VILLENEUVE VS PIRONI
FORTY YEARS. WHO KNOWS where the time goes? In the midst of one of grand prix racing’s most unpredictable seasons, a friendship pivoted in one controversial afternoon into a deadly rivalry between two of Formula 1’s fastest-ever drivers – and in a matter of weeks ended all too abruptly in a pall of tragedy for both.
Gilles Villeneuve and Didier Pironi couldn’t have been more different as men, yet as fire and ice team-mates at a turbulent Ferrari they still formed a firm bond based on mutual respect and trust, until one betrayed the other in an act of on-track treachery that triggered a devastating spiral. Alain Prost vs Ayrton Senna, Michael Schumacher vs Mika Häkkinen, Lewis Hamilton vs Max Verstappen… all keynote F1 rivalries. But none is more troubling than Villeneuve vs Pironi, the duel that descended so rapidly into a bitterly intense yet all too brief cold war.
Today, F1 people should know better than to add firewood when rivalries smoulder. They should remember Villeneuve vs Pironi, the high stakes in play and what can be lost when it all becomes too personal. The trouble is, with each passing year there are fewer people in the paddock who stretch back that far, who can remember, who truly understand that F1 now, as it most certainly was then, can still be a matter of life or death.
So we’ve turned to Nigel Roebuck and Maurice Hamilton, old friends and distinguished voices, who remember those days all too clearly – because they were there through it all. They knew and dealt regularly with Villeneuve and Pironi, as highly regarded journalists telling the tale from the coalface, Nigel experiencing a level of genuine friendship with Gilles that a latter-day F1 reporter simply can’t imagine forging with the stars of today. Forty years on, Motor Sport invited Nigel and Maurice to the cosy Greets Inn in Warnham, West Sussex to time-warp back to a rivalry that would change F1 forever. It remains an astonishing tale.
When did you become aware of Gilles?
Nigel Roebuck: “I was aware of Gilles long before I saw him because of the weekly conversations I had with Gordon Kirby, Autosport’s American correspondent. He kept raving on about this kid in Formula Atlantic, how he couldn’t believe how quick he was, that he was something special. Then I became very aware of him because of something James Hunt said after he went over and did a Formula Atlantic race at Trois-Rivières in September 1976. There were several F1 drivers in that race and they were paid quite a lot of start money – and Gilles blew them all away. James came back and said to McLaren, ‘I’m telling you, you need to sign this guy. He is special.’ That led, of course, to the one-off drive at the British GP in 1977 when Gilles drove a third McLaren alongside James and Jochen Mass.”
It was a landmark debut. What are your memories of Gilles at Silverstone ’77?
“I went up to Silverstone on the Wednesday, which was a test day and not for the normal stars, but for the backmarkers and newcomers. And that was the day nobody knows how many times he spun, but didn’t
