Gilles
Villeneuve

Gilles Villeneuve was born on 18 January 1950 in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu in the Canadian province of Quebec and grew up in Berthierville. He raced snowmobiles with success and won the World Championship Snowmobile Derby in 1974. In cars, he gained his licence at the racing school at Mont-Tremblant and won the regional Formula Ford championship in Quebec in 1973. He then moved up to Formula Atlantic, where he took both the American and Canadian titles in 1976 and the Canadian title again in 1977.

In 1976 he beat James Hunt, among others, in a non-championship Formula Atlantic race at Trois-Rivières, and McLaren responded by offering him Formula One outings. He made his debut at the 1977 British Grand Prix, qualifying ninth and finishing eleventh. He then joined Ferrari for the last two races of that season, after Niki Lauda had left the team. In Japan he collided with Ronnie Peterson, and Villeneuve's car landed in an area closed to spectators, where a spectator and a marshal lost their lives. In 1978 he retired from many races, often because of trouble with the new Michelin radial tyres. At the season finale in Montreal he took his first Grand Prix win, and he ended the year ninth in the championship.

In 1979 he partnered Jody Scheckter, won three races and briefly led the championship after back-to-back wins at Long Beach and Kyalami. In France he fought a close, wheel-to-wheel duel with René Arnoux for second place over the final laps. At the Italian Grand Prix he stayed behind Scheckter, which ended his own title hopes. He finished the season as runner-up, four points behind his team-mate. In 1980 he scored six points and was fourteenth in the standings. In 1981, in the new turbocharged Ferrari 126C, he won at Monaco and in Spain and finished seventh. In 1982 he fell out with team-mate Didier Pironi over the finishing order at the San Marino Grand Prix. On 8 May 1982 Villeneuve was involved in a collision with Jochen Mass's car during qualifying for the Belgian Grand Prix at Zolder, and died as a result.

In Formula One he started 67 races, winning six of them, with 13 podiums and two pole positions. The circuit on Montreal's Île Notre-Dame has carried his name since 1982. He was inducted into both Canada's Sports Hall of Fame and the Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame. His son Jacques became Formula One World Champion in 1997, the first Canadian to do so.

Source: Wikipedia, “Gilles Villeneuve”. Text licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.