No Jacques in F1.
Thu Aug 17 23:03:42 2006 EDT (-0400 GMT)It was announced last weekend that the temporary replacement of Jacques Villeneuve by the excellent Polish driver Robert Kubica was made permanent throughout this year and next. Kubica replaced Villeneuve at the Hungry GP and the team was pretty clear in their interest in Kubica and apparently Villeneuve forced the team to commit to one of the two.
In any case I’d like to thank the 1997 F1 world champion for his contribution to F1 both on track and off. No one was better at getting under Michael Schumacher’s skin and JV’s legendary disregard for sponsors was always pretty funny. Jacques used to have the least amount of media events of any F1 driver, and once when at an energy drink’s event he responded to the question about “does this stuff work?” with “I don’t think so.”
That said, with BMW Sauber JV seemed to be looking a lot more dignified and bringing experience to the team. BMW did some really cool demos and lots of media days this year and Jacques was a very willing and important participant in all of them.
Despite my general dis-interest in the sport, my hope is that JV joins his rival and kindred spirit Juan-Pablo Montoya (JPM) in NASCAR next year. I think the real ballad or Ricki Bobby is coming true – without the homosexuality.