in 89, I was living in Switzerland and became friends with a guy who was born in Monaco. he says - we;ll go to the race, we;ll leave after work on Friday, and get there late on Friday night ... & "camp" out... I thought we'd just snooze in the car.... so we leave Ch, go over St. Bernard, and head down through Italy back into France and down into Monaco... at about 2:30 AM, pop out right infront of the casino, go down the hill, and over to the sporting club. park the car on a side street, take the sleeping bags and head over to the pier... walk the lenght of th peer - and "camp" on the rocks below.... which are actually huge cement blocks. so remarkably I fall asleep, and wake up about 8:30 with a sea gull standing on my shoulder taking a dump.... that is a side story -they are mean. we wake up, go up to the sporting club to use the bathrooms - get refreshed... and go to the car put the bags away, and voila we are in the middle of the paddock. end up catching breakfast in the Marlboro tent - I knew John Hogan at the time... then my friend says we need to go see his dad and get our passes.. his house ( apt building )is the one right off to the left of St. Devote.. its where all the TV cameras are stationed... that was the best time I've ever had in Monaco. I got to spend most of the day in the pits and the walk way to the pits, basically watched qualifying from the stairway to Rasgasse ... and talked with James Hunt... mostly where to go drinking after.
DeCesaris had huge Marlboro money behind him as he was related to the President of Phillip Morris Europe. while the money was not huge for him, he was able to bring it where other drivers could not. DeCesaris was good early on, but was too wild and erratic. Villeneuve was about the same in the early days, but by 1980, he had fewer off's and destructive moments, but was still hard on the car. by 82, he had figured out how to "lead" and win. had he lived ( a flash of his erratic past) he would have probabbly been world Champion... but I also dont think he would have stayed at Ferrar for much longer - Williams was making huge advances to him. the politcs at Ferrari with Piccinnini were getting crazy and the Old man was not as active as he once was. Forghieri talks about how Villeneuve was finally focusing on car set up vs. driving around the issues. this is where Pironi was better than him.
Tom, i've heard many times that pironi was more regular, more focused, etc...but to me that is bs. take a look at 81 results, the diferenmce ion performance and in points scored is huger,, 25 for Gilles against 9 for Didier, and to wins for Gilles, none for Didier.....Gilles usualy qualified well ahead Didier, many times more then 1s ahead!! In 82 Gilles had Pironi beaten on all the races except for Zolder, at an average 1,5 sec per race!!! Didier was good, very good but he was not in the same league as Gilles, in fact nobody was, since many regarded Didier as the second fastest driver at the time.
+1 His untimely death made Villeneuve enter the Ferrari legend, but the honeymoon with the Scuderia had already ended, IMO.
In todays f1, driving these bullet proof cars Gilles would destroy the oposition given a competitive car.
I agree with that, in fact it´s almost certain that Gilles was in advanced talks with Ron Dennis to partner lauda at mclaren.....can you guys imagine Gilles in 84 and after driving the Mp4? the rest could pack and go home!!!
+1000 ABSOLUTELY! For the most part the Ferrari F1 cars that Gilles raced weren't the class of the field but they were robust. He had an edict to drive the car balls-out until it breaks and he did. This doesn't mean that he didn't possess mechanical sensitivity. He drove (and wrenched) his own Formula Atlantic car with great finesse, his gearchanges were an artform. At his F1 debut as a 3rd driver for McLaren at the British GP he qualified 9th ahead of regular driver Jochen Mass; he was running 7th when he pitted fearing the engine was overheating. Diagnosis was a faulty temperature gauge.
Not in My book it didn't - That was the death of the legend! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtZ0wv1I8yc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOP_ILZqGnU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SmrV-FFC1w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOre43k_ED0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHY6wv0VlsU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKM5b4jpAHk Now that is what made him a legend - Years before his untimely death! Gilles Villeneuve: Too young to die! - Too fast to live!
Always a plesure to review Gilles in action....there simply is no comparaison to any other driver...he was in a league of his own in terms of car control.
It was his "Never give up!" attitude that did it for Me! The first F1 race I ever saw on TV was Zandvoort 1979, when he had the puncture, dragged the car back to the pits with the whole wheel dragging behind the car, and sat there demanding that they fit new tyres to the car whilst the mechanics were trying to tell him: "Fit them to what? .......... There's no wheel on the car!" - He was that determined to carry on! I was 10years old at the time and from that moment onwards I was a Gilles Villeneuve fan and I became a lifetime member of the Tifosi! Then there's the Canadian GP I've posted with Gilles driving the car with the whole nose cone in his face! How many drivers would have given up and retired? - All of them bar Gilles! The car still had 4 wheels, a running engine and a gearbox that worked, so as far as he was concerned, why should he quit? To this day I cannot bear to watch the footage of his fatal accident at Zolder in '82 - It still makes Me cry every time I see it!
These were just the kind of heroics I mentioned previously that meant nothing but made Villeneuve a favourite of the crowd. At Zandvoort 79, some drivers complained later that Villeneuve risked shedding bits of his car on the track by dragging it recklessly back to the pit. In Canada, Villeneuve should have been black-flagged for driving an unsafe car. The rules have changed, and now drivers pit and have their nose cone changed. It's safer for everyone involved.
Yeah!, yeah!, yeah! and some drivers would have cried and b:censored:hed about the wheel banging that went on in Dijon (Arnoux just laughed it off afterwards and said it was great racing!), and some drivers would have moaned about Gilles in Spain holding them up, etc., etc., etc. I'm sure Gilles would be staggered and saddened to see what a bunch of big girls blouses are driving in F1 today! - As soon as someone goes wheel to wheel with them they're on their radios crying to Mommy cause it's not fair! Gilles raced in a time of real men, when they were genuinely putting their lives at risk for the thrill of it, and they didn't just give up at the slightest vibration in the car. You can try and discredit Gilles' racing all you want - It'll fall on deaf ears here! The fact is Gilles was a balls out racer with a "never say die" attitude that puts today's drivers to shame, and he'll be forever loved by the Tifosi!
Well my point is that Pironi was better testing than Villeneuve... Not a better driver over all. Remember he only had 5 full seasons in f1
I think Pironi was on his way to a WDC title at the time of the Hockenheim accident. I also think that on balance he was a better "all-round" driver than Villeneuve to lift a championship; more involved in testings and set up, fast without being flamboyant and surely displaying more personal discipline in his career. Becoming WDC doesn't mean trying to win all the time, but gathering the maximum of points according to the circumstances. I have never seen Villeneuve through rose-tinted glasses, although his driving style with careless abandon, lots of drifting, excessive wheelspin and sideway allure was certainly spectacular and punishing for his car too. Maybe that approach reminded the Commendatore of Nuvolari, who had that driving style, but in a different era. Anyway, Ferrari liked him a lot ... for a moment. Villeneuve was "all or nothing" It seemed to me that he was mostly driving for fun and not the ultimate result, concentrating on his progress but missing completely the big picture. But the public liked that, and he was certainly popular.
Well, he was certainly disciplined in opportunism. . I'm with you on reverence for point gatherers, imagine the horrendous state of F1 if there were 22 Villeneuves out there.
The fact is Gilles was a balls out racer with a "never say die" attitude that puts today's drivers to shame, and he'll be forever loved by the Tifosi![/QUOTE] Amen.
I think many people talk about Gilles without really knowing much about him. When in Snowmobiles, driving for skyroule, Gilles developed himself a front suspension for his snowmobile that later wa adopted by skyrpoule in his own models!! In 76 he won ALL pof the races he entered oin f. atlatic, except one were the engine blew up, because of a mistake his crew made. Gilles was the first guy to arrive in the morning and the last one to leave, hr didn't mind testing, he would sit in the car all day long while mechanics worked on it, His chiefe engineer from F.Atlantica also worked with Lauda and Peterson and said he was the best of the 3, he was much better as a test driver than Ronnie (not as good as Lauda) but combining speed with devoping and setting up a car, Gilles was the best. Dupasquier from Michelin also said Gilles was a very sensitive driver.
