It is both distressing and a pleasure to write about Gilles. I make absolutely no apology for admitting that he was my last ‘hero’ in Formula One racing. Nobody else since can even come close to the charm and charisma of the man who made Grand Prix cars dance to his command. Not only that but they were Ferraris! I defy anyone to dream up a more magical combination than Villeneuve/Ferrari.

I know there will be those who will come up with Schumacher/Ferrari because he did so much for Maranello during his years there. Some Brits might even come up with the dreary Mansell/Williams combo, but none could turn an average day at the track into a totally memorable experience like Gilles.

His totally irreverent attitude probably attracted me first. After seeing the incredible pictures of him totally sideways on the Trois Rivieres street circuit in Canada in a Formula Atlantic March. The whole concept of him being given his first break into Grand Prix racing by McLaren at the British GP at Silverstone in 1977 and then proceeding to simply drive faster and faster around the corners until his M23 spun raised eyebrows amongst the Grand Prix establishment even then. Imagine what it would do today….

He had a perfectly reasonable explanation for all this; there was little time to get to grips with a different car on a circuit he had never visited before so he set out immediately to find where the limits were. We must be forever thankful that Teddy Mayer of McLaren was not particularly impressed by all this, as it meant that Gilles was free to go elsewhere and the result is an indelible part of motor-racing history.

I fondly imagine that Enzo may have noticed the irreverence in him too, as well as his potential as a future successful Ferrari F1 pilota. The two got on well together and this was well known, but the partnership highlighted something personal in a GP team that was all but becoming extinct in the increasingly rarefied world of expensive briefcases and closed-off paddocks that seemed to be the future of F1.

Gilles first raced a Ferrari in a Grand Prix when he drove a 312T2, a car rapidly approaching the end of its competitive life, in his home event at the Mosport circuit. He was 17th on the grid and managed a fairly uneventful race deprived of a finish at the end by a broken driveshaft.

He was actually lucky to be able to take part in the 1978 season. The last GP of 1977 was at the Fuji circuit in Japan and Gilles had qualified 20th. Seemingly minding his own business he approached the right-handed corner at the end of the long pits straight following Ronnie Peterson in a Tyrell. It subsequently transpired that the 312T2’s brake-pedal had gone to the floor but the result was that the car, with Gilles in it, hit the Tyrell and took off over the top landing hard on its nose. This pitched the Ferrari into a terrifying sequence of cartwheels, which caused it to clear a fence and barrier and land in an area full of photographers and marshals. Tragically two were killed, but Gilles miraculously walked away from the wreck.

For ’78 Ing.Forghieri had designed the 312T3 and after an initial couple of races in South America with the outgoing T2, Gilles and team-mate Carlos Reutemann indulged in a largely disappointing season involving tyres that seemed to go off very early in races. This was particularly noticeable at Paul Ricard where they ended up racing on qualifying tyres – and not surprisingly, going very quickly too.

As so often happened at Ferrari in those years, the F1 cars began to redeem themselves in the second half of the season and Gilles started to make people sit up and watch. A third at the Osterreichring was followed up a few weeks later with second at Monza, although this was demoted to seventh for an alleged jump-start. Incidentally, it was in reference to Gilles that I first heard of the ploy of not waiting for the green light to come on for the start of a race but merely to go immediately the red was extinguished.

The culmination of his efforts in 1978 was his first Grand Prix win, appropriately enough in front of his home crowd at a damp and chilly Canadian GP. The T3’s successor was the T4 and although not possessed of anything like the amount of downforce as the Williams and Brabham opposition possessed, it was fast and reliable.

I don’t think it would be unfair to Jody Scheckter if I said that Gilles could also easily have won the World Championship in 1979. The T4 was good at most things and had no awful vices. The fact was that Gilles was an honest and fair man and he knew his place was to follow Jody home so that the latter could clinch the World Championship that he so desperately sought. He did exactly what was asked of him so that it was more than ironic when Pironi grabbed the win that was clearly so rightfully his at Imola in 1982.

Mind you, maybe he was a little naïve too in expecting too much from a teammate and it was perhaps this naivety and an almost magical car-control ability that made him the idol of so many. His determination to continue at Zandvoort with a car that was finished, his wheel-banging last lap with Arnoux squabbling over a placing and not the lead at Dijon and his qualifying lap in the rain at Watkins Glen when he was 11 seconds quicker than anyone else set him apart from anyone else for so many fans. It simply didn’t matter to us – although it must have been considerably different for him – that the 1980 312T5 was a disaster, he still drove his flat-out everywhere.

Then he came to the turbo era, first with the 126C which was clearly on another planet aerodynamically and handling-wise compared to other teams. I remember standing at Becketts corner at Silverstone (for those of us stuck in the UK there were precious few chances of ever actually seeing him at work) during qualifying for the 1981 Grand Prix and wondering how he kept his foot so hard down as the floundering car lurched and heaved its way though the corner displaying everything from understeer to oversteer and all points in between. He once described it as a ‘big red Cadillac’ and endeared himself to Enzo by remarking that it ‘was a shitbox, but I’m happy to drive it round all day.’ His two wins at Monaco and Jarama must go down in some sort of late Saturday night Channel 4 ‘all-time list’ sometime.

Harvey Postlethwaite came along to Maranello and started to drag the F1 team into the ground-effect era. At last, we all thought, this is going to be it; Gilles will hang everyone out to dry. Harvey’s first real effort was the 126 C2 and it turned out to be the start of another revival for Ferrari. But before that, Imola happened, Gilles could not forgive and the result was that Saturday in qualifying at Zolder 25 years ago.

I know it’s been told many times but I’ll finish with the late Harvey’s lovely tale of sitting in Enzo’s office one Sunday at Maranello, both of them watching the British GP from Silverstone on television. Very early on, over the limit as usual, Gilles turned into the chicane, bounced off the curb and in a huge tyre-smoking slide took Alan Jones’ Williams with him into the catch-fencing.

There was a pause, then Enzo said, ‘Far too narrow that chicane you know.’


Editor's Note
The racing number '27' is forever linked with Gilles. To re-read the story of the number and his part in it click here.