Regular readers of dotdotdotcomma may have noticed that we're not the world's biggest fans of french-Canadian former world champion Jacques Villeneuve. You may have found that we are unkind about his appearance, particularly his inability to either shave or grow a beard properly, and his tendency to do stupid teenage things with his hair. You may have spotted that we aren't that impressed with his complete failure really to impress in a car produced by one of the biggest-budget teams on the grid, and you may have picked up that we think that his casual disregard for safety and his reckless fascination with crashing are neither big nor clever.
You may have thought that we were being a bit unfair. But I think you will agree that we have a point when you read his comments on the current influx of new drivers into the F1 circus. Wanker.
Apparently, Jacques got his goat up (well, shag a son goat, as the french say) when he heard that Jaguar F1 rookie Antonio Pizzonia had two accidents at the same corner of the Catalunya circuit in Spain, within the space of a week. Jacques failed to notice that the accidents occurred in two different cars (a Jaguar S-Type road car, and a Jaguar R3 F1 car). But his observation that "even Colin McRae couldn't do much worse" was more than a little hypocritical given his own record in the accident department, which is extensive and always related with the utmost glee by the little tosser.
And let us not also forget that, despite his testing experience, Antonio is a relative newcomer to driving F1 cars (particularly the floppy R3 which must be rather different from the precise BMW.Williams that he's used to) and certainly different from driving S-Type Jags at 120 mph. Jacques Villeneuve, of course, would never have a needless off, especially in a car he was used to that was built by a bunch of his mates especially for him, on his favourite corner of his favourite track that he's always boasting about being able to take flat with no problem. I refer of course to his memorable coming off at Eau Rouge in qualifying for the Belgian GP in 1999. And even then, Ricardo Zonta did it better. (As an aside, your editors would be very interested to hear from anybody who has a downloadable movie of the marvellous split-screen replay of both drivers going off on that occasion.)
Not content with this load of nonsense, the fuzzy-faced canuck went on to describe F1's recent spate of rookies as corporate robots, criticised their lack of character and lamented the loss from the sport of rentaquoters like Eddie Irvine.
Well, Eddie wasn't always so lippy, but he's been in F1 since the early Mesozoic, so it's understandable that he's a little jaded, and it's also understandable that his bosses just about put up with them - but it's a fine line between maintaining media interest and just being a grumpy old man.
Jacques himself, of course, is in a rather privileged position. His outbursts have been forgiven since his early days in F1 because (a) he won the piss-easy 1995 IndyCar championship, and (b) his dad was a truly great racing driver. His now legendary bullshit would be more forgivable if he'd reflected the performance of his stupidly-accented bouche with performances on the track. Let's have a look at his career. He spent three years trying to cut the mustard in Italian F3 (not as challenging as its British counterpart) and never won the championship. Never even finished in the top 5. Then he moved onwards and upwards to... Japanese F3 (oooooh - all the decent Japanese drivers are, of course, in British F3), which he still fails to win. He goes on to the Toyota Atlantic Championship (the what?), and fails to win that too. In 1994, he returns to North America to take up Indy racing, where, as rookie-with-a-famous-father of the year, he manages to finish sixth overall, and the following year he goes on to win the IRL, the easiest "world-class" championship in motorsport. He reaches the pinnacle of motorsport with an F1 seat alongside Damon Hill in what was clearly the best car on the grid, the Williams Renault of 1996. The Williams was still clearly the best car in 1997 (as is proved by the fact that usually mediocre Heinz-Harald Frenzten came second) when Jacques managed to pull off the championship. After that, he went on to prove his ability in a car that was designed for him by a bunch of his mates with one of the biggest budgets in the business. And he failed to score a single point in their debut season. His record since then has been mediocre to say the least.
Except that his record of talking complete and utter bollocks has remained fairly consistent.
So, F1's newer drivers may be keeping a low political profile in order to maintain the interest of their teams and sponsors, but they seem to be doing better than Jacques on the track (his days of Williams' glory excepted). Witness, for example, Mark Webber's points-scoring debut in a Minardi of all things. Which leads me to suspect that his criticism stems from feelings of personal inadequacy when held up against these extremely talented young chaps, and the fact that he has insisted on exclusive use of the BAR T-car next year is surely a reflection of his nervousness about racing against Jenson Button, a man who has also failed to win a F3 championship, but didn't bother trying a second time and just went straight into F1. That must be galling for Jacques.
All in all, Mark Webber summed it up nicely when he told Motorsport News "I don't know why he's having a pop at the young guys - perhaps he's just been a bit short of publicity lately."
Quite. Jacques Villeneuve, you're crap, you're overrated, you're overpaid, and you're over here. Now fuck off. |
