Jacques-Joseph Villeneuve also known as Jacquo or Uncle Jacques (in French L’oncle Jacques) (born 4 November 1953) is a Canadian racer.
He is the younger brother of the late Gilles Villeneuve, and uncle to Jacques Villeneuve (1997 F1 world champion). Info from Wiki
Bio by Dave Wheeler
Born in Berthierville, Quebec, Canada.
The younger brother of Canadian racing legend Gilles Villeneuve, and uncle to Jacques Villeneuve, the 1997 Formula One World Champion. He is frequently known as Uncle Jacques because of the fame of his nephew. He started out racing snowmobiles and he has continued to race snowmobile events throughout his career. He moved into saloon racing in Canada, winning a Honda Civic series and many races from 1976 to 1978. He then stepped up to the open-wheeler Formula Ford category, and then Formula Atlantic, where he took Rookie of the Year in 1979, then consecutive titles in 1980 and 1981. He also won the World Championship Snowmobile Derby in 1980. At the end of 1981, he took a pair of drives for the Arrows Formula One team, but failed to qualify for the Canadian Grand Prix, or the Caesars Palace Grand Prix.
In 1979 he competed in the Cannonball Baker Sea-To-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash in a Porsche 928 co-piloted by John Lane, Gilles sponsor and friend.
1982 started out with Villeneuve winning the World Championship Snowmobile Derby. The track was exceptionally hard caused by bitter cold, and his team set up his sled for the conditions. He took home $11,300 for his win, with cash and prizes totaling over $50,000. The rest of 1982 was difficult, after Gilles death in May. Jacques spent most of the year in Can-Am, though he would take a one-off drive in CART.
1983 saw him take the Can-Am title, as well as another Formula One drive, narrowly failing to qualify a RAM for the 1983 Canadian Grand Prix. During this period, he also kept up his snowmobiling exploits, winning a number of prestigious races, and had a one-off drive at the 1983 24 Hours of Le Mans.
1984 saw a return to CART, with Villeneuve ranking 15th overall, having taken pole position at the Phoenix round. The following year he became the first Canadian to win a CART race, taking victory in the wet/dry race at Road America on his way to eighth overall in the standings.
In 1986, Jacques became the only person to win a third World Championship Snowmobile Derby. He would spend another season in CART and make his only appearance in the Indianapolis 500.
Beginning in 1987, Villeneuve scaled back his motor racing activities, however he regularly returned for occasional drives in CART, Formula Atlantic and IMSA. He also remained highly active and successful in snowmobiling, also branching out to powerboat racing. On January 18, 2008, Villeneuve was seriously injured in an accident during the World Championship Snowmobile race. He suffered multiple leg and pelvic fractures as a result, in addition to a spinal injury.
On February 16, 2013, Villeneuve suffered another serious accident while competing in Valcourt, Quebec, sustaining a leg injury.
In May 2014, a story published in the Montreal Gazette revealed Villeneuve is battling cancer of the intestine. The 60-year-old said he went to the doctor’s after he suffered stomach pains. His cancer is at an advanced stage and recovering from it will be difficult, the Gazette reported.
In May 2015, it was announced Villeneuve would return to the track named after his famous brother to compete in the F-1600 races for the Canadian Grand Prix weekend in June. Villeneuve had a respectable 9th place finish out of 40 cars.
Jacques was inducted into the Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame in 2001.
Autosport magazine, Vol. 182, No.10 dated 8 December 2005 and on p.27. By Mark Hughes.
Jacques Sr- Jacquo as he’s called within the family to distinguish him from his nephew-was a phenomenal talent. The perception is based almost solely on his three DNQs from three attempts in Formula 1 in the early 1980s. Can’t be any good can he?
Well hang on: the Arrows he drove at Canada was a spare car that not only was visibly running way higher than the sister car of Riccardo Patrese but had a serious misfire throughout the two weekends in question. It was fielded by a team that had lost its original pay-driver when he ran out of money and that was now running very tight on budget and needed some subsidy for the two expensive long haul races. Gilles advised him not to do it for that very reason, but Jacquo didn’t always listen to his brother. Two years later, after Gilles had been killed, Jacques Sr again tried to qualify for his home grand prix-this time with a RAM 001. It was an abysmal car yet almost made the cut. Had he repeated his practice time he would’ve been in, but just as he was trying to do so, he was baulked- probably deliberately- by Roberto Guerrero who was also on the qualifying bubble.
All that doesn’t make Jacquo a great driver, of course. But it invalidates as irrelevant the evidence of his F1 attempts. What he did before he got to F1 marked him out as a special talent. He raced snowmobiles, just like Gilles and later became world champion on them, also like Gilles. He moved to Formula Ford about the time Gilles was breaking into F1 and tried a couple of Formula Atlantic races at the end of 1979. Chuck Matthews was his engineer and recalled Jacquo’s first test drive: “We went to a place called Savannah and it was raining real hard. We had two other experienced Atlantic guys. The idea was they’d run until the rain eased off before we let Jacques out. But it never did stop raining. So we sent Jacques out, telling him just to get a feel for it and by the fourth lap he’d beaten their time by 14 seconds. We brought him in and yelled at him, saying, ‘We told you to take it easy’ and he said, ‘I was.’
In 1980 he won the Formula Atlantic title, three years after Gilles had last done so. Gilles asked his own manager Gaston Parent to see if he could line an F3 deal up in Europe for Jacquo. That’s how he came to be testing a Euroracing March at Monza in the ’80-81 off-season. Matthews went with him. ‘He beat the F3 lap record on his seventh lap- on a track he’d never seen before. The Marlboro peole were literally pushing the contract in the car.”
“The deal was a good one,” recalled Parent, who died a couple of years ago. “He would’ve been well paid but the best part was that in year two the contract said he would be part of the Alfa Romeo F1 team.”
And yet Jacquo walked away from it! He didn’t like Europe and felt homesick during his time in Italy and he simply wasn’t ambitious enough to overlook such things. He went home and hooked up again with Doug Shierson with another season of American Formula Atlantic- with a March at a time when the Ralt was definitely the car to have.
“We were the March agent so we had to run it,” recalled Shierson. “But it wasn’t as good as a Ralt, that’s for sure. But Jacques just smoked ’em all anyway- totally dominated. He had unbelievable car control and a great grasp of how the car behaved. I’d been running Bobby Rahal in 1976 when Gilles was coming on strong. You could almost watch Gilles evolve race by race, becoming quicker all the time. But Jacques was just that quick straight out of the box. This perception of him as some sort of Gilles-lite is just flat wrong. I think it didn’t happen for him because he found it tough to go out and ask for money or to promote himself- and he certainly he’d had it with going to Europe.
“I think the difference,” said Parent, “was Gilles was very career-minded, always thinking about how to progress, whereas Jacquo didn’t think in that way. I always thought his was a kinda self-indulgent way to approach racing, just pleasing himself. But as for talent I’d say he was probably just as good as Gilles. It just wasn’t as directed.”
One day in 1992, long after he’d fallen out of Champ Cars- he won at Elkhart Lake in ’85 and set pole at Phoenix- he turned up for the Trois Rivieres Formula Atlantic race with a second hand car, missed Friday practice and qualified 17th. In the race he came storming through to lead, shattering the lap record in the process, before his car died. One of those he passed was Jacques Jr…
Gallery Can-Am/Le Mans Indy F Atlantic F1
