Chill out buddyblizzard wrote:Yes, I saw his heroics and yes I have the deepest possible respect for that, but he lacked consistency on the highest level in my oppinion. Alonso for example had 18 strong races out of 19 in 2005 or the fantastic racing brain of Alain Prost, who drove often perfectly in tactical terms and it won him 4 championships.
Gilles was probably one of the greatest talents ever, I agree with you in thzat point, but only considering the skills to drive the car as fast as possible. In tactical terms he was chanceless against Prost, in terms of consistency he was chanceless against Alonso and Schumacher.
I don´t claim that I´m right, I would never do that. It´s just the way I see Gilles, it´s not negative I think, but not as positive as most people do. But of course I didn´t live in the 70´s and early 80´s until he died, that may have biased my oppinion quite significcantly, like it did with Schumacher or Alonso, I think I rate them so highly, because I actually watched them live, all that remains from Villeneuve are stats and some footage, but not the emotions of seeing it live on TV or trackside, you know what I´m trying to say?
Your critics towards Gilles are based in consistency, and you`re right he wasnt, but blame the car not him, Ferrari cars were bad, those chassis were awfull and only the 12 cylinder boxer was good, still a bit heavy compared to Ford cosworth or the Turbos later on,if you see Gilles spining or trashing his cars it`s only because his personnal limits as a driver/human being were way beyond the limits of his cars. He only had a great car (Winning championship car) in 1979 and 1982; in the 1st scenario Jody had the chance to nail the title in one race (not sure about it, maybe Monza) and Gilles stayed in 2nd behind him although he still had chances to win it later on in the season, but he always respected his team, here`s a man with high personnal values, in the 1980 season the Ferrari was so bad that these same drivers struggled to qualify in some circuits and almost no points in the entire season. The 2nd one (1982) Ferrari had at last a winning car, with a Turbo engine and a couple of fast and fierce drivers with Didier Pironi alongside him, have no doubts that the 1982 title would be decided between these 2 guys, but those "wing-cars" were very dangerous as i`m sure you`ll know, instead of winning races and fighting for a championship the man lost his life. I understand the fact that if " if i didnt see it i cant avaluate it" thing, i`ve never seen Pele playing but i saw Maradona and he was a football genious, but if millions of fans say Pele was at the same (higher) level i guess he deserves to be it. Just image this: Mr. Enzo Ferrari was a terrible character to his drivers, he claimed that Ferrari cars won the races NOT the drivers, he really didnt care if a driver started to complaint about this or that, the fault was his, not the car, he even gave a silver "Cavallino Rampante" statue to Jody for his title and the statue had a broken leg... but Gilles Villeneuve was like a son to him, the old guy just loved this driver, so there you go......
Sorry for the off topic guys.