Former F1, Indy champ Villeneuve racing at Road America, seeking return to full-time racing

Ex-F1, Indy champ Villeneuve seeks full-time ride

ELKHART LAKE, Wis. — Jacques is back — at least for this weekend.

Canadian racing standout Jacques Villeneuve’s star has faded since he won the 1997 Formula One championship and the 1995 Indianapolis 500. He’ll be racing in the NASCAR Nationwide series at Road America this weekend and is hoping to crank his career back up.

The 39-year-old hasn’t had a steady ride in a top-level racing series since 2006. He was close to returning to F1 this season and still hasn’t given up on it. But he also remains intrigued by NASCAR — something he tried to do full-time in 2008, only to have his team lose sponsorship — and is trying to put together a deal.

“I have been away from full-season racing for a few years. I was busy raising kids, and that’s actually more work than racing,” said Villeneuve, who has two children. “Now the plan is to get behind the wheel full-time to get racing — and race at the front, obviously, and to get in the winner’s circle.”

He’ll have a chance to do just that at Road America, a challenging four-mile road course that winds through the tree-lined hills of central Wisconsin. He won two Indy-style races there in 1994 and 1995, when the now-defunct CART series was drawing huge crowds to the track.

“I still remember the track as if I had driven it last week,” Villeneuve said. “So that’s good. It was always one of my favorite road courses and I was looking for an excuse to come back here and it’s been great fun.”

Villeneuve never thought he’d be back to Road America after his Indy racing days were over. But when financial problems forced the Milwaukee Mile to withdraw from hosting major events, Road America took its place on the Nationwide schedule.

Villeneuve jumped at the chance to get back in NASCAR at one of his favorite tracks.

“I’ve always loved long, countryside tracks, where you feel like you’re going somewhere when you drive around it,” he said. “There’s hills — normally there’s a corner because there’s a mountain behind it, so there’s a reason for the layout. Those tracks are very demanding. You have to take risks in some corners and it’s very exciting.”

Villeneuve was fifth-fastest in Friday’s early practice session and will be expected to contend in Saturday’s race.

“He’s a talented guy,” said veteran road racing ace Ron Fellows. “You don’t get to be a Formula One world champion by being a chump.”

But Villeneuve doesn’t feel like he has a huge advantage.

He said NASCAR cars don’t take to the track the same way as the lighter, better-handling Indy-style cars Villeneuve raced here previously. And NASCAR officials gave drivers an extra day of practice Thursday because it was the series’ first time at the track, so everyone else had more time to learn the layout.

While the big crowds haven’t yet arrived at Road America — the track expects more than 50,000 people for Saturday’s race — Villeneuve said he already has received a warm reception from fans, many of whom follow open-wheel racing more closely than NASCAR. He has been asked to sign plenty of photos and die-cast model cars from earlier in his career.

“It’s surprising,” Villeneuve said. “There’s quite a few people with old cars from the ’90s, even some F1 pictures or mini cars. It’s a racing crowd. It’s not really just linked to one series.”

And Villeneuve’s fan base even extends to fellow competitors. Drivers Owen Kelly and Victor Gonzalez Jr. seemed thrilled just to be sitting next to him in a news conference Friday.

“It’s unreal right now, having Jacques here,” Gonzalez said. “I’ve seen many of his races, and the only thing that I can say is that it’s an honor to race with him at the same track.”