(Motorsport-Total.com) – When stars die young, they inevitably remain forever young in the collective memory. They embody romanticized notions of heroism and self-sacrifice. For motorsport fans, Gilles Villeneuve’s spectacular and aggressive driving style became the epitome of what defines a racing driver. His death at the age of 32 during qualifying for the 1982 Belgian Grand Prix in Zolder cemented the myth of the tragically fallen hero.
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The truth about the man behind the legend is, of course, much more complex. This also explains why his son Jacques Villeneuve resisted comparisons so vehemently when he entered Formula 1 in 1996. (Jacques Villeneuve in the Formula 1 database!)
A new biopic about the previously untold story of his father, “Villeneuve: Rise of a Legend,” will have its world premiere on September 19 at the Toronto Film Festival. The film will be released in cinemas in Canada in November. The worldwide release is planned for next year – 50 years after Gilles Villeneuve made his Formula 1 debut at the 1977 British Grand Prix in a McLaren. (Gilles Villeneuve in the Formula 1 database!)
The film focuses on the years before Gilles Villeneuve became a Ferrari icon: an eventful journey full of personal and professional setbacks. Jacques’ sister Melanie is the film’s producer.
Why Jacques Villeneuve was reluctant to talk about Gilles Villeneuve
“Talking about my father was never a problem for me,” says Jacques Villeneuve in an exclusive interview with Motorsport-Total.com. “The problem was that [journalists] were not interested in my answer. Or in my way of thinking. They didn’t care at all.”
“They just wanted to hear: ‘I carry the torch because my father couldn’t finish what he started, and that’s why I do this.’ No. I race because I love motorsport. Plain and simple.”
“I loved my father. I am proud of him. He was incredible and achieved great things. But I do my own thing.”
“I don’t race because I want to be the continuation of Gilles Villeneuve. That’s perfectly fine. But people got angry about that. So at some point, I said: ‘Okay, then I don’t want to talk about him at all anymore because it’s pointless. There is no constructive discussion. You don’t really care anyway.'”
Gilles Villeneuve lived his life – far away from the family
Jacques Villeneuve had just turned eleven when his father died and spent much of his youth in a boarding school. His parents’ marriage was under considerable strain because Gilles Villeneuve was obsessively focused on his racing career. (Photo series: The Formula 1 career of Gilles Villeneuve)
The Formula 1 career of Gilles Villeneuve
“When he died, I had hardly seen him for one or two years,” says Jacques Villeneuve. “He actually didn’t live with us. It was a very strange situation.”
“That’s why sometimes I don’t know if something is a real memory or a memory that was told to me during my childhood – mainly by my mother back then. That makes it very confusing. So now it’s nice to be able to make some connections. And I think the film portrays these formative years quite accurately.”
The difficult legacy of racing driver fathers
Other Formula 1 world champions with famous racing driver fathers also struggled with their legacy. They had different reasons for entering motorsport – and a difficult relationship with their fathers’ legacy.
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Jacques Villeneuve’s former teammate Damon Hill, for example, worked as a motorcycle courier for a time after the death of his father Graham Hill in a plane crash and the resulting financial difficulties heavily burdened the family.
Nico Rosberg’s father Keke Rosberg, 1982 world champion, largely stayed in the background during his son’s karting career and later hardly appeared publicly. Nico could have become an engineer but declined a study offer from Imperial College London to focus on racing.
Why Jacques Villeneuve got himself a “tank”
Children of successful racing drivers often struggle with the pressure of expectations when they pursue a similar career. “But if you do this sport for the wrong reasons, you will never make it,” says Villeneuve. “You really have to love it yourself, deep down inside. You have to be ready to take the hits because you get a lot of them.”
Formula 1 world champions who never drove for Ferrari
“The stopwatch brings you back down to earth very quickly. The question is: How do you deal with it? Especially in the formative years when you start in Formula 3. That’s when you get the toughest defeats. That’s why you have to get yourself a kind of tank,” explains Jacques Villeneuve.
It happened the same way for him. “But that gave me the freedom to just be myself and not really carry that burden with me. And I think I unconsciously took a lot from my father in that regard. Not because of the way he was as a racing driver, but because of the way he was outside the race car. Because he was exactly the same person. At home, he was just like on the racetrack and in the race car.”
Gilles Villeneuve was above all one thing: selfish
“Whatever he did: He was always very selfish when it came to what he wanted to do at the moment. He loved his family, but he was the one who wanted to play with his pickup when he wanted to drive up a mountain. And only that mattered. We could play with him if we joined in with his things. As a boy, that was of course super cool. If I could ride with him in his pickup, I was in paradise.”
“But at the same time, I could observe his attitude towards risk: always pushing to the limit, but with respect. Respect for the opponents. And always with the desire to conquer the next challenge.”
“Often it was simply about showing others: ‘I can do it, you can’t.’ Because basically that was his life story: ‘I can do it, you can’t.’ Even when he bought his helicopter, he tried to do loops with it because someone told him it wasn’t possible.”
Jacques Villeneuve admits: “In this respect, I took a lot from him. But I had a different upbringing. That’s why I think I could calculate the risk a little better.”
“But I don’t have many memories of him as a father. I don’t know if that’s because those memories don’t exist or if I just repressed them after his death. Maybe that was my way of coping.”
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