There is no shortage of creativity at French Formula 1 broadcaster Canal+, which recently set up an interview – or should we say ‘questioning’ – with its own pundit Jacques Villeneuve, pretending he was in police custody.
Looking back on his career, the 1997 world champion delved into a few noteworthy aspects and events of his time as a racing driver.
Gilles’ unwanted legacy
Jacques’s father was Ferrari legend Gilles Villeneuve, who won six grands prix before his untimely death in a collision during qualifying for the 1982 Belgian Grand Prix. He was just 32 years old.
Jacques was 11 at the time and was not deterred from motor racing – but felt the weight of expectations on his shoulders, particularly from the media.
“What weighed on me was not being Gilles’ son, because I was super proud of being my father’s son,” Jacques explained. “What weighed on me was that I was never allowed to give a real answer when it came to my father. I was told ‘Oh, you race because you want to perpetuate what your father did, that’s great’. ‘No, I race because I like it’. ‘What? Are you insulting your father?’ ‘No, I like racing, I’m not emulating him’.
“That’s when I realized that too many people – especially older journalists – still lived with that romanticism. Either I said what they wanted to hear or they got upset, so I chose not to answer anymore. I wasn’t free to say what I really thought.”
Giving up on an F1 victory on debut
Reigning Indy 500 winner Villeneuve made a highly scrutinized F1 debut at the 1996 Australian Grand Prix on the all-new Albert Park track. The Canadian became the third and currently latest rookie to get pole position on debut (excluding the first-ever world championship race and the Indy 500), outpacing Williams team-mate Damon Hill by 0.138s. Ferrari’s Eddie Irvine was half a second off the pace.
“The car was competitive, clearly,” Villeneuve said. “Alongside me was Damon Hill, who was super fast and knew the car well. What helped me compared to F1’s current rookies was that we would do miles and miles of testing from January – five days a week we were at Estoril in Portugal. So we got there with a good amount of running under our belt.
“The other thing that played to my advantage was that it was a new circuit; Damon had no points of reference, and that’s how I made the difference. However, in the following two grands prix, I was one second off in qualifying!” Villeneuve’s deficit to Hill was 1.143s at Interlagos and 0.561s in Buenos Aires.
Starting from pole in Melbourne, Villeneuve led for most of the first 53 laps – out of 58 – but had to cede the win to his team-mate due to a technical issue on his FW18, which allegedly put him at risk of retiring from the race.
“Melbourne annoyed me a little bit, because we had the race in the bag,” he added. “There was an oil leak in the corners, the red light was coming on for oil pressure, so the team told me to slow down and let Damon through, otherwise the engine would break down. I found out recently from some engineers that even if I hadn’t slowed down the engine actually wouldn’t have broken down, that it was maybe better for the harmony in the team not to take that risk.”
Villeneuve was however keen to play down any suggestion of a conspiracy.
He also clarified he was not so bothered. “I knew 1997 was going to be my year, 1996 was Damon’s and I had a lot to learn from him. Had it been in 1997 or against another team-mate, I maybe would have minded, but not against Damon. He was here, he was extremely experienced, and I had a lot to learn.”
How he ended up with blond hair
Blond hair has always been, in a way, Villeneuve’s trademark – merely because, although he wore it over a short period of his life, this was when he won the world championship.
“The first time was in 1997, right after the grand prix in Montreal,” he recalled, having retired from his home race when on lap 2 he crashed into the ‘Bienvenue au Quebec’ wall – which would be nicknamed the ‘Wall of Champions’ when three of them hit it in 1999.
“I went home and saw a movie, Trainspotting. I found it very funny, and their hair was bleached blond. ‘Oh, that’s cool, why not?’ I went to my hairdresser’s, said ‘Hey, do this for me’. ‘Are you crazy?’ ‘No, do it.’ But I didn’t let my management know, nor the team, nor my sponsors. We had a photoshoot planned just before Magny-Cours; I got there – ‘Hi, it’s me!’ – and there was a bit of a shock.”
Four months later, Williams-Renault’s French contingent celebrated Villeneuve’s world title with blond wigs.
Schumacher’s post-Jerez betrayal
Jacques Villeneuve’s career highlight certainly was defeating Ferrari’s Michael Schumacher for the 1997 title, in controversial circumstances that would be debated by pundits and fans alike for decades.
“It started in the previous race in Japan,” the Williams driver detailed. “I was nine points ahead, it was 10 points for a win at the time. We almost had the championship in the bag.
“But on Friday morning, on the first out-lap, on the long back straight, there was a car stopped on the side with yellow flags. The car was stopped, fine, we kept going. Then, the stewards decided to disqualify me from the whole weekend. That seemed a little harsh – I never had such a penalty, and there has never been the like since then. All of us at Williams felt a bit like the dice were loaded.
“We still decided to race so that we could potentially appeal. The goal was to drive slowly and for someone to overtake Michael so that he wouldn’t win the race. But all other drivers were scared of playing along, so everyone was driving slowly.”
What Villeneuve didn’t mention is that he had previously ignored yellow flags a little too often, and consequently was under a suspended one-race ban. Furthermore, the incident involving Jos Verstappen’s stricken Tyrrell actually happened on a lap where Villeneuve set a personal best.
Regardless, the incident fired Villeneuve up. “We went to the last race one point down, and that’s when the political games started.
“Schumacher went to Ferrari because Ferrari needed to win, they hadn’t won for a long time. That’s why I then decided to put quite a bit of pressure on Schumacher, reminding the media and the federation how he had won his two championships against Damon Hill. By driving him into the wall,” he added, referring to the decisive collision in the 1994 title race in Adelaide.
After a remarkable three-way tie in qualifying for the last 1997 round at Jerez – with Villeneuve awarded pole position by virtue of setting his time before Schumacher and Williams team-mate Heinz-Harald Frentzen – Schumacher took the lead at the start and led his rival until Villeneuve dove down the inside on lap 48. The German drove into the Williams but failed to take it out of the race and got stuck in the gravel.
“I remember having looked at him. I remember driving down to the braking point and seeing him stood on the wall, watching me. This image really struck me. I was laughing, I was happy!”
All Villeneuve had to do was finish sixth to score one point, and he eventually took third behind the McLarens.
“I slowed down to preserve the car. The mount that held the battery was broken, so the battery was held by two electrical cables only, and it was being tossed around. But I slowed down, I braked earlier, I didn’t go full throttle, I avoided the kerbs. That’s what allowed me to finish the grand prix.”
"Il n'a jamais voulu passer à autre chose. C'était l'ère Schumacher chez Ferrari, il n'y avait pas de place pour un Villeneuve" 😳 Jacques Villeneuve nous raconte TOUTE l'histoire de son duel avec Schumacher en 1997 😍 Inspecteur Dupin, c'est dispo sur nos plateformes ! #F1
— CANAL+ F1 ® (@canalplusf1.bsky.social) 13 April 2025 at 10:04
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However, Villeneuve’s post-race party took an unexpected turn when Schumacher joined to celebrate his opponent’s world championship.
“Michael came with his wife, wearing one of the yellow wigs from the Renault mechanics,” Villeneuve said. “He wasn’t staying at this hotel, he just showed up. He joined me behind the bar, put his hand around me, made cocktails while his wife took pictures. Fair play, the championship’s over, we move on.
“One week later, I woke up to German tabloids with the picture, captioned: ‘Proof I didn’t do anything wrong, Jacques is not upset’. That annoyed me. They used my moment – my party, my championship – as a photo op to absolve him of guilt. That’s what really damaged and prevented any possible relationship.”
Schumacher went on to be disqualified from the 1997 championship by the FIA. Villeneuve still sees him as his greatest rival – but insists he never would have joined the Ferrari driver as a team-mate despite his father’s link to Maranello, as he would not have accepted number-two status and felt there was no room for a Villeneuve alongside Schumacher.
Coming to blows with feisty Montoya
During his short-lived F1 career, which spanned just five years and a half, Juan Pablo Montoya could be quite feisty – both on and off the track. Villeneuve experienced it first-hand at the 2001 Canadian Grand Prix, when the Colombian was a rookie.
“Montoya went out of the pits and blocked me on purpose,” Villeneuve claimed. “My lap was ruined. I slowed down in a chicane to say, ‘Oh!’, and he drove into me, breaking my suspension!
“He said a few things to me that he shouldn’t have, so I grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, the stewards came – that was during the drivers’ briefing – then I explained what he’d said and everything eased off.”
