The bluff that backfired: how McLaren let Gilles Villeneuve get away

Gilles Villeneuve made his Formula 1 debut for McLaren at Silverstone. But the next time he lined up on a grand prix grid, the Canadian was driving for Ferrari. Team manager Alistair Caldwell recalls how McLaren lost out on one of racing's great talents

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McLaren of Gilles Villeneuve in the 1977 British Grand Prix

Villeneuve came knocking on McLaren's door but the team carelessly lost him to Ferrari

Bernard Cahier/Getty Images

If ever there’s an example that going the extra mile is worthwhile to achieve anything in life, it’s this one that cropped up in a conversation I was having with 1970s McLaren team manager Alistair Caldwell for the James Hunt cover story in Motor Sport this month. Except it’s not so much the extra mile, more accurately the extra 3000.

Caldwell was telling me about his frustrations with Hunt and the 1976 world champion’s lack of interest in visiting the factory between races, in putting in extra effort beyond the race tracks to lift his team and in turn his own performances. It led the famously caustic Kiwi on a diversion, to a character who was stark in contrast to the lanky Englishman: the most celebrated racing driver McLaren let escape from its hook – Gilles Villeneuve.

“Although he only had a brief career with us” – just one grand prix – “Villeneuve was an absolute classic McLaren driver,” Caldwell stated. “[During 1977] I talked to him on the phone and said ‘we’ll give you a drive at the end of the year, in Canada or America, maybe some more. We’ll talk to you soon’. Then I hung up. I was in the drawing office the next morning and the receptionist rang saying there’s a young man here he wants to talk to you. I said ‘what’s his name?’ Gilles Villeneuve.”

Portrait of Gilles Villeneuve at Silverstone for the 1977 British Grand Prix

Villeneuve on his F1 debut at Silverstone in 1977

Bernard Cahier/Getty Images

It had been Hunt who first alerted McLaren to the little French-Canadian’s clear and obvious talent after witnessing it first hand and (not very) up close in the Grand Prix Molson Trois-Rivières Formula Atlantic race in September 1976. Pause for a moment: Hunt racing in Atlantics in the midst of his charge for an F1 title? A different world. Then again, as Caldwell admitted, McLaren and sponsor Marlboro weren’t paying him very much that year, given that he’d joined McLaren with few other options in the wake of Hesketh’s withdrawal.

The race was a non-championship thrash for which the organisers had lured a handful of European stars to add lustre. Along with Hunt, there was another future F1 champion, Alan Jones, plus rising Formula 2 ace Patrick Tambay and Vittorio Brambilla, the defending Trois-Rivières race winner. Villeneuve beat them all, qualifying on pole position, quickly opening up a lead and winning as he liked. Jones finished second, with an astonished Hunt third. To his credit – and somewhat typically of his naturally generous nature – James returned to McLaren raving about what he’d just seen and insisting the team should give the kid a run.

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It took a while. Villeneuve dominated the Atlantic season, winning nine of the 10 races he drove for Kris Harrison’s Ecurie Canada team in a March 76B-3, to claim both the Canadian Player’s Challenge series and the one-off IMSA title in the US. Then in 1977 budget restraints limited him to more of the same, racing Atlantics on the wrong side of the Atlantic when he should have been over in Europe in F2. Then he’d had his phone call with Caldwell.

“He’d put the phone down, got some knickers and threw them in a suitcase, driven to the airport and caught a plane to England,” said Alistair. “He didn’t ask us where McLaren was, he didn’t ask us whether we were going to be there. He knew it was a week between F1 races, so he just turned up in reception. And that’s why he got a drive at the British GP.

“It’s that attitude that was totally different to James. Gilles just knew he had to talk to us face to face, without any pre-arranged plans. So he turned up in the lobby at our Colnbrook factory. He came in, pored over the design drawings. When he sat in the car for a seat fitting he made engine noises, just like Bruce used to. James wouldn’t have been interested in the drawings at all.”

There’s a lesson in there for any young racing drivers with an apparently burning ambition. Hell, there’s a lesson in there for any of us.

Side view - McLaren of Gilles Villeneuve at the 1977 British GP

The charisma was obvious on the first lap: Villeneuve’s only McLaren appearance

Grand Prix Photo

Villeneuve’s 1977 British GP performance, in an M23 beside Hunt and Jochen Mass in their M26s, has gone down in folklore. You might have read veteran journalists Nigel Roebuck and Maurice Hamilton reminiscing about it in Motor Sport earlier this year. “I went up to Silverstone on the Wednesday, which was a test day and not for the normal stars, but for the backmarkers and newcomers,” Nigel told us. “And that was the day nobody knows how many times he spun, but didn’t hit anything. It was his first day in an F1 car and the first time he’d seen Silverstone, he had a very short time to find the limit and that was Gilles’ way: to go over it and slightly come back from it. He drove a great race” – Villeneuve ran as high as seventh in the early stages – “then had a completely unnecessary pitstop because he thought he had an oil pressure problem when it was actually a faulty gauge.”

“It was like watching Jochen Rindt, so sideways and not afraid of the car at all,” recalled Maurice. “Just powering through Maggotts and Becketts, tail out, finding the limit. It was very exciting.”

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Yet somehow Villeneuve never raced for McLaren again, even though more had been on the cards. It’s been said team chief Teddy Mayer was dismissive, concerned about the potential repair bills if he let this firebrand back out. Caldwell explains further how Ferrari snatched F1’s most celebrated cult hero right from under its great rival’s nose.

“Teddy thought he could bluff Ferrari, because Ferrari fancied Gilles as well,” said Caldwell, warming to his diversion from what I’d actually called him about. “Someone called him up to go and talk to them,” – Walter Wolf, for whom Villeneuve had driven his Formula 5000-based Can-Am car. “[Villeneuve] went off to Ferrari and when he came back he said ‘they are going to make me their test driver.’ Teddy said, ‘ah, but are they going to give you races? Don’t accept anything other than a full-time job.’

“He went back, took Teddy’s advice and said ‘I won’t accept test driver, I’ll only accept full-time race driver.’ And Ferrari said yes. Teddy thought he’d be thrown out by Ferrari, who didn’t like being dictated to by drivers, ever. It backfired. It was so pushy Ferrari went ‘wow, OK, I’ll hire the kid.’ And the rest is history, as they say.”

Overhead view of Gilles Villeneuve in a Ferrari at the 1977 Canadian Grand Prix

The second time Villeneuve joined the F1 grid, he was in a Ferrari at Mosport

DPPI

Villeneuve made his first F1 starts for Ferrari at the end of that season, at home in Canada and at the Japanese GP, after Niki Lauda had stalked out having already secured his second world title. At Fuji, the first tinge of tragedy left its mark on Gilles when his 312T2 cartwheeled over the fence after running into Ronnie Peterson’s Tyrrell, in an accident that left two dead and more injured. Little was ever straightforward when it came to Quebec’s favourite sporting son.

But for Caldwell, who could find little joy in what turned out to be Hunt’s final F1 win, the bigger picture was already becoming all too clear: McLaren had let slip the greatest natural talent of a generation.

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