Jacques Villeneuve has opened up about his complex relationship with the legacy of his father Gilles, admitting he absorbed something profound without ever realising it.
The 1997 Formula 1 world champion has long resisted comparisons to his father, insisting throughout his career that he raced because he loved racing, not to honour any unfinished legacy.
Gilles Villeneuve died at 32 during qualifying for the 1982 Belgian Grand Prix at Zolder, cementing his status as one of motorsport’s most romanticised and tragic figures.
Jacques was just 11 years old when his father died and spent much of his childhood at boarding school, with his parents’ marriage under significant strain at the time.
“When he passed, I hadn’t seen him for a year or two, really,” Jacques said, explaining that the memories he carries are difficult to distinguish from stories told to him by his mother.
Jacques grew frustrated with journalists who pushed him toward a narrative he never believed in, one that cast him as a torchbearer completing what Gilles had left unfinished.
“All they were wanting to hear is, ‘I’m carrying on the flame because of what my dad did not finish, and that’s why I’m doing it’,” Jacques said, adding simply: “No, I’m racing because I love racing.”
A new biopic, Villeneuve: Rise of a Legend, will receive its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on 19 September, with a theatrical release in Quebec planned for November.
The film focuses on the years before Gilles became a Ferrari icon, with Jacques’ sister Melanie serving as executive producer on the project.
Jacques says the film is “quite accurate on those formative years,” and that it has helped him place events he previously only half-remembered or had been told about secondhand.
Over recent years, former rivals and contemporaries have opened up about their time with Gilles, giving Jacques a picture that differs from the one he received growing up.
“Even Prost, or other people that used to race with him, that never dared before, I guess,” Jacques said, noting how much that has changed his understanding of his father.
What Jacques now recognises is that Gilles was exactly the same person inside and outside the race car, whether climbing mountains or attempting loop-the-loops in a helicopter he had been told couldn’t perform them.
“I took a lot from him on that aspect,” Jacques admitted, explaining that his own upbringing gave him a different education that allowed him to calculate risk slightly better than his father did.
Jacques frames it as absorbing his father’s attitude toward pushing limits and confronting challenges, but with enough distance to make it his own approach rather than an imitation.
“If you’re doing this sport for the wrong reason, you’ll never achieve it,” he said, warning that the physical and mental demands of motor racing quickly expose any lack of genuine commitment.
Villeneuve is one of only three world champions who were sons of celebrated Formula 1 drivers, alongside Damon Hill and Nico Rosberg, each of whom had conflicted relationships with their fathers’ legacies.
Hill spent time working as a motorcycle courier after litigation following Graham Hill’s death in a plane crash brought financial ruin on the family, while Nico Rosberg turned down an offer from Imperial College London to pursue racing.
The global release of Villeneuve: Rise of a Legend is scheduled for next year, fifty years after Gilles made his Formula 1 debut in a McLaren at the 1977 British Grand Prix.