Jacques Villeneuve and his partners trying to get the open spot on the Formula 1 grid gave their presentation earlier this month, and the former world champion is saying he’s confident that he and folks from Durango will get the spot.
That’s not exactly news, is it? All of us at F1B are still saying how confident we are about getting that spot, and we remain convinced our fruit-beer-fueled design will blow away the competition.
Boasts and bravado are as common as a giant Michael Schumacher belt buckle. What caught my eye is this from JV, via the good folks at Autosport:
If his new bid to return to the sport is successful, Villeneuve anticipates a slow start in the team’s first season and admits he would not mind being a backmarker as long as he can help lay strong foundations for the future of the team through his experience.
“It’s okay to be a backmarker as long as you have a long-term plan, backing and financials that allow you to build a project,” said Villeneuve.
“When we built BAR, if you just have something in place that’s barely alive and that could only work for maybe a year, then no, because all you have is the stress and because you have a bad year, you cannot build on it.
“But if you have a long-term in place, that’s fine because it’s part of the building process.”
Now, I’m not the JV expert that Grace is, but I do know that at his tender age, you can’t be waiting for next year to break through. Perhaps he has a driver/owner to owner scenario in his head, and he’d be happy to have helped bring the team in while behind the wheel and then lead it to competitive heights as just the boss.
But that doesn’t seem JV-esque to me. Am I wrong? Do you think a JV-led team that was putt-putting around the back with the likes of HRT (whoops, it won’t be around next season, will it?!) will please him enough? Will he explode midseason at the lack of performance?
And might that be the best thing we could hope for in 2011? Especially if it happened right before the summer break, thus giving us something to talk about for the dry weeks of August?
