TIPPING POINT:JACQUES VILLENEUVE is 41 today. That name mightn't mean much to some of you kids. It is, after all, 15 years since he won the Formula One world championship, and half a dozen since he left F1, disillusioned with the sport's politics and bored of squiring Danni Minogue in between doing for millions of bucks what most of the global male population would give their souls to do for nothing.
So while his old rival Michael Schumacher tears around Shanghai this week, practising for the Chinese Grand Prix, Jacques will be . . . who knows? Winding down from his birthday party?
Last I heard, this scion of Formula One royalty was gunning around Nascar circuts, that spiritual nirvana of American hickdom. Before that there was even an album he released, called Private Paradise. It was so private it reportedly sold less than a thousand copies. That had to sting. Or maybe Jacques is different. He always did seem a bit detached, even when living out the dreams of lesser mortals. Villeneuve’s public persona combined the wry detachment of a wealthy upbringing with a willingness to speak out in everyman terms, a duality probably helped by having been brought up in Monaco, that famously sunny place for shady people.
His legendary father, Gilles, based the family on the Mediterranean while he carved out a meteoric F1 career that ended all too soon when he was killed in a crash. His son was 11. Villeneuve snr’s path to F1 had been aided by James Hunt, the famously flamboyant ex-world champion whose on-track wildness extended to off the track too. So Villeneuve jnr probably had certain expectations when he entered F1 just after having won the Indy 500 in 1995.
Digging up old interviews and reading them through the prism of hindsight can be dirty pool, but there is something to be gained from examining what Villeneuve protested just before getting out of the world’s elite level of motor racing. “You want to know why Formula One is so boring now?” he said, asking the perennial question of the brmm-brmm business. “It’s obvious. There are no heroes in racing these days. It’s nothing to do with the sport being one-sided and Ferrari winning all the time. It’s just because there are no heroes. All these corporations don’t want their drivers to ruin their image, so you can’t say what you think. You’re basically not allowed to have a personality. How can you have any heroes if you don’t allow personalities?” Take out Ferrari and stick in McLaren, or Red Bull or whoever, and you have the same plaintive moan about F1 that has resonated for decades. On the face of it, the world’s most expensive sport sells itself on its drivers, often a difficult sell since most of them have all the personality of a crankcase ventilation valve, and are more petrified of offending a sponsor than they are of an open flame at a fuel pit-stop. Playing the heroism card is tough, too. It would be easier to acclaim Sebastian Vettel in heroic terms if his ability to drive quickly was transferred to manoeuvring a loaded ambulance through an Afghan minefield.
But Jacques was probably hankering for a less complicated age when driving heroism was measured in terms of how many vodka shots you could neck before getting into a glorified blow-torch for a couple of hours, passing the chequered flag in a blur of speed, and then passing out on a garland of dolly birds.
They were men of their age, Hunt, Nelson Piquet, Sterling Moss, all personalities capable of putting in plenty of plucky work with the elbow, whatever the circumstances. Even then, though, certain realities pertained, the most important of which was that no amount of macrobiotic dieting, alcohol abstinence and rejection of female company could compensate for a car with all the velocity of a concrete block. Just like no jockey can get the job done without a suitable horse, no driver can beat another without a decent car, no matter how skilful, determined and heroic he might be. As with the ponies, it’s all about the horsepower.
The guys in the cockpit might be the face but it’s all about the grunt under the bonnet. If you don’t get that, you don’t get Formula One.
Fortunately for Bernie Ecclestone’s bank balance and Max Moseley’s leather collection, if there are two things that much of the world seemingly can’t get enough of, they are gadgetry and money. Take the drivers out of the equation and motor racing is really a nerd-fest, concerned as it is with all things technical and mathematical. In fact, boil it down to the bare nuts and bolts, and the testosterone-charged machismo in Shanghai this weekend is really a thick-lensed, wall-eyed exercise in geeky problem-solving.
Behind his public playboy inclinations, that’s probably something Jacques privately understands very well. After all, you don’t get to be a world champion at anything unless you are capable of fitting right in, and Villeneuve once proudly admitted to being a computer nerd. In fact, Minogue, his former fiancée, once claimed she could not compete with Villeneuve’s “24-hour computer game benders”, when he would lock himself away in a room. Danni probably lacks the humility to wonder whether that had anything to do with her. But Villeneuve even looks like a geek, all big glasses, receding thatch, the works. If he didn’t drive, he appears just the type to be back at HQ, twiddling knobs and testing carbon-fibre, the basis of much of F1’s claims to be at the forefront of technological advancement that improves the lot of us all.
McLaren, for instance, have worked with the military establishment in Britain on vehicle seats that will be better able to absorb the impact of mine blasts.
Improvements in carbon-fibre cockpit technology to increase driver safety have also resulted in lighter, safer ways of transporting infant children in new Baby-Pods, which are much easier and safer to move than awkward incubators. There are things called hydraulic dampers, adapted from car suspensions that aid in the recovery of painful joint injuries. Hell, even surgical teams admit to studying pit-stop crews to help aid their efficiency, although it must be hard to gauge the percentage value of simply shouting “get out of the way” at someone. “Innovation under pressure” is F1’s rather grandiose boast about itself, as if skidding around Silverstone is an exercise in reaching for the scientific stars. There might be a touch of that, but boil it down and really F1 is shiniest, loudest, most expensive boys-with-toys club in the world. And there’s nothing a boy likes more on his birthday than a really shiny toy. Despite everything, it’s hard not to wonder if Jacques really wouldn’t mind getting back into the hero-free, personality-barren F1 game. And if he doesn’t, there are billions out there who do. Danni Minogue, anyone?
