It's just over a month until the 25th anniversary of Gilles Villeneuve's death. I was reading a magazine tonight and it had a nice piece on the great Canadian racer. It mentioned the classic late-race scrap for second between Villeneuve and Rene Arnoux in the '79 French GP at Dijon.
There are many YouTube videos of the race, ranging from a two-minute clip (set to music) to a 10-minute piece voiced by Murray Walker.
My favourite is this one (in German). It's almost 5 minutes long. You can hear the excitement and feel the cars and the French fans as they cheered for their countryman Arnoux.
This duel is considered by many to be possibly the best in the history of F1. I'm not enough of a historian to say if it is or isn't. But it sure is fun to watch.
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3 comments:
We got to see very few of those races back them. Just the odd snip now and then. Canada had one of the finest F1 stars, and most of the country neither knew nor cared.His memory should be honoured everywhere we go.
"One Proud Canuck"
I remember those days very well and strongly disagree with the claim that "most of the country neither knew nor cared." I remember how friends of mine who were not racing fans all talked about the closing laps of that 1979 French GP, which was shown in full on Canadian TV. They also talked about Gilles win at Montreal in 1978, and his death in 1982. Go back and look at the media coverage at the time. You will see what he did for the sport in this country.
That French GP video is really amazing. Watching what passes for Grand Prix racing today, it is easy to forget that there was a time, not so long ago, when all the cars looked different, when there was technical variety, when there was real racing (close but not dirty) instead of parades, and when the drivers were interesting men with real character. It is a wonderful thing to see but it is also rather sad as it shows how much we have lost.
At the time I watched every race Gilles drove in and was lucky enough to see his Canadian devue at Mosport.
Before F1 became the bottomless money pit it has become it was an exciting sport to watch indeed and nobody was more exciting to watch than Villeneuve. Ill thought out spec changes and flexable rules combined with the insane amount of cash have destroyed a once great sport.
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