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Born to race

Broadcast Date: Sept. 5, 1975

Gilles Villeneuve loves speed. As a youngster, he races his 10-speed bike around his small home town of Berthierville, Que. But he falls in love with cars at 15 when his father buys him an old red '58 MGA two-seater for $100. He spends months fixing it up and starts drag racing after school, drawing local audiences to his theatrics. By the next year he's totalled three cars — his father's new 1966 Pontiac and his second MGA.

In 1969/70, makers of the new snowmobiles begin to field racing teams to promote their new product. Villeneuve is hired as a driver/mechanic on a family friend's Quebec team. In his first year racing snowmobiles, he becomes North American champion. The next year he wins the Quebec crown and in 1973, the Canadian championship. Racing snowmobiles in whiteouts helped him hone his racing vision and instincts, he says later.

Born to race

• Born in Chambly, Que., Jan. 18, 1950, Villeneuve and his family moved to Berthierville when he was eight. His father, Seville, was a travelling piano tuner, and Gilles' first passion was music. He would practise his trumpet five or six hours a day.

• Villeneuve met his wife, Joann, on a blind date. They married in 1970, the year he became Quebec snowmobile champion. On April 9, 1971, his son Jacques was born, and on July 26, 1973, his daughter Melanie. Unlike most other racers, he was a family man. His family accompanied him to races in their mobile home, even later when Ferrari would pay for expensive hotel rooms.

• In 1974, Villeneuve joined the fledgling Ecurie Canada Formula Atlantic car racing team. He sold his young family's mobile home (they had to live with relatives) to pay for his entry to the 1974 Player's Challenge series. Although he broke his leg midway through the season, he resumed racing six weeks later, still wearing a cast.

• In winter 1975, after winning 32 out of 36 snowmobile races for Skiroule, he finally abandoned snowmobile racing to concentrate on road racing.
• Road racing takes place on closed circuits with a variety of turns and straightaways. It flourished on abandoned airstrips in North America after WWII, when servicemen brought back small sports cars from Europe. The first road race in Canada took place on the Abbotsfield Airfield in British Columbia in 1949.


• On Aug. 27, 1967, the first Canadian Grand Prix for Formula 1 cars was held, at Mosport Park in Bowmanville, Ont. It moved in 1978 to Montreal and was won that year for the first time by a Canadian, Gilles Villeneuve, for whom the circuit is now named.

Born to race

Medium: Radio

Program: Five Nights

Broadcast Date: Sept. 5, 1975

Guest(s): Gilles Villeneuve

Interviewer: Anne Graham

Duration: 2:35

Photo: Toronto Star Magazine

Last updated:
July 12, 2005