Vintage

A World-Championship Combination

Gilles Villeneuve’s records showed he was born January 18, 1952, but he was actually born in 1950. He lied about his birthdate thinking at one point his actual age would negatively impact his career as a racer. It seems Gilles was born to go fast, and his father Seville claimed he had no fear, and “always made everything he drove go as fast as it would go.” Gilles also had a mind for how things worked. When he was 10-years-old he took apart the family lawn mower and built himself a car, fitting the lawn mower’s engine and wheels to a primitive chassis he made from wood. It worked too, propelling him around the family property. When Gilles’ father bought a snowmobile, it didn’t take long before he was racing it in communities around his hometown of Berthierville, Quebec. He did well, and for 1968-69 winter season, family friend Gilles Ferland loaned him a modified Skiroule to race. He won a handful of races and the next year was hired by the Skiroule factory as a driver/mechanic on their Quebec racing team. In the fall of 1970, Skiroule told him his services were no longer needed. Rumor was, the head of Skiroule’s racing department, who was also a racer, was jealous of Gilles’ ability. Gilles had been asked by the race department to compete only in Canada, but the bigger paydays were in the

U.S., and he refused the request. In October of 1970, shortly after he was let go from Skiroule, he married his long-time girlfriend Joann. He then signed to race with Motoski for the 1970-71 season, and racing became the sole means of support for his new family. He brought in enough to live, winning the championship in Quebec and taking a World Series title in New York, but with a child on the way, he wanted and needed more. That summer he spent time converting an old school bus into a race hauler, which would become known as “Big Bertha,” sectioning off a small living quarters from where he planned to haul sleds. For the 1971-72 season he signed with Montrealbased Alouette. The Alouette sleds were fast, but not as reliable as other competitive sleds. Still, he won 10 of 14 races in Quebec and was champion again, more due to his mechanical aptitude and riding ability than the quality of the Alouette. Heading into the 1972-73 season, Gilles hired a mechanic and rented an old pig barn for his race shop. Big Bertha was cleared out and prepared as a mobile race shop and he and his mechanic planned to stay in a fifth wheel camper trailer instead. Gilles’ success the year before garnered the attention of the Alouette race shop and he was called in to help develop their new race sled, the Alouette Super. Weighing just 240-pounds, the Super featured a lightweight aluminum tunnel, no belly pan and a unique hood design. Alouette used Sachs engines which were heavier than some of its competition, but they made good power and Gilles was used to clutching and tuning them from his time on Skiroule. Based on Sno*Jet’s Thunderjet, the Alouette Supers were nearly complete by the time Gilles was called in, but his input proved valuable and they incorporated some of his feedback into the sleds before they were shipped to racers. Alouette Supers and Villeneuve proved a formidable combination. Despite an unreliable ignition system early on and the machines propensity for blowing belts, they were as fast as anything else on the track that season. And with Villeneuve’s tuning his machines, they were usually faster. Figure in Gilles’ fearlessness and talent behind the bars and it all added up to an Eagle River World Championship. The Villeneuve-tuned Alouette Supers were so good that Gilles would be competitive even two years later riding the same machines. But while Villeneuve was racing sleds in the winter, he was spending his summers working his way through the ranks of open wheel racing. While competing in Formula Atlantic in 1976 he found himself up against an all-star grid of drivers invited to race at Trois Rivieres, including James Hunt, who had all but locked up the Formula 1 World Championship that season, and Alan Jones, who would go on to win the Formula 1 World Championship in 1980. Villeneuve beat them all, and Hunt returned to his McLaren team headquarters telling everyone about the amazing Canadian driver. McLaren signed Villeneuve to drive for the team in 1977, but eventually let him go. He was quickly snatched up by Ferrari and drove the final two races of the 1977 season for the team. Over the course of his Formula 1 career, he would claim six wins in his 67 starts beginning in 1976 until his death as a result of a crash while qualifying for the Belgian Grand Prix on May 8, 1982. Enzo Ferrari, who viewed Villeneuve as one of his own sons, was so stricken by his death he nearly quit Formula 1. Villeneuve continued to race snowmobiles off and on until 1981, and what was likely his final weekend aboard any sort of race sled when he flew in from Europe, defying Ferrari’s orders not to do any extracurricular racing, and rode various Moto Skis (which were owned by Ski-Doo by that time) at an oval race in Quebec. Among the sleds he rode was a radical twin track, a concept derived from Villeneuve’s own Alouette twin track from 1974. Twin track snowmobiles would eventually become the World Championship class and would rule ice oval racing for nearly a decade, all thanks to Villeneuve and his time with Alouette.