© NASCAR Whelen Euro Series / Stephane Azemard
1997 F1 champion Jacques Villeneuve says when you have “the biggest driver of all time joining the biggest team of all time, it’s hard to make it any better than that”.
While discussing Lewis Hamilton’s switch to Ferrari, 1997 F1 champion Jacques Villeneuve said Lewis’ arrival might signal a start of the team’s resurgence, after years of failed attempts.
“They tried with [Sebastian] Vettel, but Vettel was burnt out by the time he joined Ferrari,” Villeneuve said.
“Alonso had almost worked out, but it became too chaotic. Lewis could be the one to put that past of Ferrari behind finally.
“This might be Ferrari version 2.0. You get the biggest driver of all time joining the biggest team of all time, it’s hard to make it any better than that, at a time when Ferrari needs to start winning again.
“They need something good to happen because they’ve spent the last 10-15 years ‘close but not close enough’ and every time they bring in either a world champion or a young driver like [Charles] Leclerc or [Carlos] Sainz or someone.
“And they go at it for two or three years, but the chaos never stops inside the team. It carries on. Every two years, the team principal gets changed.”
If you like SilverArrows.Net, consider supporting us by buying us a coffee!
The Canadian added Lewis might be the factor needed for Ferrari to get its act together.
“With Ferrari, it’s always exciting because there’s always news, and if you get Lewis in there and all this mega-complex situation, this could be the thing that settles everything down for a bit, giving Ferrari what they’ve been missing as a base so they can actually move forward.”
Ultimately, Villeneuve believes Lewis could be the one to bring championship glory back to the Italian team.
“It will be interesting to see if Lewis manages to do what Alonso and Vettel didn’t manage to do.
“I never thought Vettel would do it. I thought at the time Alonso might be able to do it because he got close and he was a hard fighter, and Lewis might be the one to do it now.
“And also, Jock [Clear] is in the team, and I’m curious if Jock will become his engineer or not because that would be very profitable for Lewis, the logical winning combination at Ferrari,” he concluded.
