In the second of our story-telling specials, Steven Roy turns his previously published guest post into an audio treat, and informs us about the fastest racer ever, Gilles Villeneuve.
"Gilles Villeneuve died on 8th May 1982 during qualifying for the Belgian GP at Zolder. He was in a rage after being betrayed by his team mate in the San Marino GP two weeks earlier. F1 lost the greatest driver of his generation and one of its most popular drivers ever. I decided to write a few words to mark the anniversary and it turned into a bit of a monster. I could easily have written 10 times as much..."
Hello and welcome to the fourth episode in the Races to Remember mini series. Last time we looked at an amazingly close race in the sixties, and today we’re travelling forward more than a decade, but the competition is just as fierce.
On the 1st July 1979, the French Grand Prix was held at Dijon. The track has only ever hosted six F1 races, between ’74 and ’84. After it’s debut on the calendar, it was obvious some changes had to be made as the lap time was under a minute and traffic was a serious problem. By the time our chosen Grand Prix was due, though, that had been sorted, and Dijon was notable instead for it’s fast, sweeping corners.
There was a five week break between the Monaco Grand Prix and the French race, and most of the teams did a lot of testing miles during that time. Renault were into their third year as a constructor, and so far, their reputation was one of unreliability, and very little in the way of results. However, the drivers – Jean-Pierre Jabouille and Rene Arnoux – were given a new car, the RS10 to try and impress at their home race. They got off to a good start by locking out the front row in qualifying - Jabouille first - with Gilles Villeneuve behind them in the Ferrari.
As the pack got away, Gilles made a great start to get ahead of both the yellow cars, with Arnoux falling back to ninth. He spent the first few laps gaining back his positions, but the ease with which he returned to fourth place showed how good the Renault cars really were. For once, the naturally fragile turbos were running well and the cool summer conditions were not putting undue pressure on them.
Arnoux managed to get past one Ferrari to slip into third, whilst his team mate was hustling the other Ferrari for first place. Villeneuve’s lead was falling constantly, and by lap 45, Jabouille had his Renault tucked up nicely behind the red car. Of course, catching your opponent is vastly different to overtaking, and it wasn’t until the pair came across back markers that Jabouille could make his move. As soon as the Renault was in front, the crowd went wild, even more so as Villeneuve’s tyres gave out and he began to fall into the clutches of Arnoux.
When the second Renault caught the Ferrari, on lap 78, it didn’t take long for him to overtake, giving the crowd something else to cheer about. A right kink at the end of a long straight allowed the overtaking manoeuvre. However, at the same place on the next lap, Villeneuve scorched his tyres under braking and shot past the Renault, holding on to take the lead. For one corner. The Renault slipped past again, and then they were side by side, tyres touching, each spending some time on the grass, hustling for the position. As they rounded the last corner, Arnoux slid wide, and Villeneuve got a good run on the finish line. They crossed the line just two tenths apart, with Villeneuve ahead.
Just under 15 seconds before that, though, Jabouille had secured Renault’s first Grand Prix win since 1906. It was also a notable victory as the French Grand Prix was won by a French constructor and engine, running French tyres, with French fuel and driven by a French driver. If that’s not enough, it was the first win for a turbocharged car. That was all completely overshadowed, though, by the spectacular battle for second place in the closing laps. The competition was tough but what made it special was that for once, it was a fair fight. Afterwards Arnoux said: “You can only race like that with someone you trust completely. He beat me, but it didn’t worry me. I knew I’d been beaten by the best driver in the world.”
That’s it for this episode of Races to Remember. As ever, please send me your feedback on this show, this race, or any suggestions you have for future subjects. You can email me christine@sidepodcast.com, or leave a comment on sidepodcast.com. See you tomorrow.
This week, Steven Roy takes us back to the early days of motor racing, when sport and politics still mixed, but talent was all you needed.
Audi Rosemeyer Concept alongside an Auto Union Silver Arrow
Some drivers slide under the door of grand prix racing unnoticed and after serving a respectable apprenticeship get promoted into top drives. Some like Kimi Raikkonen fly through the junior formulae so quickly that they can only be granted a license to compete on a probationary basis. One man never drove a race car of any description before he drove a grand prix car and died a legend less than 3 years after his debut with his entire motor racing career lasting less than 1,000 days.
Bernd Rosemeyer was born in Lingen, Lower Saxony, Germany on October 14th 1909. His father owned a garage and it was here that his fascination with cars and motor bikes began. The more I learn about Rosemeyer the more he seems like a previous incarnation of Gilles Villeneuve. Like Gilles he had what appeared to be super-natural car control. Like Gilles he seemed to have no fear and like Gilles he didn’t stick rigidly to the law on the road. At the age of 11 he borrowed his father’s car to take some friends for a drive and when at the age of 16 he received his driving license it was quickly removed after the police took a dim view to some of his stunt riding antics on his motor bike.
After gaining some speedway experience he started road racing with a private BMW motor bike in 1933. Like Gilles mere details like money were irrelevant but fortunately his brother Job acted as his manager and dealt with contracts and the like. He started winning almost immediately and for the 1934 season he was signed by the DKW motor cycle team. DKW was one of four companies which combined to form Auto Union.
For the 1935 season Auto Union were looking for new drivers for their fearsome rear engine grand prix cars which were designed by Ferdinand Porsche. 12 drivers were selected to take part in trials on the Nurburging. Rosemeyer turned up late dressed in a suit without overalls and when asked why he was so dressed he replied that this was an important day for him so the suit seemed appropriate.
He got in the car wearing the suit and clearly impressed enough to be selected as a junior driver. Bear in mind that experienced drivers struggled to deal with the Auto Unions which handled very oddly as a result of their rear engine layout and that not only had Rosemeyer never driven any kind of racing car but the car he drove that day had ten times the power of any machine he had ever driven. In some ways it is surprising that he ever got a second run. Team manager Willy Walb went out to Muehlenbach corner to observe the trials. Rosemeyer on his first lap turned in at full speed and spun out requiring the team manager to throw himself in a ditch for his own protection. Being a fast learner the next time round Rosemeyer took the corner perfectly. He was soon able to match the times of the very experienced Hans Stuck.
Rosemeyer practically lived at the factory from the second the ink was dry on his contract. He spent his time asking endless questions to anyone who would listen to him. He had a hunger for knowledge about his new career. The first race of the 1935 season was at Avus in Berlin. Avus consisted of two parallel straights (sections of autobahn) of about 2.5 miles in length joined by a hairpin at the each end. Avus was fearsomely quick and definitely not the place for a rookie to make his debut. But Bernd would not be put off by conventional thinking. He started leaving notes around the office for Walb with comments like “Why is Rosemeyer not driving?” and “Where is the car for Rosemeyer?”. Walb eventually relented and gave him a car for the race believing that if, despite all his warnings, he wanted to risk his life then so be it. Despite never having raced a car of any kind, and driving a car that could scare the bravest of men on a circuit that his team manager didn’t think he was ready for, Rosemeyer qualified third but a broken engine put him out of the race.
The next race was the Eifelrennen on the Nurburgring. Rosemeyer was the fourth driver in the team and was supposed to back up the more experienced drivers however all of them had problems and Rosemeyer was let off the leash to chase the leaders. This he did with gusto catching and passing Chiron and Fagioli all the while power sliding the car around the Nurburgring at angles never before seen. Only the Mercedes of Rudolf Caracciola stood in his way but not for long. To the amazement of all, not least Caracciola, Rosemeyer passed him for the lead with three laps to go. Three 14 mile laps. Caracciola the most successful driver of the time sat on the tail of the unknown junior driver unable to pass. On the last lap Rosemeyer mistimed a gear change and Caracciola was through and went on to win by a couple of seconds. On the run from the finish line to the pits Rosemeyer was devastated. He drove one handed while his other fist pummelled the car.
On the basis of that drive he was promoted to full time third driver behind Hans Stuck and Achille Varzi.
Another parallel with Villeneuve is that driving in the manner Rosemeyer did coupled with his lack of experience resulted in damage to his car but like Gilles the mere detail that the car was a bit bent was not going to make him stop, or slow down. A good example came in the Coppa Acerbo at Pescara in Italy. Rosemeyer started from the back row but was soon in second place and challenging for Tazio Nuvolari’s lead. Pushing the car beyond its limits resulted in Rosemeyer leaving the track bursting both rear tyres. After a quick pit stop to replace the rear wheels he continued at unabated pace, locked his brakes and again left the track. The car vaulted over a ditch and passed through the gap between a telegraph pole and a bridge parapet. Despite the rear of the car being badly bent he carried on and finished second to his team mate Achille Varzi. Ferdinand Porsche is reported to have been so amazed that he could get the car through such a gap so he went and measured it. There are various figures reported which range from the gap being narrower than the car to it being 5cm wider.
Some people believe the fact that Rosemeyer had never driven any other racing car an advantage. He had no idea how a proper racing car was supposed to behave so he didn’t realise how bad the Auto Unions were and while to anyone else it took a long time to adapt to the cars idiosyncrasies to him it was all he knew. Like Gilles with the evil handling Ferraris his solution was to grab the car by the scruff of the neck and to drive it sideways into positions it had no right to be in.
His first season of car racing ended with a victory at the Czech GP at Brno. While the win was a significant event in itself, more significant was that on the podium Rosemeyer was introduced to Elly Beinhorn. She was the German version of Amelia Earhart or Amy Johnson. Elly held many long distance flying records and was only the second woman after Johnson to fly solo from Europe to Australia. They met on 29th September and married on 13th July the following year. The daring young racing driver and the fearless aviator were very much the celebrity couple and had been noticed by those in power. Heinrich Himmler ordered Rosemeyer to become a member of the SS. To say the least Bernd was reluctant to comply but at the time had little option. The couple’s only child Bernd junior was born in November 1937 ten days before his father’s death.
Elly was not only brave in an aeroplane. While the Auto Unions were capable of scaring the most experienced of drivers they did not scare Elly. She got in and drove one of these fearsome cars round Monza and later round the Nurburgring in the fog. She also on one occasion got in the car with her husband so that she could experience what the car felt like when he drove. The car we are talking about had skinny tyres, very inefficient drum brakes and a V16 engine in the back that produced over 500bhp. She sat on the edge of the only seat hanging on while Bernd drove the Nurburgring in his usual exuberant sideways manner. She said that her initial enthusiasm was replaced by a conviction that they would not make it to the end of the lap after she was almost thrown out of the car at the first corner. He claimed that he had driven slowly to be safe however he completed the lap in 12 minutes as compared to the 9 minute 46 second time he recorded in qualifying.
While her husband died ridiculously young Elly died on 28th November 2007 a few months after her 100th birthday.
Rosemeyer’s second season did not get off to the most auspicious start as he did not finish any of the first three races, including the Monaco GP which was the first of four rounds comprising the European championship. The rest of the season was much better though with wins in the non-championship Eifel GP and the German GP both of which were run at the Nurburgring. He also won the Swiss GP at Bremgarten and the Italian GP at Monza to clinch the championship. It is hard to comprehend the scope of that achievement. We are not talking of a Lewis Hamilton whose entire life had been dedicated to perfecting everything required to be a world champion. Lewis Hamilton’s achievement in winning the top championship of the day at the second attempt after years of preparation in incredible but Bernd Rosemeyer won the ultimate championship of his day within two years of sitting in a racing car.
The return of Mercedes with Rudi Uhlenhaut’s W125 for 1937 meant that they dominated that year’s European championship with Rudolf Caracciola winning 3 of the 5 races to clinch the championship and team mate Manfred von Brauchitsch winning one of the two remaining rounds. However, as was the norm at that time, there were many more non-championship races than championship rounds and Rosemeyer still managed to record a few victories. He won the Eifelrennen at the Nurburgring in June and the following month travelled to America to win the Vanderbilt Cup. In August he won the Coppa Acerbo at Pescara in Italy and at the beginning of October he won the Donington GP.
As mentioned previously Bernd Rosemeyer was no fan of the Nazis and a good example of this comes from Dennis David’s fabulous website.
“At the German Grand Prix he stunned Mercedes, by taking pole position by six seconds. His race was marred by numerous off track excursions, but still he charged on in the ill-handling Auto-Union. After four hours he finished in third place behind the winner, Caracciola. As they mounted the victor’s rostrum they were congratulated by the ranking Nazi, Adolf Huhnlein. Caracciola was presented with a large trophy depicting the Goddess of Speed. Showing his disdain for bureaucrats in general and National Socialism in particular he placed a lighted cigarette between the statues lips while Huhnlein's back was turned. Alerted by the crowds burst of laughter Huhnlein turned back only to see Rosemeyer's feigned innocence.”
It can reasonably be argued that any death in a racing car is pointless and some are more pointless than others but few have ever been as pointless as Bernd Rosemeyer’s.
In order to maximise the propaganda value of motor racing to the Nazi regime, the Mercedes and Auto Union teams would at the end of the season fit slipstreamer bodywork to their race cars and attempt to set speed records on a closed section of autobahn. It is impossible to underestimate how dangerous this was. At the speeds the cars had achieved by this time if a driver had his steering angled by one degree he would have two wheels on the grass verge in one and a half seconds. That is the margin they had on cars that were bouncing all over the place passing under bridges with central pillars.
On January 8th 1938 Caracciola had broken the flying kilometre and flying mile records that had previously belonged to Rosemeyer. Auto Union had fitted some new basic ‘ground effect’ skirts to the car and not wishing to spend more time than necessary on this utterly futile activity Rosemeyer decided to fit all the new pieces for his first run. On that run he reached a speed of 429.9 km/h or almost 270mph. After that run some apparently minor modifications were made including sealing the skirts. One and a half minutes after having started what was to be his final drive the Auto Union left the road at a speed of 432 km/h. The car somersaulted many times and disintegrated.
Caracciola’s speeds set earlier that morning remain the fastest ever set on a public road.
Such was Rosemeyer’s profile that his wife Elly received condolences from Adolf Hitler and his deputy Rudolf Hess. The Nazis wanted to give him a show piece funeral but Elly said if they did she would walk out of it. He was buried next to his friend Ernst von Delius who had also died at the wheel of an Auto Union. Every year on the anniversary of his death the city of Berlin in accordance with Elly’s wishes places 13 roses on his grave. Bernd regarded 13 as his lucky number.
Few people ever have a car named after them but there must be a very select club who 62 years after their death receive such an honour. In 2000 Audi produced a concept car which unfortunately was never intended for production called the Audi Rosemeyer Coupe. It had clear styling cues from the Auto Union GP cars and featured a mid mounted 16 cylinder engine. It really is a striking car.
Leif Snellman is generally regarded as the premier authority on this period. The following are his thoughts on Bernd Rosemeyer.
“In sheer natural speed and car control, was he the best ever? The only car Rosemeyer ever raced was the monstrous rear-engined Auto Union, a car that even Nuvolari found hard to master. Yet, in a meteoric career Rosemeyer established himself as the world's fastest driver and Germany's most popular GP driver ever. Starting in 1935 he was challenging for the lead in only his second race. In 1936, in his first full season, he clinched the European Championship and forced the mighty Mercedes to retire from racing in the middle of the season. On the infamous Nürburgring track, the ultimate challenge for any driver, Rosemeyer's abilities came to his own. He held the lead every single time he raced there and he finished 2nd, 4th, 1st, 1st, 1st and 3rd. No one (with the possible exception of Gilles Villeneuve) has been able to fully copy Rosemeyer's driving style. In total disregard for the laws of physics the thrill seeking driver, whose favourite number was "13", threw the heavy car around in impossible angles. While he made the occasional mistake, his 10 victories during a time of just two years show his class. Sadly his career was cut short by a 400 km/h crash during a world speed record attempt in early 1938.”
I see no point in providing my own summary as Snellman knows far more than me about the period and the driver than I. I will only say that from my first acquaintance with Bernd Rosemeyer the parallels with Gilles Villeneuve seemed obvious and I am pleased that Snellman has come to the same conclusion. It was only on the second reading of his summary that the full impact of it hit me. “No one (with the possible exception of Gilles Villeneuve) has been able to fully copy Rosemeyer's driving style.” He is saying that Rosemeyer was even more extreme than Gilles. Surely this must be time polishing the memory of a favourite driver. No-one could be more Gilles than Gilles. Could they?
Note: If any one is interested in reading about this era the best source of info is The Golden Era of Grand Prix Racing by Leif Snellman. It is a stunningly good site.
Following on from the success of the first Steven Roy guest post, we invited him back to share some more history. A note from the author: "This was originally written to mark the 26th anniversary of Gilles Villeneuve’s death. I decided to post it here unchanged." Now on with the good stuff.
Gilles Villeneuve died on 8th May 1982 during qualifying for the Belgian GP at Zolder. He was in a rage after being betrayed by his team mate in the San Marino GP two weeks earlier. F1 lost the greatest driver of his generation and one of its most popular drivers ever. I decided to write a few words to mark the anniversary and it turned into a bit of a monster. I could easily have written 10 times as much.
Gilles positions his Ferrari 312T4 at Zandvoort '79
Twenty-six years ago today the fastest grand prix driver there has ever been died. The bare statistics of Gilles Villeneuve’s formula one career are nothing special but few drivers have ever been held in such esteem by both their fans and rivals. Gilles competed for only 4 full seasons, starting 67 grands prix and winning 6. It says much about the manner in which he raced that those of us old enough have distinct memories of so many of those races. It is difficult to think of anyone having such a short career making such an impact. As a comparison Felipe Massa has already started 25 more GPs than Villeneuve did in his whole career.
For those who were not fortunate enough to watch his career it is difficult to understand what he did, how he did it and the effect he had on people. Nowadays we tend to think of a number two driver spending his whole career as a number two. There was a time when young drivers would have a spell as a number two before becoming a team leader. Team orders were very much the norm and in 1979 Gilles was number two to Jody Scheckter at Ferrari. Imagine that Massa was the definite number two at Ferrari last season and Raikkonen after a few seasons running near the front was on course to win the title. That is the situation we had in 1979. Now imagine a race where first practice is so wet only eight drivers decide to risk going out. Raikkonen comes in and admits he had driven so fast that he scared himself; genuinely scared himself and swears to his pit crew that no-one could possibly have gone any faster - only to be told that Massa had beaten his best time and beaten it by eleven seconds. Gilles did that to Jody at Watkins Glen.
"I scared myself rigid that day", Jody remembered. "I thought I had to be quickest. Then I saw Gilles's time and - I still don't really understand how it was possible. Eleven seconds!"
Jacques Laffite (think Mark Webber), on seeing Gilles go out, went round his pit garage urging people to come out and watch because he knew Gilles in those conditions would be something very special.
Some drivers arrive in F1 with barely a ripple while others arrive with a bang. Gilles managed to create an impression in his first practice session. He had started in snowmobile racing and won the 1974 snowmobile world championship derby. Gilles had a reputation in certain quarters of not really understanding the technical aspects of the sport; however, while he was racing snowmobiles he designed and built a revolutionary suspension system which was subsequently copied by all the works teams.
In the 70s it was still common for F1 drivers to compete in other formulae. James Hunt entered a Formula Atlantic race in Canada along with a few other F1 drivers and was so impressed by Villeneuve he phoned McLaren and told them they had to sign him. Gilles won the 1976 Canadian and US Formula Atlantic Championships in a self-run car. His budget was so low that he couldn’t afford the entry to the race at Mosport. He won the Canadian championship again the following year.
At the time it was quite common for F1 teams to run a third car for a young driver every now and then. McLaren signed Gilles for five races starting from the 1977 British GP. James Hunt and his teammate Jochen Mass had the new M26 and Gilles had the tried and trusted M23. Having never sat in an F1 car nor ever having seen Silverstone, Gilles came up with an innovative way to learn the circuit. He knew that this may be the only chance he had to show the F1 world what he could do and he was determined to make the most of it. He decided that the best way to learn the track was to go through each corner a little faster each lap until he spun and then he would back off a little. Initially people thought he was simply out of his depth but as soon as it became clear that he never hit anything and that he recovered each spin without fuss and set off again, people realised he was a bit special. It should be remembered that this was not the modern sanitised Silverstone with all the twiddly bits - this was the old fashioned Silverstone that Keke Rosberg lapped at 160mph a few years later.
Despite lacking experience on a scale that is incomprehensible today, and driving the old car, Gilles qualified ninth, 2 places ahead of Mass in the new car. That in itself is a stunning achievement. Despite his total lack of experience, and the need to create an impression, Gilles noticed the engine temperature rising during the race. Rather than carrying on and blowing up the engine, he pulled into the pits to report the problem and was delayed for two laps while the team diagnosed the problem as a faulty gauge. Gilles returned to the race setting fifth fastest lap and finished 11th. Had he ignored the problem and just carried on he would have finished 4th in an out of date car at a circuit he had never seen before. Despite this incredible performance McLaren released him from his contract and Ferrari snapped him up. Before Ron Dennis took over, McLaren gave both Villeneuve and Prost their F1 debuts and let both go.
1978 was dominated by the ground effects Lotus 79 which immediately rendered the previous season’s championship winning Ferrari obsolete. While it is fair to say Ferrari struggled, Gilles scored his first podium finishing third on the mighty Oesterreichring and in the final race of the season he won the Canadian Grand Prix on a circuit that was soon to be renamed Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.
For 1979 Clay Regazzoni was replaced as Villeneuve’s teammate by Jody Scheckter. Jody had number one status and used that to win the championship. Gilles won 3 races and a legion of fans. He won on Jody’s home ground in South Africa and the US GP West at Long Beach early in the season. At the Italian Grand Prix Gilles sat behind Jody knowing that finishing in those positions would guarantee Scheckter the title. Gilles was outraged when after the race someone suggested he should have passed Jody. He was quoted as saying that it never crossed his mind to break his agreement but that he stared at the back of Scheckter’s car willing it to break. Gilles won the final race of the season at Watkins Glen after that incredible first practice performance. Gilles was happy to stick to the terms of his contract because he knew soon he would be number one and would benefit in the same way.
It seems odd that in a year where a driver establishes himself as a regular grand prix winner and as the fastest driver in the sport, that his most memorable performance should be one in which he finished second. At the same 1977 race Villeneuve made his F1 debut, Renault introduced the turbo charged engine to the sport. In its initial guise it was notoriously unreliable and rapidly gained itself the nickname of the kettle because it boiled so often. By 1979 the engine was much more reliable and powerful. Appropriately at the French GP at Dijon it won its first race in the hands of Jean-Pierre Jabouille and no-one remembers it. All anyone remembers about Dijon 1979 is the titanic battle for second place between Rene Arnoux in the second Renault and Villeneuve in a totally outclassed Ferrari. Fortunately Gilles never recognised the limits of a car or let the laws of physics limit his performance and put on the most incredible display of driving to wrestle second place from Arnoux. Arnoux’s performance that day was very special but what Villeneuve did with that Ferrari was beyond belief.
Jacques Laffite best summed up the view of the drivers of the period when he said "I know that no human being can do a miracle. Nobody commands magical properties, but Gilles made you wonder. He was that quick." I can’t imagine any current driver making a similar comment about any of his rivals.
One of the best examples of Gilles’s refusal to accept defeat or reality came at Zandvoort that year. He suffered a slow puncture in his rear left tyre. This eventually caused him to spin off. Gilles wrestled the car back on to the track and drove it with his usual verve back to the pits with the left rear wheel flailing around breaking bits of suspension and body work. When he slid to a halt in the pits he was furious that his mechanics had not fitted a new wheel. It was only when he stepped out of the car and saw that there was nothing for them to attach a wheel to that he calmed down.
The Ferrari 312T5 of 1980 was a terrible car. It is difficult to comprehend how bad it was. Suffice to say Gilles did things with it that should not have been possible but by this time that was the normal state of affairs. Scheckter managed only one points scoring finish and suffered the ignominy of being the only reigning world champion in history to fail to qualify for a race in Canada. Gilles managed 4 points scoring finishes for a total of 6 points but somehow managed to finish fifth in the race Jody didn’t qualify for. Imagine if we still had qualifying and Raikkonen didn’t manage to do a fast enough time to qualify even on the back row and Massa finished fifth in the race. Unbelievable!
For 1981 Ferrari replaced the unloved 312T5 with the 126CK which housed Ferrari’s first turbo. This was variously referred to as the big red Cadillac, a truck and by Gilles as a s**tbox. Enzo Ferrari believed that cars won races and drivers lost them. He was totally intolerant of any criticism of his cars by his drivers but simply laughed at Gilles’s description. He knew that Gilles took that car to places it never belonged. Gilles was asked by a journalist what he thought of the car. He replied ‘It is a s**tbox. I am not complaining. It is my job to drive it and I will but it is a s**tbox.’ I can imagine how a few team principals would respond to a comment like that today.
Scheckter retired after the 1980 season and Gilles became the number one Ferrari driver as he had always believed he would. His new number two was Didier Pironi who Gilles trusted implicitly, despite being warned by his wife to keep a close eye on him. Joann Villeneuve decided very quickly on first meeting Pironi that he was not to be trusted. If only Gilles had listened to his wife.
The 126CK had a very powerful engine but didn’t like corners. On a straight there was nothing to touch it but it was hopeless when it had to go round any corner. As usual Gilles didn’t let reality get in the way of his adventures and won in Monaco with it. Who else could win in Monaco with a car that didn’t do corners and was only good in a straight line? As Laffite said, sometimes Gilles made you wonder. Clearly he was playing by a different set of rules to everyone else.
The following race was the Spanish GP at Jarama. This race ended in yet another legendary performance. In 1981 a grand prix consisted of 26 drivers leaving a starting grid and driving unaided to the chequered flag. Proper grand prix racing in other words. Gilles won the race by doing his version of the Trulli-train except he was in first position and the train comprised positions two to five. Gilles was lightning quick down the straight but had to drive a defensive line through the corners. He didn’t do it by blocking or making ‘one move’. He drove a perfect, clean line lap after lap after lap and won the race despite having four faster cars on his tail for the whole race. He knew that if he made one small mistake he could drop four positions.
Keke Rosberg best summed up Gilles attitude to racing. "To Gilles, racing truly was a sport, which is why he would never chop you. Something like that he'd look on with contempt. You didn't have to be a good driver to do that, let alone a great one. Anyone could do that. Gilles was the hardest b*****d I ever raced against, but completely fair. If you'd beaten him to a corner, he accepted it and gave you room. Then he'd be right back at you at the next one! Sure, he took unbelievable risks - but only with himself - and that's why I get p****d off now when people compare Senna with him. Gilles was a giant of a driver, yes, but he was also a great man."
Nigel Roebuck commented that all drivers took risks but 'Gilles was the only one working without a safety net'.
Gilles follows Alan Jones in Montreal
The victory at Jarama was his last and stands as a fitting tribute to the man and the racer. He won in a car that had no right to be anywhere near the front of a grand prix. He won in a car he had described as a s**tbox because he knew it shouldn’t be able to run in the positions he put it in, and he won by driving absolutely correctly and by not making a single mistake for the entire race distance.
The Ferrari 126C2 of 1982 was a car capable of winning a championship and Gilles as number one knew this would be his best chance of winning a championship. Despite this he had already made up his mind to leave Ferrari. He had considered setting up his own team which gives a different perspective to Jacques Villeneuve’s BAR adventure. However he was negotiating with McLaren and it was likely that he would have been Niki Lauda’s team mate in 1983. The ‘discussions’ at times were a little too public. At one test session Ron Dennis walked out of the McLaren garage and picked up a pit board and some numbers and put it down facing the Ferrari pit showing 2.5 (meaning $2.5 million per season). After Ron returned to the garage Gilles strolled over and took out the 2 and replaced it with a 3.
We were at the height of the FISA-FOCA war and the start of the season suffered with the drivers strike at Kyalami amongst other problems. The FOCA teams boycotted the San Marino race but the event still went ahead with only the FISA teams in attendance. Gilles led followed by Pironi and Ferrari signalled to them to hold station to save the car. They were winning easily and cars were nowhere near as reliable as they are now so there was no point in taking a risk. Pironi eventually took the lead and Villeneuve re-took it. Gilles said after the race that he thought Pironi was only putting on a show for the crowd and he had expected him to honour his contract in the same way Villeneuve had honoured his when he was number two. However, on the last lap, Pironi dived into the lead and finished first. Gilles was livid and swore never to speak to Pironi again.
Nigel Roebuck was a close friend of Villeneuve’s and tried to phone him in the days after the race. He eventually spoke to him and the conversation became the basis for his Fifth Column in Autosport on the Thursday before the Belgian GP at Zolder. It is the most chilling piece of motor racing writing I have ever seen. Gilles explained that he thought Pironi was putting on a show and that he would let him lead for a bit then pass him and slow the pace. Gilles claimed that the laps he led were several seconds slower than the laps Pironi led, backing up his argument. He said that although both drove Ferraris as far as he was concerned they now drove for different teams and he would treat Pironi as another opponent. He was clearly furious at the betrayal.
The Ferrari management made matters much worse by refusing to state publicly that Pironi had broken his agreement and so Gilles felt doubly betrayed. He was quite clearly not in the right state of mind to be behind the wheel of a racing car at Zolder. In 1982 we still had qualifying tyres. These were very soft tyres which lasted for one lap and in some cases less than a lap. A rule had been brought in which allowed each driver only two sets of qualifying tyres. This resulted in drivers being forced to take ridiculous risks because if they didn’t get a clear lap on one of their two sets of tyres they had to make one.
Gilles may have taken more risks than anyone else but he was well aware of the dangers. "I don't have any fear of a crash. No fear of that. Of course, on a fifth gear corner with a fence outside, I don't want to crash. I'm not crazy. But if it’s near the end of practice, and you are trying for pole position maybe, I guess you can squeeze the fear..." On his second set of qualifiers at Zolder, Gilles had already completed three flying laps and been shown the in board by Ferrari, but he was still going for it because Pironi was marginally faster. He clipped the back of Jochen Mass’s March and was launched into the most sickening accident I have ever seen. Gilles was pronounced dead in hospital that night.
The loss of Gilles was a huge blow to anyone with an interest in motor racing. To those that knew him the blow was enormous. I remember reading Keke Rosberg’s comments about his drive past the circuit on the Monday after the race. "It's the emptiest place in the world after the race. After all that activity and intensity, there's not a soul about. It's dead. Nothing but litter. And parked out there was Gilles's helicopter. Then it hit me. Very hard."
You would not expect Jackie Stewart to be a fan of Villeneuve’s as they were polar opposites in their approach to racing, but JYS recognised his ability. "Oh, I think he's superb, and I believe he'll get better and better. At the moment he still makes mistakes, misses the odd apex, gets up on a curb, uses a little too much road on the way out sometimes, but I'm being hypercritical here. His level of natural talent is phenomenal - there's real genius in his car control." Gilles received plaudits even from those who have made a career of being hard to impress. Niki Lauda said: "Gilles was a perfect racing driver, with the best talent of all of us. He was the best - and the fastest - driver in the world." A lot of people thought he was the fastest driver but to someone as analytical as Lauda he was also the best driver. Can you imagine any driver in the last 20 years saying that about a rival?
Like Nigel Roebuck when some new rule is brought into F1, one of the ways I look at it is to ask if Gilles would approve. Somehow I think he would hate the current set up. He had a very clear idea of how F1 should be. "I love motor racing. To me it's a sport, not a technical exercise. My ideal Formula One car would be something like a McLaren M23 with a big normally aspirated engine, 800 hp, 21 inch rear tyres. A lot of people say we should have narrower tires, but I don't agree because you need big tyres to slow you down when you spin. And you need a lot of horsepower to unstick big tyres, to make the cars slide. That would be a bloody fantastic spectacle, I can tell you. We would take corners one gear lower than we do now, and get the cars sideways. You know, people still rave about Ronnie Peterson in a Lotus 72, and I understand that. I agree with them. That's the kind of entertainment I want to give the crowds. Smoke the tyres! Yeah! I [care about the fans], because I used to be one of them! I believe the crowd is really losing out at the moment, and that's bad." If only he had survived and become FIA President. I much prefer his version of F1 to Max’s strategic chess match.
Gilles didn't just attack a race track without fear, he attacked all aspects of his life in the same manner. The following is from Gerald Donaldson's excellent book on Villeneuve and shows his total lack of fear and innovative approach to problem solving.
'I flew with them in the Wolf helicopter to Fiorano for training. Every time we took off Jody left his heart on the ground and picked it up again on the way back. We were coming back to Monaco when a red light started flashing. Jody said, "What the hell does that mean?" Gilles says, "No problem. Not important." The light kept flashing and Gilles drops us down at the airport to go through customs out of Italy. Gilles goes into airport to sign the papers and Jody pulls out the flying manual and looks up flashing red lights. It said that it means the battery is overheating and might explode. It's a warning and you've got 30 seconds to land!
Gilles comes back and Jody tears into him. "Villeneuve, the f***in' battery is kaput! You aren't gonna take off and kill us all!" Gilles says, "Take it easy, there is no problem", and we take off 3-4,000 feet. We were over the sea coming into Monaco and the light starts flashing again. Then Jody almost flies out of his chair. "Villeneuve, what the f*** are you doing? Stop!" - Because Gilles is cutting the motor off - and we're going sh, sh, sh, sh, sh - then he starts it up again. He's cooling the battery. The rotor is still turning but we drop - zzzzzz - until he starts the motor again. He cooled the battery all the way into Monaco like this and Jody is having a heart attack. He got out of that helicopter as white as sheet and said "F*** you Villeneuve, I'll never get back in that goddamn thing again!" And he didn't.'
His drives from Monaco to Maranello were as legendary as his on-track exploits. He and Pironi would take turns each to see who could keep his foot flat to the floor for the longest, without lifting, with the passenger operating the stop watch. I believe it was Scheckter who said that a normal person would take 5 and a quarter hours for that journey. If you were really quick you could do it in 4 and a half. Gilles routinely did it in 3 and three-quarter hours.
Like Jimmy Clark, Gilles was a mass of contradictions. He drove without fear but never put another driver at risk. He was as competitive as any driver we have ever seen but was loved by his rivals. The other drivers accepted that he was the best but because of his personality there was never any animosity toward him. He was the last true maverick but, in some ways, he was the most modern driver of his time. He was a traditionalist but capable of the most incredible innovation.
As I mentioned earlier, some people mis-interpret his antics in some of the hopeless cars Ferrari provided him with as over-driving or not understanding the technicalities of the sport. In reality the cars were rubbish so he simply took them by the scruff of their necks and forced them to do things way beyond their capabilities. As a result he did not drive nice, neat lines in them - he threw them around because that was the only way to get speed out of them. When he had a good car he drove precisely and accurately but, unsurprisingly, it is his performance in less than stellar machinery that is etched on the memory. There are people who believe that the only way to measure a driver is by what he can do with sub-standard machinery. On that scale, as on many others, Gilles was the best there has ever been.
In the days before the fax or internet were invented, telex was the only way to communicate in writing. Effectively, a telex was a typewriter connected to a phone line. At a time when most of the drivers only thought about their cars while they were sitting in them, Gilles had a telex installed in Monaco and every day sent long messages to Ferrari's secretary with suggestions for improving the car. He not only understood the technicalities of the car well enough to come up with a never ending list of improvements, but he pushed the team into trying them in the manner of Schumacher.
It is unlikely that we will ever again see a driver like Gilles Villeneuve.
Is it a bit too soon to be discussing the Canadian GP already? I do hope not because I've just dug up a fab little video associated with the next stop on the calendar, and if I don't link to it now, I'll lose it again.
The clip below takes you on a short trip around the circuit Gilles Villeneuve, but the difference here is you get to experience it from the air, through the eyes of a remote controlled aircraft. Filming apparently took place a fortnight before the 2006 race, so you can see that most of the trackside furniture is in place, while sections of public road have been roped off.
Admittedly the video is showing it's age now, but two years ago this short film was at the bleeding edge of what is now known as First Person View pilot control, where live images are beamed from a remote camera to a set of goggles attached to your head. Turning left or right repositions the camera mounting so you can literally have a look around!
I've done some searching, but as these things have only recently become commercially available, no-one has yet taken the time to fly around any other racing tracks. It's only a matter of time though and the following film shows just how far the idea has developed in the past two years.
Nobody has ever asked me what I'd be doing if I wasn't working for Sidepodcast, but if they did, I'd tell them that is exactly what I'd be doing.
If I had the money I think I'd grab a set and have me a guided tour of every racing track I could find. Imagine following a Formula 1 test from up there... you wouldn't miss a thing.
Hello everyone, welcome to Days that Shook the F1 World, a series from Sidepodcast that takes a look at some of those important days that left the sport reeling, never to be the same again. Today we’re looking at the 3rd November 1983.
Whilst advocating safety at every opportunity, the majority of people involved in Formula 1 also want more speed. That’s the aim of the game, after all - to maximise speed and beat your rivals because they haven’t found that edge within the regulations like you have.
Ground effects was one of those things.
The basic theory behind the ground effect is to create as much downforce as possible, enabling a car to go faster around corners. By making the sides of the car as low as possible, the air pressure underneath the chassis is lower than that above, which basically glues the car to the track.
Lotus were the first team to introduce the concept to the Formula 1 back in the 1970s.They were helped along by the use of a wind tunnel, which resulted in longer sidepods and consistent ride height, creating a reasonable inverse wing effect.
This effect didn’t necessarily help on the long straights, but when it came to cornering, it left the old style cars in its wake. When Lotus introduced their car in 1978, it won 8 out of 16 races, proving that the new developments would revolutionise the sport.
Other teams began to sit up and take notice and it wasn’t long before the ground effects principal was becoming ubiquitous. By 1982, there were no cars without the technology. Fast races, fantastic cornering speeds, all great stuff.
Except, the cars were inherently unstable.
The forces created by the ground effects were all well and good, if the car managed to stay stuck to the circuit, but once the effect was broken, it had potentially devastating consequences. A wing would then act as a wing should, rising up and literally flying the car off the track.
It wasn’t long before serious accidents started to happen. Drivers were often struggling to keep their cars on track during high speed cornering, and incident after incident culminated in the death of Alfa Romeo driver Patrick Depailler in Germany. Although a lack of safety fencing was deemed the reason for his death, there was no denying that the speed carried through the bend had something to do with it as well.
During this time, the two rival governing bodies the FISA and FOCA were at war, and ground effects was one of the big catalysts for their arguments. After Depailler’s death, the FISA finally forced through a new rule, stating that, whilst in the pits, cars had to have at least 6cm of clearance between their skirt and the ground. Teams very, very quickly got around this, by running their cars close to the ground out on track, and simply raising them up on hydraulics when it came to measurements in the pits. Given the ingenuity of the teams, or the uselessness of the rule, the FISA soon revoked their ruling, and allowed skirts to return to the cars.
Big mistake.
Accidents continued to occur, and although they were excused by other circumstances, they could almost always be traced back to the lower sides on the cars. Then came the tragic death of Gilles Villeneuve, and an accident later in Germany that saw Didier Pironi break both his legs in multiple places. The cause of those accidents could not be brushed aside and it was obvious something had to be done.
In November 1982, ground effects were officially banned with a more explicit rule, stating that from 1983 flat bottoms were required for F1 cars from the trailing edge of the front wheels, to the leading edge of the rear wheels.
Since then, the sport has never looked back. There’s no denying the fact that it was a brilliant piece of engineering, to get the idea off the page, out of the wind tunnel and onto the cars. But the dangers and speeds involved were just too great, and there is no question that banning the principal was the right thing to do.
That’s all for this episode of Days that Shook the F1 World. Please visit Sidepodcast.com to leave your comments and feedback about this and the other shows in this series.
Welcome to Sidepodcast’s History of F1. After the safety concerns of the ‘70s, the ‘80s saw many more steps forward in developmental terms.
The 1980s saw the introduction of turbocharging, which is another banned technology that took the forefront of a lot of the team's attention. The Lotus team were concentrating on the ground-effect principle, whilst Renault re-entered F1 in with the first ever turbo. The technology was new, quick and exciting, but there were reliability problems, and the Renault did not finish an entire race distance until a year after the introduction.
1980 saw the first big disagreement between the two main F1 governing bodies, FISA and FOCA. The power struggle resulted in the Spanish Grand Prix being boycotted, and to avoid such situations in the future, the first ever Concorde Agreement was drafted up in 1981.
1980 also saw Team Williams dominating with their driver Alan Jones, whilst Ferrari were struggling with their own turbocharged car.
Despite the emergence of the turbo technology, Cosworth engines still dominated the grid, with 11 teams under their power in 1982. Turbos continued to improve, but Ferrari suffered more problems, this time with their drivers. Didier Pironi and Gilles Villeneuve were under team orders that Villeneuve should be given preference. Pironi overtook him at the San Marino GP, and Villeneuve decreed he would never speak to his team mate again. This turned out to be tragically true, when Villeneuve was killed whilst qualifying for the Belgian GP. The accident was terrifying, with the Ferrari skidding across the track and throwing the driver from the car, into the sand.
More accidents occurred this year, with Ricardo Paletti, a little known driver in a little known team Osella, killed at the start of the Canadian Grand Prix. He was coming through from the back of the grid, unaware that Pironi, in the Ferrari, had stalled at the front. Pironi also suffered from leg injuries in practice later that year, which put an early end to his racing career.
McLaren brought out a turbo powered car, steered by Alain Prost and Niki Lauda, and in 1984, the team won 12 out of 16 races, and took a record number of points to win the title. Lauda actually pipped Prost to the driver's title, by only half a point. Hang on, half a point? This was due to the Monaco GP that year being stopped because of a massive thunderstorm. Half points were awarded to teams and drivers.
Ayrton Senna joined McLaren in 1988 and took the championship in Japan, despite a deciding race that saw him stalling on the grid. 1989 saw Senna and Prost in-fighting after a broken agreement about not challenging each other on the track. Senna overtook Prost and the pair fell out, and later in the season, the pair collided and went off track. Prost took the championship, whilst Senna's superlicense was revoked, causing him to comment on the manipulation that may have been happening behind the scenes.
Turbo charged engines were banned in 1989, but a couple of years earlier, another major piece of technology was beginning to take shape. 1987 saw the one year that Williams took the crown from seven McLaren titles. But it was Team Lotus that introduced the new "active suspension", that was computer controlled. This technology was the turning point of the sport - from normal-ish cars into more technologically complex machines.
That’s all for this episode of Sidepodcast’s History of F1. Next time we’ll take a look at the 1990s, where it was all about two very different but brilliant drivers.
