Former Formula 1 driver Jacques Villeneuve has detailed the “little tricks” Williams added to his car at his request following his transition from IndyCar.
Having won the 1995 IndyCar World Series, Villeneuve made the switch to Formula 1 the following year, racing with Williams. Upon his move, he requested a number of radical measures to make his car unique. These included having just one paddle shift instead of the usual two, and using a very short throttle travel – the range of movement in the accelerator pedal.
Speaking on F1’s Beyond the Grid podcast, Villeneuve recalled the small details he brought over from the American series.
“[The throttle travel was] 20 or 18 millimetres, depending on the season,” he said. “I always give the comparison to a computer mouse. If you have to move it a lot to get to where you want, you’ll overshoot, you’ll have to move too fast.
“When it’s a small movement, you get there very quickly and precisely. And it’s the same thing with a pedal.”
He continued: “Instead of movement, it was pressure. When it’s short, it’s down to how much pressure you apply, more than how much you move. And you don’t have to move your whole leg, you just move your foot a little bit, so you have more control.”
Villeneuve went on to describe his unique approach to paddle shifting, in which he only used one paddle to upshift and downshift. He claims he was the only driver on the grid to take this approach.
“That allowed me to not remove my hand from the wheel to go grab it, so you could actually shift while you were cornering at high G-force, or to react quickly if you got wheelspin.
Villeneuve: F1 quirks were “baggage I’d brought from the States”
The Canadian driver, along with his race team at Williams, pioneered a number of techniques brought over from IndyCar which hadn’t made their way onto F1 cars yet.
“We had a lot of little tricks like that that we kept thinking of,” said Villeneuve. “Like flags on the pedals. We were the first ones to put that, heelrests, to hold the legs so they don’t move.
“I told Jock [Clear, Villeneuve’s former race engineer], ‘Listen, I’m spending half my energy holding my leg instead of driving’. So we put this and it helped. It also saved you from breaking your foot if you crash.
“So there was a lot of little things: grips on the steering, adjustable front wings. This is stuff I had brought from IndyCar.
“And also radio communication. Jock would often, at the start, be like a spotter into turn one, watching the TV and telling me where the traffic was.
“This is all the baggage I’d brought from the States.”
Asked whether these technical quirks had been implemented before his debut race at the 1996 Australian Grand Prix, Villeneuve said: “The paddle shifting, that happened later.
“It was gradual. But anything in the comfort and pedal flags and all that, with 9000 kilometres, you have time to figure it out.
“Williams was very quick at reacting, which was fantastic.”
Villeneuve went on to win the 1997 Formula 1 World Drivers’ Championship, the season after his debut with Williams. He subsequently raced for BAR, Renault and Sauber before leaving the sport in 2006.
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