R.I.P. Gilles Villeneuve [Great photo of JV piloting his father's 312 T4]

30 years ago today. He's definitely his father's son.
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Has he (Jacques) adhered to his history of avoiding mentioning or going into any detail of Gilles?

 

any vids of him driving the thing?

 

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjFpET0vK7g[/ame]

 

I don't think there's been anything posted yet.

 

And I stand corrected.

 

F1 Racing magazine had their Jan 2012 issue with a "Villeneuve Special" title on the cover, headline "Jacques on Gilles", sub-headed "Nearly 30 years on, a son's tribute to a true racer"

It was a pretty good article!

 

By my watch he was doing about 1 min 31 sec... not sure what a 79 F-1 car time is.

 

I was more intersted in the sound!!

Bring back the old engines...please

 

the shame is that it's his only drive in a F1 Ferrari...when it was his destiny to be a Ferrari driver...unfortunately, he couldn't keep his mouth shut and wait for his moment.

shame...

R I P Gilles !

 

Gilles set a Fiorano lap record at 1:08.8 in the t3 in late '78/early '79, but I know the layout has changed at some point, not sure how much...

 

Still slower than his dad then

 

Another vid here:

http://www.youtube.com/embed/yUPS0oQKtMI

 

I look on JV's career as a waste. I feel like he could have accomplished much more but he chased the money and lost motivation...

 

Awesome stuff....nothing sounds better than a flat 12.

 

An F1 Career in Reverse, too bad he didn't retire as Champion at the end of his career.


Back to Gilles, I bought the new Motorsport with Gilles on the cover, he was my first F1 hero and to this day, I think he was the fastest driver that ever lived.

 

Thanks for sharing!

 

Good points Tony - in my book he was one of the fastest if not the fastest. I would wager the fastest to be Ronnie Peterson or Ayrton Senna. But certainly Gilles was the most charismatic, pure and exciting F1 driver ever. Salute!

 

When I lived in the south of France in the 80's, a went to a local bar in a small village. It looked like your typical movie set of what a country French bar looks like. Only locals sat around on a lazy Saturday afternoon.

Before his death, Villenueve used to come there quite often and share drinks with the locals. They had pictures of him on the walls with his signature. He was fondly remembered and was a notorious driver around town. They described his driving habits as crazy.

That's as close to I got to him other than watching him race in Long Beach in 1978. But, I feel I was lucky enough for only that.

 

Thank you Sam, IMHO nobody (including Senna) was faster with what Machinery Gilles had lap after lap, best example was Jarama 1981, one of the most underrated drives of all time and one of the best.

 

I don´t think he was or is underrated (only by a few ignorant people), and i agree, nobody, absolutly nobody was faster than him.
In his days, and if you look at the coments of drivers like Alain Prost, Arnoux, lafitte, Jones, Sheckter, Lauda, Rosberg, Pironi, they all without exception regarded him as tyhe best and the fastest..to me, this is enough.

 

a massive fan of GV but lets not get to carried away.

Pironi was an equal, so were alot of others

I was lucky to watch him at Monaco in 81 and witnessed his driving skills, every lap he would exit St Devote and his rear tyre would clip the armco barrier just enough to kick the car into shape for the climb up the hill....awesome to watch. It was the only way to drive the dog 126 around the track.

 

I´m sorry but a driver that is 1 second slower than his teammate in qualy is hardly his equal....if you look at 1982 qualifying times, the diference between both of them is superior to that until zolder!!!
Pironi was very, very good, but Gilles was simply from another planet.

 

yes, there is a reason why countless Italian towns all have Gilles' fan clubs...

when i was at the Factory in '93, i lost count as i tried to tally up the number of fan club stickers that were posted on the door of Shopping Formula 1 across the street.

nobody else was even in the same galaxy...and it's not just because of Dijon in '79.

as another here has already mentioned, he was acknowledged by his peers as, well, peerless.