Who was better, Gilles Villenuve or Ayrton Senna?
My personal favourite of the two was Villeneuve. He was one of the stars of F1 when I started watching, and he could be relied upon to provide the excitement race after race. It was just down to a youngster’s whim that he wasn’t my hero and Nelson Piquet was. His death changed my relationship with F1 permanently, in that I hadn’t previously had it in my head that F1 was dangerous…the accidents had been part of the fun of watching up until then. His death was a little surreal, in that firstly it just wasn’t possible that a driver with such car control could die in an accident; secondly there was the problem that qualifying wasn’t covered live and the first news reports were contradictory. Why did I like Villeneuve? I liked the person – there haven’t been many more open and honest individuals in F1 in my lifetime – I liked his style of life and of driving, I liked the strange things that always seemed to happen to him, like his 3-wheeled lap of Zandvoort…and I loved his elastic car c
