Villeneuve turns left, races into new world

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The following is a cheat sheet for Jacques Villeneuve as the former Formula One world champion prepares to make his NASCAR debut at the Craftsman Truck Series race on Saturday night at Las Vegas Motor Speedway:

A) If you notice a couple in their 40s running and screaming at you in the infield and dressed in attire plastered with Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s image while the husband carries a cardboard cutout of Jimmie Johnson and the wife holds a bucket of Miller Lite with Kurt Busch’s face on each bottle while also wearing a Jeff Gordon bobblehead affixed to her Carl Edwards hat, don’t reach for a weapon or call security. They’re supposed to look and act this way.

B) The floor device near your right leg inside the truck isn’t just some decoration on which to hang your Canadian Grand Prix commemorative T-shirt. It’s called a stick shift. Use it.

C) If at any time during the race you hear another voice inside your helmet, don’t freak out and crash thinking it’s Michael Schumacher playing with your head. In NASCAR, that nifty little mechanism called a two-way radio allows you to communicate with a live person about how the machine is running instead of waiting for an F1 computer to spit out data you believe is wrong.

D) Yes, there really are automobiles built that can’t reach 200 miles per hour.

E) Don’t turn right.

Villeneuve has never been to a NASCAR event, much less competed in one. But life as an F1 champion can grow sour quickly when you are no longer winning in the highest, fastest, most technologically advanced and politically controlled class of racing. You are wanted one day and exiled the next. You are a god today and lose your ride tomorrow.

The answer for some has been to cross over to a class viewed by most F1 fans around the world as cargo planes to their rockets. Villeneuve said there was a time most Europeans probably wondered if NASCAR was some bizarre form of Demolition Derby, but that must be because they only saw highlights of Robby Gordon.

Villeneuve is 36 and following former F1 driver Juan Pablo Montoya into the dark side of oval tracks and scheduled autograph sessions with zealous fans, officially departing the snooty world of wine and cheese and sports jackets for one of beer and pretzels and logo-splashed sweatshirts. One thing the French-Canadian won’t do is move his family from Montreal to Winston-Salem, N.C. He’s beginning a new journey, but he isn’t nuts.

"I know there will be a lot more interaction (with fans) in NASCAR and that excites me," said Villeneuve, who is scheduled to finish the trucks season for Bill Davis Racing before possibly entering the Cup series with the team next year. "But the only thing that really excites a driver is racing."

It’s not certain fans outside America will begin to embrace NASCAR more each time a Montoya or Villeneuve comes over, and it’s probably not that important they do. Foreigners favor four-hour races like they do our laws on gun control, and most domestic fans can’t comprehend the boring open-wheel truths of as much passing as you find on U.S. 95 at rush hour.

But it’s intriguing from other perspectives. Villeneuve won the Indianapolis 500 and CART title in 1995 and was an F1 champion two years later. He began racing at age 5 and at 12 predicted he would one day stand atop the F1 world. But he has never been one to keep his opinions quiet and openly quarreled with Schumacher, arguably the best driver ever born to this planet. Ultimately, for these and other reasons, the F1 kingdom considered Villeneuve expendable.

It led to his now taking the NASCAR plunge after recently testing two days in the trucks and three more in the Car of Tomorrow. It makes you wonder what his father might have said about Jacques pursuing a career in the land of motor homes and barbecue. Giles Villeneuve was a rising F1 star before being killed at age 32 in a qualifying accident at the 1982 Belgian Grand Prix, back when drivers of his caliber thought stock car racing was that thing Americans did in really slow cars out in some place called Daytona.

"He would not have understood this back then," Villeneuve said. "But if he saw how it is now, he would have. He was a racer at heart and loved anything with great racing, where you can battle it out. That’s all that matters.

"When you are the new boy, people want to see what you’re made of. That’s only natural. But once you know how your car is going to respond and react, it will drive like any other. NASCAR and F1 are no different that way — if you’re in a bad car, you’re in a bad car. It’s always about what is hidden underneath."

F) It’s a Holley carburetor.

Ed Graney can be reached at 383-4518 or egraney@reviewjournal.com.