The 1982 season was complicated for Gilles Villeneuve in the Ferrari 126C2, which was nonetheless competitive. In 3 races, 2 retirements and one disqualification (for an illegal fin).
The Renault turbo driven by Alain Prost overwhelmed Ferrari, with 2 straight wins at the start of the season. The San Marino Grand Prix, the fourth event of the season, is the perfect place to give hope to typhoid.
Ferrari won the race to head the San Marino Grand Prix, after abandoning the Prost. Gilles in front of Didier. The team should have been instructed to freeze the positions to preserve fuel rather than the 126C2 consuming a lot.
When the panel came out, Gilles was in front of Didier, but the two were fighting. In Gilles ’head, Didier is struggling to put on a show for typhoid.
There were two clans in the Ferrari garage, that of Pironi, a calculator and clever strategist, who rallied to his goal, the team’s sporting director at the time, Mario Peccinini, and that of Gilles, who was still aggressive, who became loyal to him. the team.
Gilles took the lead, and the panel came out. But Pironi ignored him, convinced that Marco Peccinini would defend him, and he surprised Gilles before he had finished crossing first. Gilles came second, amazed.
Didier did not respect the signtold Patrick Tambay on Radio-Canada Sports in 2012.
That’s where this controversy started, this infidelity that Gilles felt. Since then, in 1979, he has respected the team’s instructions for the benefit of world champion Jody Scheckter. That day in 1982, he felt, when they were very good friends, that he had been betrayed.
Gilles told me he was in black rage, that he would never talk to Didier againfor his part was told René Arnoux, former F1 driver (Renault and Ferrari) at Radio-Canada Sports.
That’s what he did, he didn’t talk about it anymore, because when Gilles said something, he applied it the next second. And a hatred was born that day that can only create discord within the team.
His quarrel with Didier Pironi, which was revealed in Imola, left traces of bitterness and resentment as black as asphalt tires.
Two weeks later, at Zolder in Belgium, Gilles still hasn’t melted the Imola disobedience. Finishing ahead of his teammate was his only goal.
Did he do too much one lap in qualifying? Did he want to beat Pironi’s time, beating him by a tenth of a second on the starting grid? According to the Ferrari team’s chief engineer at the time, Mauro Forghieri, Gilles would have been back in the pits, and it still couldn’t register time.
The race continued the next day. Gilles ’Ferrari no 27 includes, revenge as fuel.
In the press room, the journalists began to pack their belongings, as the session was about to end.
His famous lap where he committed suicide, he never had a chance to make a quick lap and catch up with Pironi who was better than him.told Radio-Canada Sports in 2007 the only Quebec journalist present that day at Zolder, Guy Robilard.
” He committed suicide for nothing “
It was time to look up, to see Gilles, who was increasingly angry, pass in the straight line in front of the press room, to see him on the television screen, and the accident occurred. I vividly remember that there was dead silence in the room, case to say so. We immediately looked at each other, and we told each other: he was dead. Time to see recovery, no need to be a doctor to understand.
The accident froze not only the journalists in the press room, but the entire paddock. Finally, the tightrope walk fell on his wire. The inevitable finally happened. The feeling of anxiety was mixed with a strange feeling.
In the paddock floated a sense of resignation. It was as if the paddock had breathed a sigh of relief from this difficult anxietywritten in 2012 by Italian journalist Pino Allievi, in the Italian daily the Gazzetta dello Sport.
An unbearable hardship, which lasted for many years. Through his desire to be faster, often in defiance of rationality, Gilles put the nerves of those close to him and his opponents to the test. Didn’t his wife Joanna say in 1982 to the Quebec press: I’ve been dreading this moment for seven years now, well, it’s happened.
A particularly oppressive ordeal this spring of 1982, exacerbated by this misunderstanding with Didier Pironi.
Source: Radio-Canada
