Gilles Villeneuve has been a child, always and forever. He put dreams before him, with a girlish obstinacy, he defeated nightmares, thanks to an instinctive madness. His is a story that began between snow and ice, matured between asphalt and folds. A black and white that gave rise to color: red, like that love that cries out forever.
There is a young Canadian, a sort of madman, who races on snowmobiles in the pearly infinite of Quebec. Over there, where candor dominates, passion has no rules. It simply explodes with the sound of the engine: the freezing months are too long, the impatience to tame is too full. There are those who love the quiet of the snowy landscapes, those who dedicate those long months of hibernation to rest. Certainly not Gilles. He is a child of winter and he makes it come alive with the only means he has available.
Running to quench a thirst, splashes of snow, crystals torn away from impossible trajectories. Splashes of glory conquered among the furrows of the soul, in search of a beyond that smacks of infinity. Because that expanse of nothingness is not enough for him and cannot be enough for him. Joann, first a loving girlfriend, then a devoted wife, then a mother, is aware of this. Of Gilles and his children. It always follows him, in a caravan as an improvised love nest, in a motorhome as a permanent home for existence.
![Gilles Villeneuve](https://www.formulacritica.it/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/1-4-750x375.webp)
Gilles flares up in a burning year, in that 1976 and in its acrid smoke of defiance. While Lauda fights against Hunt's McLaren and against death, James discovers it and reveals it to the world. Overseas races, forays between the pilots who count and choose to have fun to the limit, testing themselves on other continents and in other disciplines. Trois Rivières is the name of the circuit on which Gilles defeats the competition and gets noticed by those who share the seed of madness with him.
Hunt recognizes that uniqueness that distances itself from any type of perfection. Pure enthusiasm based on improvisation and feeling. Something that gets into your gut, also and above all because this guy doesn't have a canonical history in the world of racing. Those snowmobiles remind James of the ramshackle Mini with which he shouted to the world that he wanted to be a driver. And that raw talent whispers to him a request for attention. So the handsome blond giant and the tiny brown elf become accomplices. Of hopes and emotions.
Success came for James in the sensational, hard-fought and damned 1976. For Gilles the opportunity, first with McLaren, at Silverstone '77. Then the call from Enzo, the controversial Ferrari debut. The legacy of Lauda the accountant, which Gilles collects by transforming it into flights. The asphalt as a launching pad towards the extreme, to assert oneself, to distance oneself. Unfortunately also to make the first contact with the tragedy, in that Japanese Grand Prix which seems a dark omen of the future, of that carom that describes parables of death.
![Gilles Villeneuve](https://www.formulacritica.it/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/2-2-750x375.webp)
Enzo suspects, wait. That it was perhaps too early to throw him into the fray, that tomorrow would prove this boy who never grew up, crazy, diabolically angelic right. She looks at him and scrutinizes him, does not abandon him, finds in him a son and that instinctive tenderness that she never thought she would feel again. Gilles' eyes were sweet, with that veil of melancholy that came from who knows where. It was easy to think: “I loved him“.
At the same time it was difficult to think how fragile that thirty-year-old child was. A clay warrior ready to crumble in the dark moment of his existence. Yet he, Enzo, felt that that wonderful 126 C2 would deliver paradise to its aviator. After his loyalty to Jody, after two years of horrible waiting, his time would come.
The maple leaf on the flag would have known triumph, and Ferrari the Olympus, thanks to a pair of aces formed with his partner and friend Pironi. The light-hearted looks and smiles shared between the jovial Frenchman and the little Canadian are too beautiful. A perfect understanding, or at least it seemed like it. Instead Gilles trembled, lost in the anxiety of a crisis with Joann, his fixed point. Caught in the fratricidal battle with Didier, now his moving target.
Imola theater for a play, never rehearsed, never agreed upon with the screenwriter. Pilots like puppets without strings playing the scene, deceived by a director devoted to anarchy. Didier's trip, considered a small whim. The desperation of Gilles, who considers it an abnormal betrayal. They are both there on the podium, with reversed positions, no longer joyful, in an embarrassing curtain that remains open. It will close permanently after less than two weeks.
Zolder, 8 May, qualifying day. The circuit winds through a forest with names that evoke elves and fairies. But for Gilles there is only the echo of an affront to be avenged as revenge, in the frantic pursuit of a senseless challenge. Terlamenbocht, a cemetery between trees and sky, defined by a wave of asphalt too thin to contain the heat of a revenge. The angry little faun, driving the lightning-fast Ferrari, hits Jochen Mass's very slow March.
![Gilles Villenuve](https://www.formulacritica.it/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/3-2-750x375.webp)
A contact between titans, defined by tires, orchestrated by destiny to create a fatal ascent. The single-seater becomes a helicopter without blades, a carcass without will, pushed by kinetic forces transformed into cynical ones. A tornado-like whirlwind, between the copious rain of mechanical remains and the brutal force of that violent ascension. Gilles is now a puppet at the mercy of events, in his devastating, crazy flight.
The boy pilot, poet of the wheel, leaves the last word to a twirl, to a crash of wings. Ready to reach infinity aboard that red car that consecrated him. But don't call him a myth: Gilles is just a man who taught us to fly.