Rarely in the history of Formula 1 has a driver had such phenomenal initial successes as Jacques Villeneuve. The 24-year-old Villeneuve was thrust into the Formula One spotlight by Bernie Ecclestone, who well understood the enduring global appeal of that surname and moved heaven and earth to fit it into a winning Williams-Renault in 1996. The 24-year-old Villeneuve became only the third man, after Mario Andretti and Carlos Reutemann, to qualify on pole for his first Formula 1 championship Grand Prix. Without an oil leak that led to the appearance of the “Slow” sign five laps from the end of the race at the 1996 Australian Grand Prix, JV (as he called himself) would have become only the second F1 driver after Giancarlo Baghetti. to win in the championship on his F1 Grand Prix debut. Instead, he finished second behind his teammate Damon Hill, who had already won 13 Grands Prix. Jacques won four Grand Prix victories that year and seven the following, winning the 1997 Drivers' World Championship.
As we watch him now, a quarter of a century after those heady days, dispensing F1 TV expertise in pit lanes and paddocks, bald and bespectacled, often with a mysterious expression, unmolested by journalists or even spectators, it's easy to forget that in the same places In his heyday, he was harassed by fans begging for autographs and besieged by media looking for quotes. He was peroxide blonde and wore oversized and therefore comically baggy overalls for reasons that were never clear, other than perhaps they matched the grubby street clothes he preferred. He usually refused such requests and was encouraged to do so by his manager Craig Pollock, who was new to motorsport and therefore much ridiculed, especially by the media.
“If you try to get past there, we’ll have to get you out of the barrier.”
Nonetheless, press purists were fond of Jacques in his early F1 days, particularly those who had known his father Gilles, who had not only been a highly committed Ferrari driver in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but also became one Formula 1 demigod, as soon as his life came to a violent, tragic and early end in Zolder in 1982. At first JV seemed to be just a little different from the old way. His F1 debut at Albert Park in 1996 had impressed everyone. But six months later he achieved something truly extraordinary for the first time in Estoril. He fought with Michael Schumacher for the lead at the Portuguese Grand Prix, hurled his Williams past Schumi's Ferrari on the outside of Schumi's Ferrari at the entrance to the long and fast 180-degree right-hander before the pit straight on lap 16 and clung to the steering wheel with a man who was already notorious for giving no mercy, gaining a lead he would never lose again. It later emerged that he had told his engineers and mechanics the day before that he thought he could overtake there and they had laughed at him. Specifically, one of them said: “If you pass someone there, we’ll have to go down there and get you out of the barrier.” But he did it. Against Schumacher. It was remarkable.
Villeneuve alongside Schumacher as the 1997 title is decided in Jerez…
Grand Prix photo
The next year, 1997, he not only won the F1 World Championship, but also dominated the man Frank Williams had hired to replace his new world champion Damon Hill: Heinz-Harald Frentzen. Frentzen was undoubtedly talented and was widely considered a future star in the mid-1990s. In fact, the experienced sports car star Jochen Mass publicly stated in 1990 that Frentzen was the fastest of his three young teammates in the Sauber-Mercedes World Endurance Championship. The other two were Karl Wendlinger and Michael Schumacher, so that was really high praise. Nevertheless, Villeneuve won seven Grand Prix for Williams in 1997, Frentzen only won one.
The 1998 Williams was a mediocre car, incongruously painted red with yellow and white stripes, which made it look more like a 1996 Ganassi Reynard-Honda IndyCar than a 1998 F1 car, the state of the art new by Adrian Newey in 1998 was described in the form of the sleek, silver and super-fast McLaren MP4-13, which won nine Grands Prix that year, while the Williams FW20 won none.
Then Villeneuve made a sudden, unnecessary and career-damaging bad decision, influenced by Pollock (certainly) and the desire to make a lot of money quickly (probably). For 1999 he joined a brand new team called BAR, whose boss Adrian Reynard had bragged before the season that the new team might win its first Grand Prix, but instead had to endure the humiliation of seeing it fail Only world goal scored championship point all season. The following year, 2000, was better, but Villeneuve still couldn't achieve a podium finish, let alone a race win. In 2001 he came third in Barcelona and Hockenheim, but these two promising results were only deceptive: neither in 2002 nor 2003 did he achieve a podium finish, and even points-scoring finishes were rare. His five years at BAR had been a disaster, and by 2004 the 1996 and 1997 superstar was, incredibly, unemployed and at the end of the year drove just three Grands Prix for Renault, whose unpredictable team boss Flavio Briatore had sacked Jarno Trulli after his home grand -Prix (Monza) and urgently needed a gap.
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