50 YEARS OF HEROES AND VILLAINS AT CANADIAN GP
From Villeneuve to Schumi, Montreal has seen plenty of drama,
On an overcast day in Jerez, Spain, in 1997, Jacques Villeneuve and Michael Schumacher came tearing down the straightaway in front of our smoke-filled press centre with a world championship on the line.
Right in front of our eyes, Schumacher used his pricey Ferrari like a junker in a demolition derby to try to force Villeneuve off the track and ended up spinning his wheels in the gravel, the very picture of futility, as Villeneuve sped off to a world championship while nursing his damaged Williams around the final laps.
At that moment, their roles seemed clear: Villeneuve the hero, Schumacher the villain — at least in Montreal, where Villeneuve was not only taken as the local boy but also the son of the most revered driver in the history of the Montreal Grand Prix.
In 50 years of racing, Montreal has seen its share of heroes and zeros. Perceptions change, of course, depending on the track, the era, the allegiance to a team. (In that sense, only Ferrari would seem to have a devoted, long-term fan base that doesn’t come and go according to the driver behind the wheel.)
Montrealers are passionate about F1 racing and hockey, so feelings run high. At the moment when he tried to run Villeneuve off the track, Schumacher was probably the most hated man in the history of the race here, while Villeneuve shared top spot on the podium with his father, Gilles.
Villeneuve, diminutive, diffident and a local hero, seemed like the perfect antithesis of Schumacher. Villeneuve was down-to-earth and unassuming, while Schumacher’s Teutonic arrogance was expressed in the disdainful curl of his thin lips.
That was the narrative, anyway — and it was a crock. Schumacher was the real working-class hero, while Villeneuve was the Swiss private-school boy with the arrogance to match. As the seasons went by, Schumacher emerged as one of the two or three greatest drivers in the history of the sport, while Villeneuve was exposed as a young man who lucked into a good car.
When your pit crew hates you, you’re probably not going to be loved for long. It was Villeneuve’s arrogance that would remain stamped in the public imagination, while Schumacher’s charitable acts set him apart until the tragic ski crash that effectively ended his public life.
So perceptions change. The status of Gilles Villeneuve, winner of the first race here in 1978, killed tragically during qualifying in 1982 in Belgium, is unassailable. Ditto Schumacher. And Ayrton Senna. And Lewis Hamilton, who has won here five times, second only to Schumacher’s seven victories.
If you loved Senna, you hated his teammate, Alain Prost — and vice versa. If you liked Mark Webber, you hated Sebastian Vettel for the way he treated a veteran teammate. Same with Nico Rosberg and Hamilton.
Some drivers we hated just because. Like Nigel Mansell and, especially, Juan Pablo Montoya. For an earlier generation, it was probably Niki Lauda. Then there was Andrea De Cesaris, who was hated by fans and fellow drivers for one simple reason: he couldn’t drive, to the point where he became known as Andrea De Crasheris.
With reporters, an ability to talk is as prized as anything a driver can do on the track. Jacques Villeneuve fans hated Eddie Irvine because of his quarrel with their hero, but reporters loved Irvine because he could talk the bark off a tree and because he was always funny.
Damon Hill — gentlemanly, astute and possessed of a wry sense of humour — earned the affection of reporters here when he was asked why F1 drivers so often drove in a pack.
“Perhaps,” Hill said, “it’s because we’re like journalists — we’re afraid to miss something.”
If you want to be loved as a driver (in Montreal and around the world) the best thing you can do is drive for Ferrari. Vettel is already benefiting from the Ferrari fame, especially with Ferrari the best team on the circuit this season. Suddenly, he doesn’t seem as arrogant or obnoxious, especially after he biked to a news conference Thursday.
Personally, I’ll stick with Hamilton, whose car was a complete mess in Monaco but who is, in my estimation, still the best driver on the circuit.
Next up in the love ’em or hate ’em sweepstakes, local boy Lance Stroll, who has the deck pretty well stacked against him. When you’re a billionaire’s kid in the throes of a thoroughly mediocre rookie season, that’s to be expected. But Stroll is a personable young man who didn’t get a ride in F1 entirely by sitting on his father’s money, so it could go either way.
Stroll should be very happy to become either loved or hated on the F1 circuit. Because one thing the drivers we love and the drivers we hate have in common, with the single exception of Andrea De Cesaris: They’re all pretty good.
If racing fans are indifferent, it means you suck. If they love you or hate you, you’re driving pretty well.