taking four fourth-places including at Magny-Cours

Photo by: Motorsport Images

The political landscape within BAR changed in the two seasons that followed, and results remained elusive. Villeneuve moved on. His F1 career would continue with three outings for Renault at the end of 2004 followed by a year and a half driving for Sauber and BMW. It came to a disappointing end after the 2006 German GP.

Although F1 was finished for him, Villeneuve’s passion for racing remained (and remains) undiminished. He has driven in sportscars and at Le Mans for Peugeot, raced in GTs, World Rallycross, V8 Supercars, Brazilian Stock Cars and Formula E. But his favourite?

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“NASCAR, oh yeah!” he says, smiling. “F1 was amazing on the quali lap, to get that perfection with the team. But racing wise, when you get in the NASCAR, I have hardly ever had as much fun. I think that’s also because of the skiing, because the NASCAR is quite a big, heavy, soft car.

“You can drive around the problem. The way you lean on it and attack the corner, if you have some kind of issue, you’ll brake a bit harder or less or you throw the car in. I love the racing in NASCAR because it’s back to being a gladiator.”

These days, perhaps not surprisingly, Villeneuve often gets asked for advice by fathers looking to give their sons a chance to reach Formula 1. He is left cold by the pushy parents.

“For me, that’s always been the worst approach you can have because you never know if the kid is really passionate? Does he really want to do it? Or will he say one day, ‘Dad, actually I really don’t like what I’m doing’?”

Villeneuve remains passionate about motorsport today, winning his first race in EuroNASCAR at Vallelunga last year

Photo by: EuroNASCAR