C´mon guys you´re soooo f***in´ boring!
I´ve been reading this forum for 10 years and even registered once, posted 30+ times to be able to check the live forum, and lost my pass... but that´s ok I like to get useful links and information this place is still awesone... felt compelled to register again so I could reply to this thread.
That said, there´re some endless rantings going on here, just try to put Jacques´ name in the middle of the argument (BTW, where´s se7en and Ross, they love to put JV down whenever they get a chance!) and people go nuts. I can understand that, its obviosly a waste of time trying jokes like ´Jacques who?´ when EVERYBODY know Jacques. Just as a start, he is the son of RACING LEGEND Gilles Villeneuve. AND a F1 World Champion like 18 other people in the world - 31 total but many already passed away - so I think he belongs to a club that accepts only 0.00000003% of the potencial applicants (Alive F1 World Champions X the rest of us 6 billion people who are not F1 WC).
If you consider the opinion of some posters here, JV must certainly be THE biggest loser ever, he could only be champion by luck, his VASTLY SUPERIOR car and he still made ´hard work out of it´ like the bashers that always quote the inexistant words of PH, he was fired like 10 times from his own team, from BMW, from NASCAR, from Peugeot... Ah the envy...
The bad perception JV gets is related to his last year at BAR, his return with Renault and his spell at Sauber/BMW. I´ll try NOT to dispute it all over and over again, just like to say a few things now that we can put things in perspective after all. Not to forget I hear all the time `he was beaten by every single team mate since Frentzen bla bla bla` so:
1) JENSON ´BOY BAND´ BUTTON
Well, he was widely known as a playboy in the early years, but developed into a Champion. Fast and smooth driver. They´re evenly matched in 2003, JV had bad reliability so Jenson got the points and there was the Richards situation. Very hard to asset huh? Was replaced by Sato in Japan after giving up on the last event of the year since he got to know his contract wouldn´t be renewed for 2004.
2) RETURN WITH ALONSO
Trulli was replaced by Jacques for the last three races of 2004. He did two tests and that was it, after almost a year out of the sport and with tyre war the cars were almost a full three seconds faster than the previous year. Yet he was .3 tenths shy of Alonso´s raw pace over a single lap in those three races, and by the end of the 3rd, the Brazilian GP that I had the pleasure to witness, he was lapping - race pace that is - less than .1 tenth of off Alonso (just go check fastest lap times). Fisichella couldn´t emulate that performance in TWO YEARS as Alonso´s teammate (haha), then we had Kovalainen (hahaha), Nelsinho (hahahaha) and finally Grosjean (hahahahahahahahaha). And when some reasonable people argued that `he had no time to adapt to the car`, the f***ers here claimed ´its al BS, he´s past his sell by date, he is useless, its all excuses` and so on. But now with the testing ban we could witness the Badoer experience, the Fisichella Ferrari experience (he can get a podium with a Force India and doesn´t score A SINGLE POINT IN A FERRARI? WTF? Liuzzi performed below expected as well, Grosjean, Alguersuari, pffffffff, Jacques still can drive circles around all these guys any given day. Its a known secret that Renault tried to keep Jacques for 05 and put Fisi on that Sauber, but things didn´t work out right. Can you imagine Alonso and JV as teammates in 05 and 06?
3) MASSA @ SAUBER
Massa was very erratic as a rookie, but was always VERY fast. Just ask Kimi, Badoer and Fisichella. And Schumacher as well. Villeneuve had a poor start to the year (yet he qualified 4th for the opening round and gave FA a hard fight, being passed and passing back at the following corner and all). Bashers say ´Felipe outscored Jacques` but the truth is JV was up in the table until the last race, and lost to Massa by a whopping ONE point. 9 to 8 if I´m not mistaken. And still all people talk about is the Monaco incident, which, IMHO, is totally a mistake from the team, JV was lapping faster and couldn´t lose time behind his own teammate. But Peter Sauber couldn´t run things the way he wanted, his team was Sauber-Ferrari and Felipe was Ferrari´s protegè. Still is. Thats why PS said he regreted signing Jacques, ´cause he couldn´t give a World Champion the support he deserved, the Sauber team was not that big at that time. Anyway Villeneuve fared quite well against a maturing Massa.
4) HEIDFELD @ BMW
Jacques was not supposed to be there from day one, but as BMW inherited all Sauber contracts, they just HAD to confirm him in the car. There was nothing really between him and Heidfeld, but as always ´Quick NiK´ is overlooked, he hasn´t won yet but he´s got EIGHT 2nd places. And Kubica isn´t any better than them both, as BMW can prove by themselves in
http://www.bmw-saube...l#/news/~508|0/So if Jacques can be .3 tenths shy of Alonso´s pace, and as fast as Button, Massa or Heidfeld, well, you do the math.
People also dispute JV abilities in setting the car up. And giving feedback. But the professionals who have actually worked with him are always full of praise of his techinal skills. Jacques left BAR at the end of 03 after five seasons, 04 Honda was a rocket who won a race in Buttons´hands yet JV´s replacement Takuma scored a big ZERO points all year long. Jacques worked with Renault just for three races, but his feedback at least had not hampered their speed the following season. Jacques was axed from BMW after two years, and they had very good 07 and excellent 08, but maybe its all just a big coincidence. What should this Jock Clear guy know anyway?
And after BMW and 06, let me see:
- He is still quite young at 38, you can´t call anyone with less than 45 old, WTF?
- He is very rich. Very very rich.
- He races all kind of amazing cars all over the globe. Sure for most people here (hello lunatics) he´s still a loser, a fluke, whatever, but I don´t think its a bad life at all, one weekend racing NASCAR trucks, or Nationwide, or even tasting the Cup cars @ Talladega, another weekend doing Le Mans for Peugeot with the 908, one of the most amazing racing cars (ah, nice time to add that JV had three outings with Peugeot, three podiums, one victory @ SPA and a runner up @ Le Mans.) Add to that some Seat Diesel Touring Car around SPA, some GT1 again @ SPA, SpeedCrap in Bahrein, Top Race in South America, and I can´t forget the two beatiful races @ Circuit Gilles Villeneuve with the #32 Braun. It really must suck being Jacques.
- He loves racing and still has the passion and the desire to prove himself again in F1. He DOESN´T NEED to do that. But still he wants it badly. If he can´t get a seat, its for reasons well beyond my humble comprehension.
Marco
(EDIT: typo)
Edited by marcotulio27, 11 November 2009 - 01:17.
