It was the finest two minutes of motorsports ever seen. And, in the end, nobody really won.
Formula One is the pinnacle of motor racing, or at least it's supposed to be, but it's occasionally a Byzantine mystery to the casual observer. Watching it requires a certain level of dedication, or at least a general knowledge of who's driving the red car, and who's driving the silver car, and why does the blue car always seem to win? What's more, the current circus surrounding the races has enveloped the sport of kings in a sort of fortification of wealth. Where once you might have been able to drive down to observe the best drivers in the world duking it out on the racetrack, now there are passes and gates, and only the very rich can get the best tickets and the access.
In 1979, it wasn't like that at all. The French Grand Prix was attended by more than 100,000 people, and they weren't there to hobnob with celebrities or stuff their faces with caviar. They were there to watch the highest level racing in the world, and they prayed for a French victory - they got both, though not in the way they expected.
Renault now provides the turbocharged V-6s for the current F1 season, but back in 1979 the technology was very much unproven. Or rather, it was proven: proven to be horribly unreliable. After one particularly disastrous race, a British magazine dubbed the RS01 racecar the "Yellow Teakettle" as its coolant whistled and steamed out in the pits.
The car wasn't very good, but Renault persevered and built another one. While most
teams were running 3.0-litre engines, the rules provided for a 1.5-litre turbocharged offering, and Renault believed the greater torque and rev-happy nature of the forced-induction smalldisplacement engine would be a success.
Finally, at the 1979 Grand Prix, they were to prove the soundness of their theory to the world. After qualifying, the twin yellow-and-black Renaults sat proudly in the first and second position on the grid. They had decimated the field, and were ready to clinch victory.
Just one little problem. One little Canadian problem.
Sitting just behind the two French cars in a bright red Ferrari 312 T4 was a French Canadian man whose name had already attracted worldwide attention. All of Canada knew who he was, the boy from Richelieu, Que. who had won the 1978 Canadian Grand Prix, the man who world champion Niki Lauda would call "the craziest devil I ever met." Gilles Villeneuve.
Villeneuve's flat-12 powered Ferrari wasn't far off the pace of the two turbocharged cars, but he knew he had his work cut out for him. The previous day had been almost unbearably hot, but the weather was now overcast and cool.
The Achilles heel of any turbocharged car is heat, and as temperatures rise, power levels fade away. With cool intake temperatures and cold air to bathe the engines of the two Renaults, the twin French juggernauts stood a very good chance of winning - as long as they didn't break. The crowd was electric with anticipation, as news of the successful qualifying performance drew people in from the surrounding areas.
The Renaults were as French as they could be: developed and built by a French company, they were running on French Michelins, and both were driven by French racers. In first position, Jean-Pierre Jabouille was a veteran of Formula One and LeMans, and brought an engineer's precision to his driving. Just behind, the rookie René Arnoux was ready to prove himself.
Villeneuve had a strategy. Somehow, he must get ahead of the two Renaults from the very start, and stay ahead. He knew his Ferrari didn't have the punch out of the corners to effect a pass, and he knew the long uphill sections at the Dijon circuit favoured the stronger turbocharged engines even more. The flat-12 in his Ferrari had 500 h.p., just as the Renaults did, but it made it further up in the rev-range, and didn't have quite the down-low power to accelerate hard. It wasn't going to be easy.
The green flag dropped and Villeneuve struck. Smoking his tires, he slipped between Arnoux and Jabouille, and instantly started putting distance on both. Jabouille dropped in behind in second place, while Arnoux struggled with his start and dropped to a lamentable ninth.
Villeneuve's strategy was very simple, but it had a flaw. Despite all his skill and his fierce driving style, the Ferrari's tires and chassis weren't up to the job. Every lap he took at full speed was wearing down the rubber, and what's more, the French were beginning to recover.
Jabouille maintained his position, figuring out the course and learning how his car responded with the extra power provided by the cool intake temperatures. Slowly, he began reeling in his French Canadian rival.
Arnoux, meanwhile, was having the drive of his life. He had quickly recovered from his semi-disastrous start, and was picking up the pace. Dropping into a rhythm, he began to climb up the ranks. There was no giving way to legends like Lauda or Nelson Piquet - Arnoux simply spooled up the boost on his powerful Renault and blasted them into the weeds. Soon, he was just behind Jabouille, and the twin Renaults began hunting down the Ferrari.
Halfway through the 80-lap race, Villeneuve must have sensed he wasn't going to win. His tires were cooked, worn through from maintaining high levels of cornering speeds to counter the straight-line punch of the Renaults. Jabouille continued to gain despite all his efforts, and on the 46th lap, the Frenchman made his move.
As soon as his Renault passed, Jabouille immediately abandoned his chess-game approach and drove his car as hard as possible. There was simply no way the Ferrari could keep up, and the gap between first and second immediately stretched to multiple seconds.
Arnoux soon crowded up behind Villeneuve, trying for the same performance. The crowd was already on their feet, cheering Jabouille and the surety of his win. Would they see a one-two podium finish on French soil? It had been 30 years since a French driver had taken victory here, and hearts were in mouths.
On the 78th lap Arnoux cut to the inside corner after the long straight and went for it. It was a killing stroke, a coup de grâce, and it should have meant a hard-fought third place finish for Villeneuve. But Gilles heard something.
Over the howling roar of the Ferrari's flat-12, he could hear Arnoux's V-6 misfiring at the top end of the rev range. It still had the low-end torque to make the passing moves, and Arnoux's tires were in far better shape than those of Villeneuve's Ferrari, but suddenly the French's power advantage had vanished. The cars were lapping the track in a little more than two minutes, and in the final two laps, the greatest battle ever seen
in Formula One racing got underway.
First, even as Arnoux cut to the inside, Villeneuve refused to give way. He clung to the outside, just a nose behind, but Arnoux's shorter line meant that the Frenchman couldn't be stopped. He moved into second place and the crowd roared.
But Villeneuve was right there, staying on Arnoux, not letting him surge ahead as Jabouille had. The pair scorched through the rest of the lap, and crossed the line in a row. Diving into the corner, right where Arnoux had made his passing move, Villeneuve suddenly darted to the inside, locking up his brakes and wreathing his car in a cloud of smoke. His Ferrari responded, despite its tired-out rubber, and he surged through, taking back second by a nose. The cars were so close, their wheels actually overlapped! Through the next corners, Villeneuve had to work hard. His car was twitching and sliding, nearly all its grip gone. Arnoux dove in again, and the cars went around the corner exactly side-by-side. They banged wheels, trading places only by a nose. Arnoux slipped ahead, but misjudged and went offtrack briefly. With the loss of acceleration, Villeneuve once again took the lead.
They collided again, and Villeneuve dropped behind, but in the last hairpin, he cut aggressively inside, and held it, held it, held it for just long enough to get across the line.
The cars finished Villeneuve second, then Arnoux third, the split between them less than one quarter of a second.
As the cars circled on their victory lap, both drivers waved to each other, and to the crowd. When they finally stopped, both men, charged with energy, leapt from their machines to shake hands. There was no animosity, only the pure joy of racing at the highest level, and the respect for a battle well fought.
In 1982, while qualifying for the Belgian Grand Prix, Villeneuve would be killed in a crash with Jochen Mass. Mass would later withdraw from racing, not out of any sense of guilt - the accident wasn't his fault - but because of the devastating effect it had on Villeneuve's young family.
Canada too reeled from the loss, and the name of Villeneuve became part of our national legend. His is a story of what could-havebeen, as well as the glory of what was.
Last year, for the opening of a special exhibition at the Enzo Ferrari museum in Italy, Villeneuve's Ferrari 312 T4 was started and driven on the streets of Modena. The police escort cleared the way, and the racecar snarled and howled its tribute to its fallen master.
On that day, at the wheel, was René Arnoux; no one else could have been more fitting.
Follow Brendan on Twitter: @brendan_mcaleer.
