Villeneuve Pironi is one of Formula 1’s many great tales, and sadly one of its greatest tragedies too, if ever proof was needed that in racing beating your teammate is the number one priority, aka enemy number one, then the story of Gilles and Didier provides it.
Filmmaker Torquil Jones, who began working on Villeneuve Pironi before he was much into Formula 1, but since then has turned into “an F1 obsessive, explained: “Throughout the process, you just get an appreciation of the sport and how special these two men were.
“Particularly in that era, around the late seventies and early eighties, the sport was so dangerous. They would race in these metal tin cans with no protection. They were risking everything, race after race.
“There are countless quotes from Didier where he speaks very poetically about the experience of racing and the experience of being on the edge and the experience of speed. From the start, I knew there would be a lot of onboard car-rig filming that we could do to give us that sense of being in the car.”
Set for release this Christmas on Sky, the documentary blurb states: “Villeneuve Pironi tells the astonishing story of Canadian Formula 1 legend Gilles Villeneuve and French star Didier Pironi, two fearless Ferrari Formula 1 drivers, forever torn apart by a historic and hugely controversial moment in time.”
It was gut-wrenching stuff for those F1 fans who were around to witness that season; Villeneuve’s death as a result of the feud, and the irony of Pironi’s brutal crash, that nearly killed him at Hockenheim, exactly three months after his Ferrari teammate perished.
Didier survived despite nearly losing his legs, however, in 1987 he was killed after a crash while piloting an offshore powerboat during the Needles Trophy Race near the Isle of Wight.
Gilles was 32 when he died, Didier was 35 at the time of his death
In making the film, Jones aimed to create a visual experience to make the production stand out as a doccie: “I was always very keen not to shoot in a very straightforward way because there’s a lot of documentaries at the moment that shoot reconstructions in the same way.
“We used a number of different techniques, like specialized filters on the front of the camera that re-refract the light where it feels like parts are in focus, but parts are out of focus. It was really to give that dreamlike, abstract sense of being there at the time and being inside the mind. We just wanted the viewer to feel as immersed in the story as possible.”
Recalling the Villeneuve Pironi premiere at DOC NYC last month, Jones said: “The reaction was really, really positive. It was the first time anyone outside of a handful of people had watched the film. Hopefully, it’s an indication of that bigger audience that we’ve been trying to get.
“The ambition from the start has always been to produce a documentary that’s embedded in the sports documentary genre, but is really a human drama. What was interesting for me was the reaction from people who weren’t Formula One fans or necessarily sporting fans.
“Hopefully, the fact it’s such a human drama at its core makes it so that anyone can understand and relate to the film and be taken away by the drama of it.”
Many challenges in the making of Villeneuve Pironi
Jones also shed light on the journey to final cut: “We first started developing this film six years ago, so pre-Drive to Survive. We were approached to see if we wanted to make a Gilles Villeneuve documentary, who is an icon of the sport and deserving of his own biopic–incredible personality and an amazing driver.
“It was really when we looked into the story, particularly around 1982, this really compelling figure of Didier Pironi started to emerge. It was my co-writer on the film, Gabriel Clarke, who had the idea: Why don’t we do this as a doubleheader?
“I responded: If we’re going to do that, we’re going to need both families to be a part of the film. Because it really is a story about two families. The producer on the film, John McKenna, spent four years trying to bring the families to the table for the first time.
“This story has been written about a lot, but it had never been made into a documentary feature, which was surprising given how dramatic the story is. Really, I think it was because no one has been able to bring the families together to tell the story before.
“I think our timing has just been really fortunate. The fact that there is a much bigger audience for F1 now, particularly in North America, means that hopefully, we can ride the crest of this wave that’s been built via that Netflix audience,” explained Jones, with reference to how F1 is finally catching on in America, a boom in interest, including three Grand Prix races Stateside in 2023: Miami, Austin and Las Vegas.
Good timing as Netflix’s Drive to Survive F1 show awakens America
With reference to Netflix’s Drive to Survive F1 show, Jones said: “I’ve watched all three series. I think it’s great. I think the reason it works and why the popularity of this sport has increased off the back of it is because it’s personality driven.
“It’s being driven by the drivers and the sporting directors of the team. Its rivalry. It’s teammates. It’s friendships. It’s betrayal. It’s loyalty. It’s all of those things that really appeal to us about the Villeneuve Pironi story as well.
“I think that’s why the audience has grown massively because they’re not seeing it as 20 cars. They’re seeing it as 20 individual characters going up against each other.
“I think that people are just looking for really good stories and I think F1 provides a lot of very compelling stories. Yeah. It’s narrative-driven, it’s 100% narrative driven.”
There was so much detail around the story that wouldn’t make a 90-minute film edit
Jones explained: “There was enough content that would make a really intriguing book about the story and about that season. It is laced with politics. infighting, and different ambitions and perspectives.
“The key for me was figuring out how to get to the people that matter in the story. For example, within Ferrari, we talked to the sporting director, Marco Piccinini, who was running the team. Many who were there say that he had a preference for Didier Pironi and he didn’t get on with Gilles as well.
“But then we also spoke to Mauro Forghieri, who was the technical director and head engineer, who had an amazing relationship with Gilles and didn’t really like Didier Pironi. We also have Enzo Ferrari’s private secretary [Brenda Vernor] who had a very human, personal relationship with both drivers and Enzo Ferrari.
“We also talked to the mechanics who were there working with both men on a day-to-day basis, supplemented with drivers from other teams who were friends with both men but had an outsider perspective on Ferrari.
“The key for me was working through all the research and, through talking to the right people, deciding who were the right characters in the story that will give us first-hand accounts of what happened, but will also give us different perspectives on what happened.
“From there, it’s a case of, as a filmmaker/storyteller, deciding what is the key information that’s really going to drive the emotional narrative. What’s going to make this as thrilling and as exciting as possible?”
Jones wanting both sides of the story recalled the challenges of balancing the narrative
“There are aspects of this story where the views are so opposing,” revealed Jones. “You can’t just pick a side and say: This is the right version of events, and this is not.
“You have to weigh up all the evidence. There are times when you have to lay it out to the audience a bit tongue-in-cheek, like with the wedding. Joann [Villeneuve] was with Gilles at the time and will know better than anyone how Gilles reacted.
“There was a genuine sense of: Hang on a minute. These are best friends and the wedding hasn’t even been mentioned to us and we’ve not been invited and the best man is Marco Piccinini, who’s, essentially, the boss of the drivers. So, what’s that about?”
“But then, you talk to Catherine Bleynie-Larson, who was Didier’s wife, and you talk to Marco Piccinini, and they just say: This wasn’t a big deal back then. People got married and you’d invite people a week before, you just do it.
“So what’s the right answer there? I think you just have to lay it out to the audience and let them decide. Because I started as a casual fan, I had no skin in the game, so to speak. For me, it was just an incredible story,” enthused Jones.
Villeneuve Pironi goes deeper than any other documentary on the two legendary F1 drivers
Shedding valuable light on that incredible chapter of F1 history were the soundbites that surfaced, many forgotten, that Jones and his production team unearthed: “There was one quote in the film where Gilles, right at the beginning, says: I love racing because I can defy the laws of physics.
“And there are countless quotes from Didier where he speaks very poetically about the experience of racing and the experience of being on the edge and the experience of speed. From the start, I knew there would be a lot of onboard car rig filming that we could do to give us that sense of being in the car. That really just expanded out to be inside their minds for certain key events.”
Jones explained why he expects Villeneuve Pironi to be set apart from similar productions: “We used a number of different techniques, like specialized filters on the front of the camera that re-refract the light where it feels like parts are in focus, but parts are out of focus.
“It was really to give that dreamlike, abstract sense of being there at the time and being inside the mind of whoever was talking in that moment.”
Sky subscribers in Europe and UK, look out for the Villeneuve Pironi doccie on your schedule over the festive season. It airs in Italy on 25 December.
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