Jacques Villeneuve says Kimi Raikkonen did not deserve his Formula 1 title
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jaques v, bet gilles would turn in his grave listening to all that c… his son has come out with over the years
what an A 1 pratt and a half
Villeneuve is praising Massa’s efforts to a Brazilian website because he is eager to attract Brazilian sponsors for his Stock Car Brasil venture. Seems like a pretty desperate move to me.
I remember I didn’t like Villeneuve in his first 2 seasnons. Than, in 1998, he was beaten by Frentzen. Then he got worse. When Button arrived at BAR, he said nasty things about him. Button defeated him by a mile.
But after all this suffering, in his late years at Sauber I started to feel sorry for him anbd even support him. But now…no comment.
PS: IMO, the most undiserving WDC was Phil Hill.
Remember Villeneuve’s debut was similar to Hamilton’s. He looked very good and took the title in only his second year of F1. But then what? Of course BAR wasn’t the good move, but a Champion should stand out. Kimi might have deserved to win the title more in ’03/’05 than ’07, but one title for such a talented driver is too little, and his career spun over only 9 years, and he fought consistently for the title. It’s a shame he lost motivation.
Then, Villeneuve is praising Massa, so I can’t blame him ;P
For me, Kimi should have won in ’05, Lewis in ’07 and Felipe in ’08. I’d have preferred it like this so Lewis could have a record-breaking season without taking the title from Kimi, and Felipe could take the title in ’08 but at the same time Hamilton is world champion anyway. Sadly, things don’t go as we want, and Massa this year is performing worse than Kimi in any of his seasons.
I thought Kimi rightly deserved in 07 because (putting Mcvlaren’s antics aside) the boys at Mclaren went into self destruct mode and cleared the way for Kimi. If anything he deserved it the most that year.
Riise I actually thought Alonso deserved it in 05 rather than Kimi but I did feel rather sorry for him when his car kept dying on him!
I don’t like to criticise JV’s title that much as even if I think he should have won it sooner he was still talented and it was his decision to go to BAR that wrecked his career rather than his lack of talent.
I used to like JV but after this and his appearance in the media earlier in the year about ‘snoozeworthy’ races, the guy’s really craving attention – and for what?
Ironic that this comes from Jacques, he clearly forgot his own title winner. When Williams was about 1 second / lap faster than everyone else, but he still nearly lost it to Schumacher.
Raikkonen was somewhat lucky in 2007, but he was very unlucky in 2003 to finish runner up by only 2 points. Not to mention 2005, when his Mclaren blew it half the time.
In my opinion Villeneuve was the least talented champion of all time.
Villeneuve was once a big star and he enjoyed all that attention. Now he just wants that attention back!
Jacques is lucky that Williams canned Damon Hill, who soundly beat him in 1996, and probably could’ve taken a fair chunk of points away from Villeneuve, either handing Schumacher the championship (assuming he didn’t ram someone off the road), or won outright.
Villeneuve was not “awesome” in his first two seasons of F1. In 1996 Williams had one of the most dominant cars in recent history and only needed two decent drivers to win both titles (and JV couldn’t even beat Hill). Schumacher won 3 races in a dog of a Ferrari (I’m not an MS fan), Benetton had probably a better line-up than Williams in Alesi and Berger but couldn’t design a car to suit anyone but Schumacher.
In 1997, JV outqualified the nearest non-Williams by nearly 2 seconds in Melbourne. Admittedly a great lap but more an indication of the FW17’s superiority. He only barely beat Schumacher to the title in a car worth close to a second per lap for much of the season. He then went to BAR where there wasn’t much between himself and Panis. In 2003 he was well beaten by Button and since then never beat a team-mate (see Alonso, Massa, Heidfeld). Along with Damon Hill the worst world champion in my lifetime.
At least Raikkonen had decent opposition in machinery of a similar standard (Alonso, Hamilton, Massa) and won 2 races more than anyone else.
Sounds like sour grapes to me. If you win the championship, it means your one of the best drivers in the world. It doesn’t matter if you win races, it’s points that count, not the amount of wins. Massa and Raikkonen are both very talented drivers, to split them would be difficult, it just turns out Raikkonen had one of those seasons were everything adds up.
Mika Salo commented today (and I thought so too), that JV’s statement is most likely from a situation/interview were he had to suck up to Brazilians and/or Felipe (it was a Brazilian interview after all), so the easiest way was to say something about Kimi. And JV also said that he didn’t understand the criticism aimed at Massa this year…
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