In a way, this is very understandable, as Villeneuve is possessed of a particularly unusual career history in the world's premier single-seater category. Perhaps only Emerson Fittipaldi, who won 2 titles in his first 4 years in the sport then spent a further 6 tooling around in the pack driving for his family team, can match it. In Jacques' first 33 races in the sport, he won eleven times and finished no lower than second in the drivers' championship standings. In the subsequent 131 he did no better than four 3rd places and fifth in the final table.
Much of the reason for this will be put at the door of his decision, mid-1998, to leave the Williams team and join his long-time manager Craig Pollock at British American Racing. His first season with the team built around him was an unmitigated disaster: he failed to finish any of the first eleven races of the year and finished without a point to his name. He stayed with the team for an additional 4 seasons, but rarely looked anything but a midfield runner. In 2004 he took a sabbatical year, save for three races at Renault towards the end of the season, before an 18-month return to the sport with Sauber and BMW. When he walked out of his broken car at the German Grand Prix in 2006, however, it looked very much like he was done with Formula 1, sick to death and glad to be rid of it.
Because the simple fact of the matter is, Villeneuve never, ever got to grips with Formula 1's grooved tyre era. A vocal opponent of the change, when the ludicrous rubber actually appeared in 1998, Villeneuve was never the same driver again. So reliant on absolute commitment and late braking for his speed, Villeneuve lost his edge, lost his confidence, then lost everything. Perhaps the saddest sight of all was of a once-great driver at all kinds of lurid angles in his early days at Sauber in 2005, damn-nearly completely unable to make his car brake in a straight line.
Yes, there are questions about his decision to join BAR and his suitability thereafter as a team leader and as a focal point for a squad's development. But I honestly think that, with different tyres, we'd have seen a different Jacques. And a different Jacques could have meant the recent history of Grand Prix racing could have been a little different.
There's now a whole new generation of motor racing fans who, though they may remember Villeneuve the midfield runner, may not think of him in any other way. If you were born on the day Villeneuve won his last Grand Prix, you would now be 12-years old and at secondary school. The news that Jacques Villeneuve has been tempted back across the Atlantic by the new Formula and, crucially, its slick tyres, would most likely have failed to excite you. However, with a bit of luck, 2010 may give us glimpses of a return to the old Villeneuve - rear wheels almost perpetually on the limits of the exit kerbs, brakes locked and at maximum attack, the Villeneuve who, between 1995 and 1997 won the Indy 500, the Indycar championship, 11 Grands Prix and the world title. Just to have a driver of his pedigree and personality back in the sport would be treat enough for me. But if his car allows him to recapture his old form, he's going to make an indeleble mark on a whole new generation of impressionable young minds.
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