Villeneuve: the Facts & Stats

For most world champions, their careers follow a broadly similar path - enter F1 with one of the less fancied teams, catch the attention of the right people, get into one of the top cars and win the title, before maybe a couple more wins and a last hurrah ushers in retirement, legacy secured.

Befitting his reputation as a maverick, Jacques Villeneuve's F1 career went in exactly the opposite direction, making his ten-year stint in F1 appear less successful than it has been, despite posting better numbers than a lot of other champions (163 starts, 11 wins, 13 poles, 9 fastest laps).

The son of one of the most revered drivers in history, Villeneuve coincidentally wore the same numbers 12 and 27 made famous by Gilles during his two seasons of IndyCar racing, winning five races in total.

He was Indy 500 rookie of the year in 1994, and became the first Canadian winner of the event in 1995 despite being given a two-lap penalty for overtaking the pace car. This led to team owner Barry Green's memorable post-race quote: "we just won the first 505-mile race!" The 24-year-old Villeneuve sealed the title at the final round at Laguna Seca, becoming the youngest man to win the IndyCar title at the time.

While sentimentality might have led him to a Ferrari drive for 1996, it was Frank Williams who eventually signed him, becoming just the fourth "second-generation" driver in history, after David Brabham (1990), new teammate Damon Hill (1992) and Michael Andretti (1993). It proved smart in the short term, as Adrian Newey's FW18 won 12 races, making it the most successful Williams chassis ever.

Villeneuve's debut at the 1996 Australian GP still stands as one of the best in F1 history. Not only did he join Mario Andretti (USA 1968) and Carlos Reutemann (Argentina 1972) in taking pole position for his first F1 start, he was also the first to do so away from his home country.

He came within five laps of emulating Giancarlo Baghetti (France 1961) in winning at his first attempt, but an off-track excursion led to a critical drop in oil pressure, forcing him to settle for second. It would have made him the only man in history to take pole, victory and fastest lap on a debut, assuming we discount Giuseppe Farina from all of the above - he did all three at the inaugural championship race at Silverstone in 1950.

The Canadian eventually won on his fourth F1 start at the Nurburgring, and added victories at Silverstone, Hungaroring and Estoril as he he threatened to become the first-ever rookie world champion (again, discounting Farina). In the end, the crown went to Damon Hill, but only after Villeneuve forced a last-round decider.

As with his IndyCar career, Villeneuve would win the championship in his second season, scoring seven wins and surviving Michael Schumacher's notorious last-round assault at Jerez in doing so.

Without downplaying the achievement of winning a world title, it's fair to say Jacques made heavy weather of it. He won with a score of only 81 points, the second-lowest since the introduction of 10 points for victory in 1991. By contrast, Alain Prost scored 105 points in 1988, a season with one less race and one less point for a win - and he didn't win the championship!

Villeneuve was again driving a car (the FW19) that held an advantage over his competitors. This was never more proven than at Albert Park, where his pole time was 2.1 seconds quicker than anyone other than teammate Heinz-Harald Frentzen. That said, even Frentzen couldn't get within 1.7 seconds of his benchmark, and Villeneuve would outperform the highly rated German throughout their two seasons together.

His '97 triumph drew an era of Formula One to a close, giving Williams the last of their seven drivers' and nine constructors' championship titles to date. He took the team's 100th win (Britain '97), 100th pole (Argentina '97) and 100th fastest lap (Portugal '96), while his 11 wins, 13 poles and 23 front row starts for the team rank third in each category, beaten only by team stalwarts Nigel Mansell and Damon Hill.

Jacques Villeneuve, Williams-Renault, 1997 Grand Prix of Monaco © LAT

It was also last of six consecutive world championships for Renault-powered cars, and Renault continued to play a large role in Villeneuve's career (or should that be vice versa?). In both 1998 and 1999 he used a re-badged Renault unit, and he teamed up with them again briefly at the end of 2004. He started 68 races using Renault-based engines, beaten only by Rene Arnoux and Giancarlo Fisichella in the manufacturer's history, although Fernando Alonso will tie him at the upcoming Chinese GP.

After a mediocre 1998 season at Williams, in which he could only manage two podiums, he switched to the new British American Racing team for the '99 campaign, as the team boldly aimed to join Mercedes-Benz (France 1954) and Wolf (Argentina 1977) as winners of their first Grand Prix, something Villeneuve had so narrowly missed doing himself.

As it was, the season was an unmitigated disaster, with the team failing to score a point. It certainly wasn't all of Villeneuve's doing, retiring while in the points three times throughout the season, and only making it to the flag three times in 16 races. It made him the first former world champion in history to go pointless in a full season.

For 2000, the team were able to ditch their outdated Supertec (nee Renault) engines in favour of the first works effort from Honda for eight years, and while Villeneuve put the car in the points seven times, he missed out on a likely podium at Monza when the electrics failed.

BAR's first podium arrived courtesy of Villeneuve's third place at the 2001 Spanish GP, albeit fortuitously, as race leader Mika Hakkinen retired on the last lap. Jacques added a further podium in the attrition-hit German GP, which remains his last podium finish in F1. These results hid BAR's loss of competitiveness relative to 2000, a slide which continued in 2002, before Geoff Willis's first design for the team appeared in 2003.

His personality clash with former team principal Dave Richards through the 2003 season was well reported, and matters came to a head in the period after Indianapolis, a race in which teammate Jenson Button had led BAR's first ever laps before an engine failure.

It was announced shortly afterwards that Villeneuve would not be retained for 2004, and taking the opportunity to jump before he was pushed, Jacques promptly failed to show up for the final round at Suzuka. In a manner comparable to his current situation with BMW-Sauber, it was assumed his F1 career was at an end.

Less than a year later, and Jarno Trulli's equally acrimonious departure from the Renault team was a trigger for Villeneuve's return to the paddock. While outperformed by Fernando Alonso in all three outings, he did at least out-qualify the Spaniard at Suzuka, and lapped comfortably quicker than him throughout the closing 20 laps of the Brazilian GP.

2005 saw the beginning of his two-year deal with Sauber, and a reunion of the Villeneuve name with the Ferrari engine. While it started well - fourth on the grid in Melbourne was his best for any race in five years - he struggled to come to terms with the car and was overshadowed by Felipe Massa. As much as BMW seemed to dislike the prospect of continuing with him in 2006, they eventually did so.

Jacques lived up to expectations this season, finishing in the points four times and retiring from a points-paying position on two other occasions. He outqualified Nick Heidfeld 7-5, scoring the team's best start of the year at Indianapolis (6th), and the drivers were tied at 6-6 when comparing their personal fastest laps, with Jacques having been quicker than Nick in their last four races together.

Jacques Villeneuve, Sauber-Petronas, 2005 Grand Prix of Canada © LAT

With 163 starts, Villeneuve is the most experienced F1 driver ever to come out of North America, although he was winless in his final 132 starts. Had he ever taken another victory, he would have shattered Riccardo Patrese's record 99-race winless spell between the 1983 South African and 1990 San Marino GPs.

Villeneuve seems to bring good luck to any team that parts company with him. The season after he left BAR, they finished second in the constructors' championship, the only time a team other than Ferrari, Williams, McLaren or Benetton/Renault have finished that high since Brabham in 1981.

After Jacques' cameo role with Renault in 2004, they put both drivers on the podium for the first time in 22 years at the 2005 season-opener, before going on to win both titles for the first time in team history. Just to rub it in, his departure from BMW-Sauber before the Hungarian GP coincided with their first podium for three years!

The lack of a major home victory is perhaps the only thing missing from Villeneuve's CV. His father won the first Montreal F1 race in 1978 and was second the following year. He also finished 5th from 22nd on the grid in 1980, and even after losing the front wing in the 1981 race, still finished third. By contrast, Villeneuve Jr. failed to score a point in any of his last nine appearances on home soil, although he finished on the podium in 1996 and won the Toyota Atlantic support race as long ago as 1993.

While Villeneuve's last official lap led is the penultimate lap of his championship-clinching 1997 European GP, that wasn't his last time at the front of a Grand Prix. He led the 1998 Canadian GP for all of 100 yards, when he made an ill-judged pass of Giancarlo Fisichella that sent him straight into the gravel trap! His 633 career laps led are still more than Kimi Raikkonen (624), Ralf Schumacher (401), Fisichella (196) and Jenson Button (104).

With all this accomplished, what else does Villeneuve have left to achieve? He stands alongside Jim Clark, Graham Hill, Mario Andretti and Emerson Fittipaldi as the only men to win both the Indy 500 and the F1 World Championship.

Of those, only Andretti added Daytona 500 success, while Hill was the only one to win the Le Mans 24 Hours. At age 35, Villeneuve still has plenty of opportunity to underline his place in racing history, with or without Formula One.