Jacques Villeneuve (Vanwall Racing) : "The opposite of what I've been doing throughout my career"

That was the biggest surprise of the WEC entry list. Jacques Villeneuve will be competing in the 2023 World Endurance Championship with Vanwall Racing alongside Tom Dillmann and Esteban Guerrieri. Was it his trial run in the Alpine F1 car last year that made him want to do so?

"My goal was to get back into full-time professional racing and not just do the odd races that I've been doing for the last 15 years, a few races in NASCAR, a few other races here and there", Villeneuve said on the FIA WEC official website.  "It’s always been a key goal of mine – to go for the Triple Crown (F1 world championship, the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the Indy 500)."

Fifteen years after his last appearance in Endurance Racing with Peugeot Sport, the 1997 F1 world champion will have to relearn how to work with two team-mates. He believes that this will be his main challenge.

"The biggest challenge is working with other drivers and sharing a car," he said. "I've always been extremely specific on the setups of a car and how I like to drive it. For me it’s been about fine tuning and that's not something you can do when you share the car with two other drivers as every driver has a specific way of driving - you have to make compromises and you have to decide as a group. How much can you personally give up in your own setup without damaging yourself too much but at the same time, which also helps the others. That's very difficult and it's the opposite of what I've been doing throughout my career where you really go for that extra little tenth or two in the car."

Although he knows Tom from his time in F2, Jacques only met Esteban during the tests in Barcelona. "It was fun to drive," he says. It's a heavy car and it's fast. It wasn't easy to drive but the car was still in its infancy. So, there was still a lot to do on balance and the car was a little bit surprising at moments as it would catch you out which could make it difficult for six or eight hour race. There’s still a lot of work to do but the basics of it are there. There is definitely potential for the car to be competitive and what you want ultimately, is an easy car to drive and in endurance racing, a car that does not break down."

And his Peugeot period, what memories does he keep? “It's a mixture of good and bad," he replied. "We had an extremely fast car but the reason why I wasn't smiling on the podium is we actually managed to lose the race. So, it was a terrible second place. Sometimes you can fight through adversity and finish second and get an amazing result. But this was a race we should have won and we managed to finish second. So, for that reason, it was extremely disappointing.” extremely disappointing.

Revenge is in the air...