Commenting on the wedding of Didier Pironni, Johanne Villeneuve said to her husband: ''If he was your friend, he would have invited you''. Everything is said, everything is explained, period.
He was invited. A friend of Gilles said he saw the wedding invite at his home. Gilles didn't go because his marriage was in difficulty. You know he had a mistress back in Toronto? There's far more to this story than people think.
@@hugodrax71 That was photographer Alain de la Plante, who had known Villeneuve since his Formula Atlantic days. I have had first hand contact with him and he is quite clear in his memory of it. He saw it on a sideboard but I can't recall whether he said it was at home or in a hotel room.
The Gilles mythology is, appropriately, full of myths. Both he and Pironi were humans: flawed and imperfect. They both had good points, they both had bad points. People need to get over the idea that the situation was like an old western, with goodies in white hats and baddies in black hats, both drivers lived in shades of grey.
Pironi wasn't on pole at Zolder in 82. He was a tenth faster than Gilles in 6th and 8th places. The 82 Canadian GP wasn't wet, Paletti hit Pironi because he was unsighted at 100mph, his view blocked by the cars ahead of him. The corner named after Gilles is not worthy of having his name at Imola-the original bend before Tosa would have been. I still maintain Jochen moved far too late, he should have let Gilles past going up the hill after the chicane. When Mass moved across the circuit he did so in way that gave Gilles no chance to swerve or brake. That said, the rigid suspensions of the day and the large underside surface area of the cars contributed to the car getting airborne as it did, the soft ground and proximity of the barrier all conspired against him. The chances are Gilles' neck was broken before he was thrown from the car, but he could also have broken it when he landed in the catch fencing. We'll never know. I am certain that he would have been World Champion in 82, and had he remained at Ferrari the 126C2B and C3 of 1983 were tailor made for him, almost certainly back to back championships in 82 and 83. Just look what Tambay and Arnoux achieved with those cars and they weren't in Gilles league by a long way. Equally he may well have gone back to McLaren or even to Williams, his name would be on that trophy somewhere. The average qualifying time difference between the two drivers had increased in 1982 compared to 1981, Gilles did not regard Pironi as a threat to him in anyway. They'd got on pretty well together up until then, Gilles even telling journalists at the Brazilian GP to go easy on Didier after a huge testing shunt at Paul Ricard. The Ferrari management handled the whole thing really badly. The fastest and most exciting driver we've seen, I put Gilles and Nuvolari in a separate bracket to everyone else. I'd also have to add that Didier would have been WDC in 82 but for Hockenheim. I see there's a comment saying neither driver was in same class as Senna and Prost. I disagree. Gilles was absolutely in the same class, was as fast, and what's more, compared to Senna, a way fairer driver on track, he didn't resort to intimidation or underhand tactics. A total giant of a driver.
I recall an interview with Gilles' friend Arnoux who said Gilles, for his speed and talent, would have had difficulty winning an F1 title because he didn't have the mentality of picking up points in each race. He was always pushing, every lap in every race. So he ended up making mistakes and breaking cars. He was much faster than Scheckter in '79 but Scheckter won the title by consistently collecting points which you have to do. From the Maranello point of view, Pironi was probably a better bet for the '82 title because he knew if he couldn't win a race then take the points you've got. Gilles could never do that.
No point in blaming Jochen Mass. The visibility oout of those cars was horrendous and he probably didn't even see him until it was too late. The poor man has had to live with it ever since.
This may have been one of the reason why Rosberg retired. His papa, Keke, won the championship in 1982 after such a tragic season robbed of an exciting rivalry. Nico wouldn't want the same tragedy to happen to him and Hamilton, so he retired for his own and his family's sake. Had Nico been racing today, he would not only be involved in a rivalry with Hamilton, but also a fierce rivalry with Vettel and Verstappen. And as you have seen in the British, Hungarian, & Belgian GP in 2021, it can go wrong very quickly.
Great video, much appreciated, the effort you put in clearly shows up. One small mistake i can point out is that Imola '82 wasnt Pironi's first win, he won the Belgian GP in '80, with Ligier. (3:52)
Mercifully free of the soap opera sentiment of so many other videos on this subject. As one who saw it, I remember it as the most insane season of my lifetime and perhaps anyones. The drivers’ strike, the FISA-FOCA war, ground effect, turbos, the return of Niki Lauda… The season would have been crazy enough without the Villeneuve-Pironi story. I think had Villeneuve stayed at McLaren, he would eventually have been world champion. Much as he seemed made for Ferrari and Ferrari for him, McLaren would have mentored him better. It’s also ironic the way chassis development was at the heart of this. When Dr Harvey Postlethwaite - whose legacy is still with us - joined Ferrari in 1981, he knew that the answer to Ferrari’s problems was a carbon fibre chassis, like that of McLaren. He also knew that Ferrari were simply not ready for such a radical change. He set about designing a bonded Nomex honeycomb aluminium sandwich chassis for Ferrari and it would be the marque’s first true monocoque. The rest of the grid had been using them for twenty years. Postlethwaite couldn’t use the chassis in 1981 so the drivers were saddled with the original 126C which was a pig of a car but had a great engine. The 126C2 was a great engine finally mounted in a good chassis and that chassis improved dramatically over the season. The introduction of a pull rod, rising rate front end transformed it. The team also switched from Michelin to Goodyear. When Villeneuve was killed at Zolder, it was revealed that the entire panel behind the driver’s seat had ripped clean away, leaving the unfortunate French-Canadian with no restraints and he was thrown from the car as it broke up. I can only imagine what this meant to Postlethwaite but as Alan Jones said at the time, Villeneuve, great as he was, wasn’t the one you expected to retire quietly to the chicken ranch at the end of his career. Had Ferrari been more ready for a fully carbon chassis - they had one for 1983 - the crashes that killed Villeneuve and ended Pironi’s career and chances of becoming France’s first World Champion, might not have had the consequences they did. Had Villeneuve’s crash happened a year later, he would probably have survived. And had he been at McLaren he might have survived to be World Champion. The F1 cars of 1982 were the most dangerous and - IMHO - beautiful F1 cars since the sleek, cigar-shaped cars of the mid-1960s. They were extremely fragile, put the driver’s feet well in front of the front axle, had little to no crash protection and were prone to aerodynamic divergence, which is still with us today. Aerodynamic divergence - the tendency for a car to flip once it exceeds a certain stability margin - was a major factor in both Villeneuve and Pironi’s crashes. By the end of the season, the 126C2 was an absolute weapon and one of the greatest Grand Prix cars ever built. It won the Constructor’s Championship, despite missing two races and running only one car for six races and the team lineup at the end was totally different from the start. At Monza that year, a 42 year-old Mario Andretti - who had been out of F1 for two years - put the car on pole. So, a great car but the same could not have been said for the team management. Under Il Commendatore, Ferrari stumbled its way through seasons it should have won, simply because the drivers were never properly managed or mentored. Ferrari preferred to play games with his drivers, endlessly gaslighting them and trying to create internal competition. The drivers who did the best there were those who could get the team behind them. The best examples of that are Lauda and Schumacher but Pironi, aside from being as good a driver as anyone, seemed capable of the same thing.
There's not a lack of F1 content on the web. However, what you wrote is detailed, precise, well paced and better than anything I've heard, seen or read anywhere. Kudos. for your prose
What a fantastic comment to read. Very detailed and certainly informative. I'm glad you enjoyed the video! In my eyes, Pironi and Villenueve were far too good to stay without a title for too long. It very much reminds me of a Prost vs Senna rivalry just a few years earlier. I'm sure with Pironi at Ferrari and Villeneuve at McLaren, their battles would have factored into world championships well into the 1980s. I've always thought of Gilles as the fastest F1 driver to never win a world championship: his racecraft and raw pace were mesmerising. I can't imagine what Postlethwaite must've gone through and felt by the end of 1982. Not one, but both drivers killed in a chassis he built. Christ. I don't see Pironi as loyal to Ferrari. Like Enzo, he knew about the team game, but he was a very shrewd operator. If the Ferrari had dropped off in performance after 1982, or political wrangling was getting in the way of his career, I don't see him hesitating to leave. Perhaps he'd have gone for Renault/Benetton or even Williams! Thanks again for the extensive comment. Are you subscribed? Would you like to see similar content in the future? Let me know.
@@JebMotorsport Thanks for your comments. Much appreciated. Further to what I said earlier, there's a bit of a gap that needs to be filled. Gilles Villeneuve was my undisputed favourite driver. I think that was true for a lot of people. His humble beginnings and his simple lifestyle made him look like "one of us". He didn't use a private aircraft to go from race to race but travelled around Europe with his family in a motorhome. His daredevil, never-say-die exploits were already the stuff of legend by the time he started the 1982 season Legends like Watkins Glen in 1979, when he was 11 seconds faster than anyone else in the pouring rain, the infamous dice with Arnoux at the 1979 French Grand Prix, the 1981 Monaco Grand Prix, which he won in a car that had no business winning a race like that and the follow up race at Jarama, where he drove faultlessly to win against much faster opposition who pressured him mercilessly to the flag. Jarama, though not as exciting as Monaco, was probably his greatest drive. It silenced most of the few critics he did have. People knew he was very talented but some thought him a bit one dimensional. Damon Hill described him as "a bit of a rock ape" not so long ago. His win in Spain changed that. He had to employ every bit of race craft and self-control he could muster. He was under maximum pressure for the entire race and couldn't afford a second's lapse in concentration. But at the time of his death, Villeneuve was, in my mind, not quite the complete driver. I think a team like McLaren would have changed that. He had become a victim of his own success. He'd always been "the fastest guy in F1", which also meant "the world" and it was a moniker that he happily lived up to. By 1982 he hadn't changed much, although the motorhome was a thing of the past and he was rumoured to be having an affair with a woman in Montreal. But to an extent, Villeneuve had stagnated. He hadn't gone off the boil but he hadn't made the kind of progress that would have made him a World Champion. Ferrari had done exactly nothing to improve the situation. Villeneuve was still driving to make every lap his fastest. He wanted to win every race at all costs. If you saw his car in the paddock after a race, you could be sure it could not have been driven any harder. But being fast doesn't make you a World Champion automatically and he was never going to learn that at Ferrari. A team like McLaren would have focussed him on the end goal - to be not just the fastest but a World Champion. He was 32 years old and there was still time. But he was dissatisfied and though still popular, he was no longer quite the darling at Ferrari that he had been and there were rumours that he had been talking to McLaren for 1983. It's my thinking that he would have been better mentored by people like John Barnard and Teddy Mayer than he was by Enzo Ferrari and Luca di Montezemolo. Ferrari seemed only to reward those who rewarded themselves and Didier Pironi was such a character. I had the advantage of meeting him once, at the Australian Grand Prix at Calder in 1980. He stood out like a sore thumb: a small, fleshy man in tailored clothes and with the face of a choirboy. It would have been easy to underestimate him. Many did. He just didn't look the part. We now know he was a man of considerable intellect and extraordinary competitiveness and drive. The 1980 Australian Grand Prix was a non-Championship event then and pitted two Grand Prix cars - Alan Jones' World Championship-winning FW07 and Bruno Giacomelli's Alfa Romeo 179 - against a fleet of local Formula 5000 cars, on of which was driven by Pironi. In the race, Pironi drove a non-ground effect car he'd never seen before, at a track he'd never seen before and finished third behind Jones and Giacomelli. Some of the local guys, like John Bowe, were very good drivers but that wasn't going to stop Pironi. He was seriously fast. It was this kind of laser focus that had taken him from the by then-struggling Tyrrell team to Ligier and then Ferrari. He had handily outpaced team leader Jacques Lafitte at Ligier but his progress took a hit in 1981. The Ferrari was a pig. It was said it had only a fraction of the downforce of the other cars and it simply could not get enough heat into the Michelin radials. His results were less promising than expected but to be fair, ha also had the lion's share of the bad luck. Where Villeneuve was able to drive around the 126C's inadequacies, Pironi seemed to stall. But in 1982 that would all change. Suddenly there was a Ferrari with more than a good engine. It had a good chassis that eventually became an excellent chassis and Pironi took full advantage of it, racking up scores that virtually ensured his Championship status. I agree that he would probably have moved on from Ferrari. Team loyalty is something drivers really can't afford. Not if they have the talent and want to be World Driver's Champions. I think Pironi understood this better than anyone and who knows where he might have ended up or how many championships he might have won. He and Villeneuve were a formidable driver combination but unfortunately, that is not reflected in the results.
@@thethirdman225 "...a small, fleshy man in tailored clothes and with the face of a choirboy" - perfect description of Pironi. Thank you for some absolutely brilliantly informative and reasoned posts - I really enjoyed reading them!
If only he had lived. Thinking about it the 80s wouldve been mega. We couldve had gilles vs pironi vs senna vs mansell vs piquet vs prost vs Bellof(if he also lived)
Imagine if Villeneuve had been to McLaren as Niki Lauda team mate in 1983. Those two were like ice and fire. In 1984 McLaren has the TAG Porsche 1500 hp turbo engine. Including at Monaco 1984... which was Senna and Bellof huge breakthrough, both chased Prost. Now imagine Villeneuve, not Prost, is seating in that McLaren. We have now Villeneuve vs Senna vs Bellof. Under torrential rain. In Monaco. That would have been the craziest end of a race ever, with three daredevils.
There is one contemporary song that could be the soundtrack of Pironi - Villeneuve brief rivalry. ABBA "The winner takes it all" (thanks Better call Saul for that song, I had forgotten it). Look at the lyrics: part of them could reflect Pironi - Villeneuve Imola rivalry. And part of the lyrics could refer to their wives... and lovers (Catherine, Veronique, Joann... both men private lives were also in turmoil when Imola and Zolder happened). It is rather incredible.
Lauda was my hero growing up but these two remain my favourite Ferrari pairing and I liked the "quieter" style of Pironi very much. Gilles was immensely fearless with this remarkable natural ability to race which saw him always push to the max.
It is a pretty dumb story. There was some part inside the engine that made the Renault the fastest cars, and surely enough Prost and Arnoux got plenty of poles that year 1982. But the same stupid part that made them so fast was unable to withstand a two hour race. It invariably failed after 30 mn to 1 hour. It couldn't be replaced and it couldn't be removed otherwise the car was no longer competitive. And that's how Renault lost the 1982 championship... not as bad as 1983 and Piquet tweaked fuel, but pretty frustrating nonetheless.
This one was a Greek tragedy. I stopped watching F1 at the end of 1982. I couldn't imagine a season I would ever be that motivated to watch ever happening again. I was glued to the TV for 16 races. How I passed my uni exams, I don't know. My two favourite drivers were gone - one dead, the other never to return, the beautiful wing cars were banned and the new ones simply didn't have the elegance. Talk of 1,000 hp engines and Patrick Tambay doing 346 km/h in testing on the Mistral Straight at Paul Ricard held little interest for me. There will never be another 1982 (I hope). The best bits were incredible and the worst bits, incredibly bad.
@@thethirdman225 Pironi and Villeneuve had a good relationship at Ferrari and were friends away from the track. The fall out came after just the one race - Imola in 1982 - and continued for a fortnight until Gilles' tragic accident at Zolder so it's very diffrent to rivalries such as Senna-Prost and Mansell-Piquet, which lasted a long time and were very acrimonious for a lengthy period.
@@hugodrax71 I know the story very well. What came in later seasons is for other people. I know next to nothing about that. I thought Villeneuve showed a level of personal fragility and immaturity that did him little credit, which was unfortunate. But there are those who blame Pironi for Villeneuve's demise and I think that's silly. To think that his state of mind was what got him killed is to do him an injustice. He was a professional racing driver. Those kinds of emotions have no place on the track. If he really did let his emotions get the better of him then he had no business being in a Formula 1 car at Zolder. On the other hand, there are lots of people who say that his behaviour on that last lap was nothing out of the ordinary for him. Either way, it was Villeneuve and not Pironi, who brought about his own demise, either by misadventure (i.e.: an accident) or by allowing his emotions to get the better of him. I think the latter is selling him short.
@@thethirdman225 Imola '82 remains the most misunderstood race I've ever come across in a lifetime following F1. The underlying fact - Ferrari never put out a team order for either driver to win the race. The order Gilles kept talking about afterwards was in his own head. There are a couple of issues people tend to overlook. First, the private agreement in view of the FOCA team boycott (which the team bosses at Ferrari and Renault didn't know about) between Gilles, Pironi, Arnoux and Prost before the race (hold station for the first half of the race, race for the win in the second half). Second, Gilles' error at Rivazza on lap 45 (the lap after Arnoux's retirement) which handed the lead to Pironi. Fair to say, the late Pironi has had a shit deal since '82.
@@hugodrax71 *_"The underlying fact - Ferrari never put out a team order for either driver to win the race. The order Gilles kept talking about afterwards was in his own head."_* And in the heads of those who bought into the Italian racing media's soap opera version of events. There was no order that Villeneuve should win the race. There was no matter of protecting points. Indeed, the only point that had been scored at that stage was Pironi's. *_"Second, Gilles' error at Rivazza on lap 45 (the lap after Arnoux's retirement) which handed the lead to Pironi. Fair to say, the late Pironi has had a shit deal since '82."_* Exactly. I remember watching it and the 'SLOW' sign came out _after_ that. My take on it at the time was neutral. I was the biggest of Villeneuve fans but I simply switched to Pironi when Villeneuve was killed. I have been actively involved in competitive sport almost all my adult life. I still race keelboats most weeks (I'm 64). As such, my view of a competitive mindset is necessarily different from most viewers. I recognise that there are differences between motor racing and yacht racing but they are not big enough to matter. There are fans who know a lot more about Formula 1 generally than I do but again, it's not enough to matter. If you've ever participated in combat sports - I fenced for a few years - you know there is only one possible result and that's that one person wins over the other. I still remember the night I beat my Maitre d'Arms in a sabre bout. We were on the final point and he said, 'You won't get this one." I flicked him on the fingers of his sword hand, which must have hurt like hell but considering the number of hits I'd absorbed from him over time, I didn't feel that bad about it. There was no requirement for me to lose. So to the 1982 San Marino Grand Prix. I and I suspect a lot of others, wasn't really interested in personal revenge. That's not what I expect from sporting heroes and as a result of that, I've had no heroes in my life since. No Formula 1 driver is there to finish second. Not in those days, anyway. Pironi was not under any obligation to do so. The car was good and he was fast and getting faster. My assessment now is that Villeneuve had had things his own way for so long that he took it for granted. The mere fact that he brought up the idea that Ferrari owed him for Monza '79 shows how irrational he was at the thought that the now hated Pironi might be settling in very well at the Scuderia. The stories that were spread about Pironi playing the political game have been spread purely to discredit him. He _was_ a political animal. To get what you want in a team, you _have_ to be a political animal. Look at Niki Lauda and Michael Schumacher. They managed to get the best out of Ferrari _because they got the team to work for them._ That's how you win World Championships. And that's what Pironi was doing. Villeneuve, on the other hand, was going nowhere. It wasn't really his fault either. Well, not entirely anyway. Unlike Pironi, Villeneuve didn't have a long term plan that extended beyond winning races. Whatever people say about him, he was not a 'percentage player'. You have to be if you want to win a title or two. The problem was that he was so adored by his fans - including me - that I think he took it for granted that he was the fastest driver in the world and the championship was just a matter of time. We saw something similar with Verstappen. It took him 8 seasons to win a WDC and he wrecked a lot of cars along the way. But Red Bull were/are a different team and with seemingly inexhaustible patience, they coaxed and coddled him until he finally won it. Villeneuve wasn't young enough for that. He needed mentoring he was never going to get from Ferrari, who was more comfortable gaslighting his drivers and playing social Darwinism instead of building a proper team. Someone said it years ago and it took a long time for it to settle in for me. Villeneuve needed to move to a better team. There's a lot more to it than that but this is a long enough post already. Pironi was the best driver I ever saw _in the flesh._ I met him at the 1980 Australian Grand Prix, which was a race between the Williams of new WDC Alan Jones and the Alfa Romeo 179 of Bruno Giacomelli. All the others were Formula 5000 cars. In a car he'd never seen on a track he'd never seen, he outpaced everyone else to finish third. Realistically, the F1 cars were a couple of seconds a lap faster so he stood no real chance of winning. The race can be found on UA-cam if you look for it. In the pits he stood out like a sore thumb. With the face of a choirboy and in tailored clothes, the little fleshy guy - and yes, he was a bit pudgy then - contrasted with a paddock full of Australians in jeans, tee shirts and flip flops. It would have been terribly easy to underestimate him. I towered over him when I asked him to sign my copy of Grand Prix International from his first F1 win in Belgium that year. But the way he looked at me, I felt like I was being sized up. But behind the wheel he was an absolute tiger. If Pironi had done what Villeneuve unreasonably expected of him, his status at Ferrari would have become untenable. Willingly finishing second wasn't something Enzo Ferrari understood and I, for one, would agree with him. You're not there to finish second. Not ever. That's inexcusable. And those who say he should have followed team orders or that he betrayed his teammate simply don't know anything about competitive sport. I don't go out on the water to finish second and I didn't step onto a fencing piste to finish second either. The idea that a guy at the very top level of his sport would do it simply makes no sense. So yeah, you're absolutely right. Pironi does get a shit deal and it's undeserved.
Strange to praise that incident. He did an amazing manoeuvre only to run off out of control, destroy the rear end, drag his disabled car all around the track at great risk to him and other drivers and retire in the pits. Dumb bravado.
What happened in 1982 is the main reason as to why big teams no longer employ two drivers worthy of being #1. Senna and Prost being another example but not quite as tragic
i saw the crash first hand. i was only 8 and seeing villenueve dying was a shock, but just to know that, when working, covering the 94' imola gp i would see senna's death was terrible. so much so ,that even i kept covering f1 i still don't remember simple facts from 95 onwards
No, both of them were not the same class of Senna and Prost..But if the 1982 season went in a normal way, one of them has taken the championship.. Ferrari had the best overall-package back then in 82-83.
I absolutely disagree that he was not in Sennas class. his 1981 season with 2 wins in the dry and a 3rd at Canada in a monsoon with a front wing that was damaged on lap 1 and eventually fell off the in a totally crap handling car that Gilles called his red dump truck is what Senna doesn't have in his tool box. As for Senna, he was by no means perfect. He threw away a number of races with unforced mistakes like Monaco and when he cost Mclearn the perfect season trying to overtake a back marker and leaving him nowhere to go and they collided at the first chicane at Monza.
Gilles would have been champion in 82 I doubt he would have anymore titles though as the competition from the field were a lot more focused, Pironi I doubt would have been a title winner he would have moved to Renault and both drivers would have retired by 1989
Villeneuve was said to be on his way to McLaren because of all the Ferrari drama. I doubt he would have been a match for Lauda in '84 if so, but he would have had a very decent shot at the '85 championship.
A lot of people - among them his friend Arnoux - doubt Gilles would have been champion because he pushed too hard and took unnecesary risks, always trying to be the fastest on every lap. Sometimes you have to be strategic and just take the points you've got. Gilles couldnlt do that. Just look at 1979. He had the best car but lost out to his teammate Scheckter because Scheckter could play the long game.
Nonsense. There was no team order for any driver to win that race at Imola. Pironi was actually in front when the SLOW boards were first put out, not that SLOW meant to maintain position. But if they did, which Gilles and many of his supporters insist they meant, then Gilles should have stayed behind Pironi.
They didn't. Gille's seatbelt mounts sheared throwing him when the front dug in. The pictures often shown of Pironi's crash generally show the aftermath with the front cut off to allow him to be removed.The front of the car actually held up, though obviously folded in on Didier
Dear "Jeb", Wonderful intent to comment of this historical rivalry. However, it would be kind of good to be a tad more exact on commenting what you seem not to be familiar enough with and/or have not done your homework of a bit of research. Neither was Imola 1982 Pironi's first Grand Prix win - that was back in Zolder 1980 on a Ligier). While you could argue that it was his first FERRARI victory in F1 then it needs to be said so. Nor was the qualifying battle between the two over pole position - your claim that Pironi was on provisional pole with Villeneuve on P2, they were 6th (Pironi) and 8th (Villeneuve). Everyone can easily check on these facts via Wikipedia and perhaps you might consider doing the clip again with corrections to render it the value it deserves and you no question intended. You would do yourself a great favour and do justice to these events, while I do not even complete the clip as such clearly incorrect statements put me off. Hope this critique arrives well on your side. Greetings, Rolando Monello Was there in those years, close by at the tracks, but even if one was not, a little research does wonders :-)
40 years after his tragic death, Gilles Villeneuve is still regarded as one of the most fearless and fastest F1 drivers.
Those were halcyon days of racing: unlimited danger and bravery.
I didn’t know that Pironi’s boys were named after Gilles and Didier.
Touching.
Gilles Pironi is an engineer for the Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team.
Commenting on the wedding of Didier Pironni, Johanne Villeneuve said to her husband: ''If he was your friend, he would have invited you''. Everything is said, everything is explained, period.
He was invited. A friend of Gilles said he saw the wedding invite at his home. Gilles didn't go because his marriage was in difficulty. You know he had a mistress back in Toronto? There's far more to this story than people think.
I agree
@@hugodrax71 That was photographer Alain de la Plante, who had known Villeneuve since his Formula Atlantic days. I have had first hand contact with him and he is quite clear in his memory of it. He saw it on a sideboard but I can't recall whether he said it was at home or in a hotel room.
The Gilles mythology is, appropriately, full of myths. Both he and Pironi were humans: flawed and imperfect. They both had good points, they both had bad points. People need to get over the idea that the situation was like an old western, with goodies in white hats and baddies in black hats, both drivers lived in shades of grey.
Pironi wasn't on pole at Zolder in 82. He was a tenth faster than Gilles in 6th and 8th places. The 82 Canadian GP wasn't wet, Paletti hit Pironi because he was unsighted at 100mph, his view blocked by the cars ahead of him. The corner named after Gilles is not worthy of having his name at Imola-the original bend before Tosa would have been. I still maintain Jochen moved far too late, he should have let Gilles past going up the hill after the chicane. When Mass moved across the circuit he did so in way that gave Gilles no chance to swerve or brake. That said, the rigid suspensions of the day and the large underside surface area of the cars contributed to the car getting airborne as it did, the soft ground and proximity of the barrier all conspired against him. The chances are Gilles' neck was broken before he was thrown from the car, but he could also have broken it when he landed in the catch fencing. We'll never know. I am certain that he would have been World Champion in 82, and had he remained at Ferrari the 126C2B and C3 of 1983 were tailor made for him, almost certainly back to back championships in 82 and 83. Just look what Tambay and Arnoux achieved with those cars and they weren't in Gilles league by a long way. Equally he may well have gone back to McLaren or even to Williams, his name would be on that trophy somewhere. The average qualifying time difference between the two drivers had increased in 1982 compared to 1981, Gilles did not regard Pironi as a threat to him in anyway. They'd got on pretty well together up until then, Gilles even telling journalists at the Brazilian GP to go easy on Didier after a huge testing shunt at Paul Ricard. The Ferrari management handled the whole thing really badly. The fastest and most exciting driver we've seen, I put Gilles and Nuvolari in a separate bracket to everyone else. I'd also have to add that Didier would have been WDC in 82 but for Hockenheim.
I see there's a comment saying neither driver was in same class as Senna and Prost. I disagree. Gilles was absolutely in the same class, was as fast, and what's more, compared to Senna, a way fairer driver on track, he didn't resort to intimidation or underhand tactics. A total giant of a driver.
I recall an interview with Gilles' friend Arnoux who said Gilles, for his speed and talent, would have had difficulty winning an F1 title because he didn't have the mentality of picking up points in each race. He was always pushing, every lap in every race. So he ended up making mistakes and breaking cars. He was much faster than Scheckter in '79 but Scheckter won the title by consistently collecting points which you have to do. From the Maranello point of view, Pironi was probably a better bet for the '82 title because he knew if he couldn't win a race then take the points you've got. Gilles could never do that.
No point in blaming Jochen Mass. The visibility oout of those cars was horrendous and he probably didn't even see him until it was too late. The poor man has had to live with it ever since.
@@thethirdman225Mass ha testimoniato di averlo visto e di essersi spostato a destra per farlo passare.
@@alfiosciuto8238 Okay. So still not his fault. Thanks.
Where did he testify?
This may have been one of the reason why Rosberg retired. His papa, Keke, won the championship in 1982 after such a tragic season robbed of an exciting rivalry. Nico wouldn't want the same tragedy to happen to him and Hamilton, so he retired for his own and his family's sake. Had Nico been racing today, he would not only be involved in a rivalry with Hamilton, but also a fierce rivalry with Vettel and Verstappen. And as you have seen in the British, Hungarian, & Belgian GP in 2021, it can go wrong very quickly.
Comparing the safety standards in 1982 F1 vs 2015 and beyond is apples and oranges !! Those cars in 1982 were death traps !!
@@MrLew1965 perfeito! A probabilidade de morte por acidente hoje são muito pequenas.
Keke retired because Alain
Prost destroy him at McLaren
Great video, much appreciated, the effort you put in clearly shows up.
One small mistake i can point out is that Imola '82 wasnt Pironi's first win, he won the Belgian GP in '80, with Ligier. (3:52)
There’s a few errors in this video
Mercifully free of the soap opera sentiment of so many other videos on this subject. As one who saw it, I remember it as the most insane season of my lifetime and perhaps anyones. The drivers’ strike, the FISA-FOCA war, ground effect, turbos, the return of Niki Lauda… The season would have been crazy enough without the Villeneuve-Pironi story.
I think had Villeneuve stayed at McLaren, he would eventually have been world champion. Much as he seemed made for Ferrari and Ferrari for him, McLaren would have mentored him better.
It’s also ironic the way chassis development was at the heart of this. When Dr Harvey Postlethwaite - whose legacy is still with us - joined Ferrari in 1981, he knew that the answer to Ferrari’s problems was a carbon fibre chassis, like that of McLaren. He also knew that Ferrari were simply not ready for such a radical change. He set about designing a bonded Nomex honeycomb aluminium sandwich chassis for Ferrari and it would be the marque’s first true monocoque. The rest of the grid had been using them for twenty years.
Postlethwaite couldn’t use the chassis in 1981 so the drivers were saddled with the original 126C which was a pig of a car but had a great engine. The 126C2 was a great engine finally mounted in a good chassis and that chassis improved dramatically over the season. The introduction of a pull rod, rising rate front end transformed it. The team also switched from Michelin to Goodyear.
When Villeneuve was killed at Zolder, it was revealed that the entire panel behind the driver’s seat had ripped clean away, leaving the unfortunate French-Canadian with no restraints and he was thrown from the car as it broke up. I can only imagine what this meant to Postlethwaite but as Alan Jones said at the time, Villeneuve, great as he was, wasn’t the one you expected to retire quietly to the chicken ranch at the end of his career.
Had Ferrari been more ready for a fully carbon chassis - they had one for 1983 - the crashes that killed Villeneuve and ended Pironi’s career and chances of becoming France’s first World Champion, might not have had the consequences they did. Had Villeneuve’s crash happened a year later, he would probably have survived. And had he been at McLaren he might have survived to be World Champion.
The F1 cars of 1982 were the most dangerous and - IMHO - beautiful F1 cars since the sleek, cigar-shaped cars of the mid-1960s. They were extremely fragile, put the driver’s feet well in front of the front axle, had little to no crash protection and were prone to aerodynamic divergence, which is still with us today. Aerodynamic divergence - the tendency for a car to flip once it exceeds a certain stability margin - was a major factor in both Villeneuve and Pironi’s crashes.
By the end of the season, the 126C2 was an absolute weapon and one of the greatest Grand Prix cars ever built. It won the Constructor’s Championship, despite missing two races and running only one car for six races and the team lineup at the end was totally different from the start. At Monza that year, a 42 year-old Mario Andretti - who had been out of F1 for two years - put the car on pole.
So, a great car but the same could not have been said for the team management. Under Il Commendatore, Ferrari stumbled its way through seasons it should have won, simply because the drivers were never properly managed or mentored. Ferrari preferred to play games with his drivers, endlessly gaslighting them and trying to create internal competition. The drivers who did the best there were those who could get the team behind them. The best examples of that are Lauda and Schumacher but Pironi, aside from being as good a driver as anyone, seemed capable of the same thing.
There's not a lack of F1 content on the web. However, what you wrote is detailed, precise, well paced and better than anything I've heard, seen or read anywhere. Kudos. for your prose
@@christianbelanger621 Thank you. My pleasure. 🙂
What a fantastic comment to read. Very detailed and certainly informative. I'm glad you enjoyed the video!
In my eyes, Pironi and Villenueve were far too good to stay without a title for too long. It very much reminds me of a Prost vs Senna rivalry just a few years earlier. I'm sure with Pironi at Ferrari and Villeneuve at McLaren, their battles would have factored into world championships well into the 1980s. I've always thought of Gilles as the fastest F1 driver to never win a world championship: his racecraft and raw pace were mesmerising.
I can't imagine what Postlethwaite must've gone through and felt by the end of 1982. Not one, but both drivers killed in a chassis he built. Christ.
I don't see Pironi as loyal to Ferrari. Like Enzo, he knew about the team game, but he was a very shrewd operator. If the Ferrari had dropped off in performance after 1982, or political wrangling was getting in the way of his career, I don't see him hesitating to leave. Perhaps he'd have gone for Renault/Benetton or even Williams!
Thanks again for the extensive comment. Are you subscribed? Would you like to see similar content in the future? Let me know.
@@JebMotorsport Thanks for your comments. Much appreciated.
Further to what I said earlier, there's a bit of a gap that needs to be filled. Gilles Villeneuve was my undisputed favourite driver. I think that was true for a lot of people. His humble beginnings and his simple lifestyle made him look like "one of us". He didn't use a private aircraft to go from race to race but travelled around Europe with his family in a motorhome. His daredevil, never-say-die exploits were already the stuff of legend by the time he started the 1982 season
Legends like Watkins Glen in 1979, when he was 11 seconds faster than anyone else in the pouring rain, the infamous dice with Arnoux at the 1979 French Grand Prix, the 1981 Monaco Grand Prix, which he won in a car that had no business winning a race like that and the follow up race at Jarama, where he drove faultlessly to win against much faster opposition who pressured him mercilessly to the flag. Jarama, though not as exciting as Monaco, was probably his greatest drive. It silenced most of the few critics he did have. People knew he was very talented but some thought him a bit one dimensional. Damon Hill described him as "a bit of a rock ape" not so long ago. His win in Spain changed that. He had to employ every bit of race craft and self-control he could muster. He was under maximum pressure for the entire race and couldn't afford a second's lapse in concentration.
But at the time of his death, Villeneuve was, in my mind, not quite the complete driver. I think a team like McLaren would have changed that. He had become a victim of his own success. He'd always been "the fastest guy in F1", which also meant "the world" and it was a moniker that he happily lived up to. By 1982 he hadn't changed much, although the motorhome was a thing of the past and he was rumoured to be having an affair with a woman in Montreal. But to an extent, Villeneuve had stagnated. He hadn't gone off the boil but he hadn't made the kind of progress that would have made him a World Champion.
Ferrari had done exactly nothing to improve the situation.
Villeneuve was still driving to make every lap his fastest. He wanted to win every race at all costs. If you saw his car in the paddock after a race, you could be sure it could not have been driven any harder. But being fast doesn't make you a World Champion automatically and he was never going to learn that at Ferrari. A team like McLaren would have focussed him on the end goal - to be not just the fastest but a World Champion. He was 32 years old and there was still time. But he was dissatisfied and though still popular, he was no longer quite the darling at Ferrari that he had been and there were rumours that he had been talking to McLaren for 1983. It's my thinking that he would have been better mentored by people like John Barnard and Teddy Mayer than he was by Enzo Ferrari and Luca di Montezemolo.
Ferrari seemed only to reward those who rewarded themselves and Didier Pironi was such a character. I had the advantage of meeting him once, at the Australian Grand Prix at Calder in 1980. He stood out like a sore thumb: a small, fleshy man in tailored clothes and with the face of a choirboy. It would have been easy to underestimate him. Many did. He just didn't look the part. We now know he was a man of considerable intellect and extraordinary competitiveness and drive. The 1980 Australian Grand Prix was a non-Championship event then and pitted two Grand Prix cars - Alan Jones' World Championship-winning FW07 and Bruno Giacomelli's Alfa Romeo 179 - against a fleet of local Formula 5000 cars, on of which was driven by Pironi. In the race, Pironi drove a non-ground effect car he'd never seen before, at a track he'd never seen before and finished third behind Jones and Giacomelli. Some of the local guys, like John Bowe, were very good drivers but that wasn't going to stop Pironi. He was seriously fast.
It was this kind of laser focus that had taken him from the by then-struggling Tyrrell team to Ligier and then Ferrari. He had handily outpaced team leader Jacques Lafitte at Ligier but his progress took a hit in 1981. The Ferrari was a pig. It was said it had only a fraction of the downforce of the other cars and it simply could not get enough heat into the Michelin radials. His results were less promising than expected but to be fair, ha also had the lion's share of the bad luck. Where Villeneuve was able to drive around the 126C's inadequacies, Pironi seemed to stall.
But in 1982 that would all change. Suddenly there was a Ferrari with more than a good engine. It had a good chassis that eventually became an excellent chassis and Pironi took full advantage of it, racking up scores that virtually ensured his Championship status.
I agree that he would probably have moved on from Ferrari. Team loyalty is something drivers really can't afford. Not if they have the talent and want to be World Driver's Champions. I think Pironi understood this better than anyone and who knows where he might have ended up or how many championships he might have won. He and Villeneuve were a formidable driver combination but unfortunately, that is not reflected in the results.
@@thethirdman225 "...a small, fleshy man in tailored clothes and with the face of a choirboy" - perfect description of Pironi. Thank you for some absolutely brilliantly informative and reasoned posts - I really enjoyed reading them!
Great story, both drivers were fantastic but similarly to many great drivers of that era they were the unlucky ones
If only he had lived. Thinking about it the 80s wouldve been mega. We couldve had gilles vs pironi vs senna vs mansell vs piquet vs prost vs Bellof(if he also lived)
Imagine if Villeneuve had been to McLaren as Niki Lauda team mate in 1983. Those two were like ice and fire. In 1984 McLaren has the TAG Porsche 1500 hp turbo engine. Including at Monaco 1984... which was Senna and Bellof huge breakthrough, both chased Prost. Now imagine Villeneuve, not Prost, is seating in that McLaren. We have now Villeneuve vs Senna vs Bellof. Under torrential rain. In Monaco. That would have been the craziest end of a race ever, with three daredevils.
Don't forget De Angelis
@@amina-pr8xt who also died powerboat racing iirc
@@johnandrews3568 no he didn't mate
@@amina-pr8xt my bad... it was a crash in his brabham.
Amazing story. Awesome storytelling. Don't think I didn't notice the Forza music
Haha thanks man! One of the songs ran out early so I shoehorned some Forza orchestral bits in at the end 😁 hope it was a good video regardless
There is one contemporary song that could be the soundtrack of Pironi - Villeneuve brief rivalry. ABBA "The winner takes it all" (thanks Better call Saul for that song, I had forgotten it). Look at the lyrics: part of them could reflect Pironi - Villeneuve Imola rivalry. And part of the lyrics could refer to their wives... and lovers (Catherine, Veronique, Joann... both men private lives were also in turmoil when Imola and Zolder happened). It is rather incredible.
Villeuve and Pironi are my favourite driver of all time.
Lauda was my hero growing up but these two remain my favourite Ferrari pairing and I liked the "quieter" style of Pironi very much. Gilles was immensely fearless with this remarkable natural ability to race which saw him always push to the max.
Wow I'd forgotten just how unreliable those Renault turbos were, they seem to fail in every race. Thank you for a really good summary.
It is a pretty dumb story. There was some part inside the engine that made the Renault the fastest cars, and surely enough Prost and Arnoux got plenty of poles that year 1982. But the same stupid part that made them so fast was unable to withstand a two hour race. It invariably failed after 30 mn to 1 hour. It couldn't be replaced and it couldn't be removed otherwise the car was no longer competitive. And that's how Renault lost the 1982 championship... not as bad as 1983 and Piquet tweaked fuel, but pretty frustrating nonetheless.
Rivalries have always interested me, and this one is no different, even with the tragedies
This one was a Greek tragedy. I stopped watching F1 at the end of 1982. I couldn't imagine a season I would ever be that motivated to watch ever happening again. I was glued to the TV for 16 races. How I passed my uni exams, I don't know.
My two favourite drivers were gone - one dead, the other never to return, the beautiful wing cars were banned and the new ones simply didn't have the elegance. Talk of 1,000 hp engines and Patrick Tambay doing 346 km/h in testing on the Mistral Straight at Paul Ricard held little interest for me.
There will never be another 1982 (I hope). The best bits were incredible and the worst bits, incredibly bad.
@@thethirdman225 Pironi and Villeneuve had a good relationship at Ferrari and were friends away from the track. The fall out came after just the one race - Imola in 1982 - and continued for a fortnight until Gilles' tragic accident at Zolder so it's very diffrent to rivalries such as Senna-Prost and Mansell-Piquet, which lasted a long time and were very acrimonious for a lengthy period.
@@hugodrax71 I know the story very well. What came in later seasons is for other people. I know next to nothing about that. I thought Villeneuve showed a level of personal fragility and immaturity that did him little credit, which was unfortunate. But there are those who blame Pironi for Villeneuve's demise and I think that's silly. To think that his state of mind was what got him killed is to do him an injustice. He was a professional racing driver. Those kinds of emotions have no place on the track. If he really did let his emotions get the better of him then he had no business being in a Formula 1 car at Zolder.
On the other hand, there are lots of people who say that his behaviour on that last lap was nothing out of the ordinary for him.
Either way, it was Villeneuve and not Pironi, who brought about his own demise, either by misadventure (i.e.: an accident) or by allowing his emotions to get the better of him. I think the latter is selling him short.
@@thethirdman225 Imola '82 remains the most misunderstood race I've ever come across in a lifetime following F1. The underlying fact - Ferrari never put out a team order for either driver to win the race. The order Gilles kept talking about afterwards was in his own head. There are a couple of issues people tend to overlook. First, the private agreement in view of the FOCA team boycott (which the team bosses at Ferrari and Renault didn't know about) between Gilles, Pironi, Arnoux and Prost before the race (hold station for the first half of the race, race for the win in the second half). Second, Gilles' error at Rivazza on lap 45 (the lap after Arnoux's retirement) which handed the lead to Pironi. Fair to say, the late Pironi has had a shit deal since '82.
@@hugodrax71
*_"The underlying fact - Ferrari never put out a team order for either driver to win the race. The order Gilles kept talking about afterwards was in his own head."_*
And in the heads of those who bought into the Italian racing media's soap opera version of events. There was no order that Villeneuve should win the race. There was no matter of protecting points. Indeed, the only point that had been scored at that stage was Pironi's.
*_"Second, Gilles' error at Rivazza on lap 45 (the lap after Arnoux's retirement) which handed the lead to Pironi. Fair to say, the late Pironi has had a shit deal since '82."_*
Exactly. I remember watching it and the 'SLOW' sign came out _after_ that.
My take on it at the time was neutral. I was the biggest of Villeneuve fans but I simply switched to Pironi when Villeneuve was killed. I have been actively involved in competitive sport almost all my adult life. I still race keelboats most weeks (I'm 64). As such, my view of a competitive mindset is necessarily different from most viewers. I recognise that there are differences between motor racing and yacht racing but they are not big enough to matter. There are fans who know a lot more about Formula 1 generally than I do but again, it's not enough to matter. If you've ever participated in combat sports - I fenced for a few years - you know there is only one possible result and that's that one person wins over the other. I still remember the night I beat my Maitre d'Arms in a sabre bout. We were on the final point and he said, 'You won't get this one." I flicked him on the fingers of his sword hand, which must have hurt like hell but considering the number of hits I'd absorbed from him over time, I didn't feel that bad about it. There was no requirement for me to lose.
So to the 1982 San Marino Grand Prix. I and I suspect a lot of others, wasn't really interested in personal revenge. That's not what I expect from sporting heroes and as a result of that, I've had no heroes in my life since. No Formula 1 driver is there to finish second. Not in those days, anyway. Pironi was not under any obligation to do so. The car was good and he was fast and getting faster. My assessment now is that Villeneuve had had things his own way for so long that he took it for granted. The mere fact that he brought up the idea that Ferrari owed him for Monza '79 shows how irrational he was at the thought that the now hated Pironi might be settling in very well at the Scuderia. The stories that were spread about Pironi playing the political game have been spread purely to discredit him. He _was_ a political animal. To get what you want in a team, you _have_ to be a political animal. Look at Niki Lauda and Michael Schumacher. They managed to get the best out of Ferrari _because they got the team to work for them._ That's how you win World Championships. And that's what Pironi was doing.
Villeneuve, on the other hand, was going nowhere. It wasn't really his fault either. Well, not entirely anyway. Unlike Pironi, Villeneuve didn't have a long term plan that extended beyond winning races. Whatever people say about him, he was not a 'percentage player'. You have to be if you want to win a title or two. The problem was that he was so adored by his fans - including me - that I think he took it for granted that he was the fastest driver in the world and the championship was just a matter of time. We saw something similar with Verstappen. It took him 8 seasons to win a WDC and he wrecked a lot of cars along the way. But Red Bull were/are a different team and with seemingly inexhaustible patience, they coaxed and coddled him until he finally won it. Villeneuve wasn't young enough for that. He needed mentoring he was never going to get from Ferrari, who was more comfortable gaslighting his drivers and playing social Darwinism instead of building a proper team. Someone said it years ago and it took a long time for it to settle in for me. Villeneuve needed to move to a better team. There's a lot more to it than that but this is a long enough post already.
Pironi was the best driver I ever saw _in the flesh._ I met him at the 1980 Australian Grand Prix, which was a race between the Williams of new WDC Alan Jones and the Alfa Romeo 179 of Bruno Giacomelli. All the others were Formula 5000 cars. In a car he'd never seen on a track he'd never seen, he outpaced everyone else to finish third. Realistically, the F1 cars were a couple of seconds a lap faster so he stood no real chance of winning. The race can be found on UA-cam if you look for it. In the pits he stood out like a sore thumb. With the face of a choirboy and in tailored clothes, the little fleshy guy - and yes, he was a bit pudgy then - contrasted with a paddock full of Australians in jeans, tee shirts and flip flops. It would have been terribly easy to underestimate him. I towered over him when I asked him to sign my copy of Grand Prix International from his first F1 win in Belgium that year. But the way he looked at me, I felt like I was being sized up. But behind the wheel he was an absolute tiger.
If Pironi had done what Villeneuve unreasonably expected of him, his status at Ferrari would have become untenable. Willingly finishing second wasn't something Enzo Ferrari understood and I, for one, would agree with him. You're not there to finish second. Not ever. That's inexcusable. And those who say he should have followed team orders or that he betrayed his teammate simply don't know anything about competitive sport. I don't go out on the water to finish second and I didn't step onto a fencing piste to finish second either. The idea that a guy at the very top level of his sport would do it simply makes no sense.
So yeah, you're absolutely right. Pironi does get a shit deal and it's undeserved.
There IS archival footage of the German GP. The attack of Piquet against Salazar
Strange to praise that incident. He did an amazing manoeuvre only to run off out of control, destroy the rear end, drag his disabled car all around the track at great risk to him and other drivers and retire in the pits. Dumb bravado.
Great video, thank you for sharing it.
Pironi was not a team player he raced only for himself we’re Gilles was a team player
5:40 as mentioned, it was dry. I was on the start - finish line that day as it happened.
Yep, I watched that race live from Toronto on the CBC.... dry start.
The original version of "Multi 21"
Nice video
So sad,never watched F1 properly after Gilles was killed.
Theres some footage from Hockenheim practice… look around…
What happened in 1982 is the main reason as to why big teams no longer employ two drivers worthy of being #1. Senna and Prost being another example but not quite as tragic
i saw the crash first hand. i was only 8 and seeing villenueve dying was a shock, but just to know that, when working, covering the 94' imola gp i would see senna's death was terrible. so much so ,that even i kept covering f1 i still don't remember simple facts from 95 onwards
Pironi learned what Karma is... twice!
Taking the lead of a race is far different from being involved in the depths of your friends. Completely separate worlds.
❤❤❤❤gilles villeneuve pironi traditore
No, both of them were not the same class of Senna and Prost..But if the 1982 season went in a normal way, one of them has taken the championship.. Ferrari had the best overall-package back then in 82-83.
I absolutely disagree that he was not in Sennas class. his 1981 season with 2 wins in the dry and a 3rd at Canada in a monsoon with a front wing that was damaged on lap 1 and eventually fell off the in a totally crap handling car that Gilles called his red dump truck is what Senna doesn't have in his tool box.
As for Senna, he was by no means perfect. He threw away a number of races with unforced mistakes like Monaco and when he cost Mclearn the perfect season trying to overtake a back marker and leaving him nowhere to go and they collided at the first chicane at Monza.
Gilles was the fastest race driver ever... to this day.
But somehow not faster than Carlos Reutemann or Jody Scheckter....
Gilles would have been champion in 82 I doubt he would have anymore titles though as the competition from the field were a lot more focused, Pironi I doubt would have been a title winner he would have moved to Renault and both drivers would have retired by 1989
Villeneuve was said to be on his way to McLaren because of all the Ferrari drama. I doubt he would have been a match for Lauda in '84 if so, but he would have had a very decent shot at the '85 championship.
A lot of people - among them his friend Arnoux - doubt Gilles would have been champion because he pushed too hard and took unnecesary risks, always trying to be the fastest on every lap. Sometimes you have to be strategic and just take the points you've got. Gilles couldnlt do that. Just look at 1979. He had the best car but lost out to his teammate Scheckter because Scheckter could play the long game.
I was in Imola in 82, saw Pironi overtaking Gilles :-(
Well, gee whizz, somebody must have thought it was a motor race or something.
Paletti was already dead when the fire started from what I have read.
Pironi the traitor
Nonsense. There was no team order for any driver to win that race at Imola. Pironi was actually in front when the SLOW boards were first put out, not that SLOW meant to maintain position. But if they did, which Gilles and many of his supporters insist they meant, then Gilles should have stayed behind Pironi.
Both cars broke apart in a very similar way. Has there ever been an investigation In to the strength and integrity of that years ferarri f1 car
They didn't. Gille's seatbelt mounts sheared throwing him when the front dug in. The pictures often shown of Pironi's crash generally show the aftermath with the front cut off to allow him to be removed.The front of the car actually held up, though obviously folded in on Didier
ELF means Energy Liquid of France.
410 sprint car racing is much more dangerous.
Is it true that Villeneuve was not wearing seat belts ? as stated by Jeremy Clarkson in an interview !
JEB CONTENT JEB CONTRNT JEB CONTENT
One other rivalry tho......
This rivalry was what could have been Prost vs Senna
❤❤❤❤❤
Peroni ... Average 🙃
Dear "Jeb",
Wonderful intent to comment of this historical rivalry.
However, it would be kind of good to be a tad more exact on commenting what you seem not to be familiar enough with and/or have not done your homework of a bit of research. Neither was Imola 1982 Pironi's first Grand Prix win - that was back in Zolder 1980 on a Ligier). While you could argue that it was his first FERRARI victory in F1 then it needs to be said so. Nor was the qualifying battle between the two over pole position - your claim that Pironi was on provisional pole with Villeneuve on P2, they were 6th (Pironi) and 8th (Villeneuve). Everyone can easily check on these facts via Wikipedia and perhaps you might consider doing the clip again with corrections to render it the value it deserves and you no question intended.
You would do yourself a great favour and do justice to these events, while I do not even complete the clip as such clearly incorrect statements put me off. Hope this critique arrives well on your side.
Greetings,
Rolando Monello
Was there in those years, close by at the tracks, but even if one was not, a little research does wonders :-)
Formula 1 are NOT the fastest racers
Who are then?
He flew completely out of the car, still strapped to his seat.
1982 has to be the worst year for F1
You’d think a real competitor wouldn’t want team rules enacted on their behalf. I’d be offended
Pironi was a hard charger with ice in his veins. You put him in a car now and he'd dominate still.