F1-Blog

Jacques Villeneuve’s 2007 prospects

Jacques Villeneuve has been reported as saying he is struggling to find a decent drive next year. His current BMW contract expires at the end of the 2006 season.

This is actually strange, as his driving this year is as good as he has been since 1997. The BMW/Sauber car has come along quite well under his leadership. He has also been continually out qualifying his team mate all year.

BMW could do worse than offer him a drive for 2007, however it seems there may be other seats going. Renault is probably a bad idea, but other teams on the grid could do worse. It may also be worth some of the lower 'wealthy' teams like Toro Rosso offering the drive, he would be a good development driver for the new car.

JV leads the assult

Jacques Villeneuve has had his clashes with Michael Schumacher before (Jerez in 997 comes to mind). But he has taken the attack to Schumi over his 'mistake' at Rascasse corner that ultimately ended up in him stalling his car on the outside of the corner.

JV told reporters “I hope it was deliberate, because if that was a mistake he should not even have an F1 super licence, If you can make a mistake like that, you shouldn't drive a race car.

There’s no way you could make a mistake like that. It’s the kind of thing I couldn't dream of doing myself. I don't know what goes through your mind when you decide to do that, when you know that the rest of the world can see.

I don't understand it, it's stupid. He didn't need to do that, he's a seven-times world champion, he was on pole position. Why do that? It’s only going to make him look bad.

This is embarrassing. Embarrassing for a world champion. It would even be embarrassing for Ide.”

BMW Drop the engine

It looks like BMW may have made a big mistake with Jacques Villeneuve's chances at Barcelona. It seems a major mistake was made by someone in the garage, "It was not dropped, but I won't tell you exactly what happened because I have to blame a team member. It was probably damaged and due to the regulations we are not allowed to open it to have a further investigation." said Mario Theissen.

That means that JV has to take a 10 place drop on the grid. Unfortunate for the BMW Sauber team as they seem to be showing a good increase in performance.