Former Formula 1 champion Jacques Villeneuve has said that he ‘would love’ the chance to have another go at racing in Formula E.
The 1997 world champion competed in three rounds of the 2015/16 season with Venturi, although he did not start in Punta del Este after a crash in qualifying. After that the team announced that Villeneuve would be replaced for the rest of the season by British driver Mike Conway.
Despite this experience though, Villeneuve told the official Formula E website that it was worthwhile, saying, “I would love to come back. The racing was fun, the tracks were great in parts – in Malaysia the track was awesome – the championship is professional and there’s a great bunch of drivers.”
“It was a worthwhile experience and it would be great to have a proper shot at it.”
When talking about what exactly went wrong at Venturi, Villeneuve said that the preparation beforehand had been fine, but that the team just experienced a few ‘bad days’.
“Before the season started I spent a lot of time working with the team working on different ideas – electronics, steering, dampers, everything – using all the experience I had from Indycar on this type of track – bumpy and close walls – and it looked like it was on its way up.”
“But obviously it was frustrating to not get the results when we had the pace. But that’s the way racing goes, there are good days and bad days and sometimes the whole season can be full of bad days, sometimes you can’t control all of this.”
The Canadian also went into detail about the qualifying crash in Punta del Este that ultimately saw the end of his brief stint in Formula E.
Although he said he might have been partly at fault, he laid the majority of the blame with the team, who he believes could have used their experience to prevent a misjudgement on the brake bias.
He said, “The crash could have been lack of experience, but also from the team. It was somehow forgotten that the brake bias was with regen and not without regen.”
“We only thought about it after qually, and that was just annoying because definitely someone in the team should have thought about it, because they had a year’s experience.”
“But ultimately it wasn’t even that big a crash. It was 70km/h and it did the tub – it was the smallest crash I’ve had! It was just a shame that there wasn’t time to build anything up, that’s all.”
“That was a bit disappointing, but that’s just the way life goes.”
