Gilles got on famously with all his team mates - including Didier Pironi, until the very last weeks of his life.
Thinking back - and I can't believe it's almost 20 years he's been gone - he was the kind of fellow you couldn't not get on with. When I was reminiscing about him, shortly after his death, I wrote that, 'The fans loved him, because he, of all the guys out there, was so clearly working without a net'. And that really was the case. I loved to watch Gilles drive because, more than anyone else I have ever seen, he really was 'at the edge', but at the same time I always feared for him, because it was clear that if any one of them was destined to go out on his shield, it was him. He left no margin at all.
Out of the car, he was different again: if the feistiness was never far from the surface, he was essentially a gentle character, absolutely fearless in what he said (be it about Bernie or anyone else), totally honest and straightforward, and with a tremendous sense of fun. The other drivers loved him as much as the journalists.
Villeneuve had his first F1 drive with McLaren, at Silverstone in 1977, but for the rest of his career was only to drive Ferraris. In '78, his team mate was Carlos Reutemann, a charming man and a brilliant driver, but also an immensely temperamental one, who had notably poor relationships with two other team mates, Niki Lauda and Alan Jones. With Villeneuve, though, there was never a problem, and nor was there with Jody Scheckter in 1979 and '80 - despite the fact that Gilles was invariably the quicker of the two.
Then, in '81, Pironi joined Ferrari, and although Villeneuve had much the upper hand, through that first season there were no problems between them.
Early in '82, Pironi had a huge testing accident at Paul Ricard, which left him very shaken. At Rio he was completely off his game, and I remember that Gilles took me on one side, and asked me to have a quiet word with my colleagues: "Please ask them not to give Didier a hard time. OK, he's off the pace, but he's had a hell of a shock. He'll be fine in a couple of weeks. Ask them to go easy on him..."
Take my word for it, this is not standard behaviour for a racing driver. Normally, they'll capitalise on the slightest sign of weakness in a team mate, Pironi did not reply in kind. He was a superb Grand Prix driver, potentially a great one, in my opinion, but he was also much more of a politician than the guileless Villeneuve. In early April of '82 Gilles and his wife Joann were stunned to read in the papers that Didier had got married - with Ferrari team director Marco Piccinini as best man. The Villeneuves had not been so much as invited.
Then came Imola, where the Ferraris, marginal on fuel, were cruising to a one-two, Gilles ahead. At the last passing place on the last lap, Pironi suddenly spurted by Villeneuve, and literally stole the victory. Some people thought they had been 'racing', that Didier had beaten Gilles in a straight fight; it was anything but that.
I was in the parc ferme when they came in, Villeneuve slewing to a halt in a cloud of tyre smoke. His body language was eloquent as he climbed out, took off his helmet. He looked across at me. "The guy's a c***!" he said, and stalked away.
An hour later, he was in his beloved Agusta helicopter, en route back to Monaco. Among those joining him on the flight was Jackie Stewart.
"I'd never seen him angry like that," Stewart said. "You know, with him the World Championship was incidental. He told me his one goal was to beat the record for the most wins, which I then held, and this one had been stolen from him. He was stunned. There had always been this innocence about Gilles - he didn't have a trace of maliciousness in him, and he couldn't believe what had happened. It was awful that the last days of his life were so tormented and disillusioned."
So indeed they were. A couple of days later I called the apartment in Monte Carlo, and we talked for an hour and more. It was a conversation which left me disturbed and apprehensive. He was never going to speak to Pironi again, he said. "I've declared war. Absolute war.
"Finishing second is one thing - I'd have been mad at myself for not being quick enough if he'd beaten me. But finishing second because the bastard steals it..."
It was the duplicity that Villeneuve couldn't stomach. As Stewart said, what truly mattered to Gilles was winning races - that, and being known as the fastest driver on earth. It was deeply offensive to him that some believed he had been beaten in a straight fight.
"People seemed to think we had the battle of our lives," he muttered. "Jesus Christ, I qualified a second and a half faster than him - where was my problem? I think I've proved that, in equal cars, if I want someone to stay behind me...well, I think he stays behind..."
So what now? I said. "In Belgium, if we get a repeat of Imola, running 1-2, short of fuel, than I guess we're both going to run out, right? If it's a matter of trying to pass him at the end of the straight, I'll take the same chance as if it were a Williams or a Brabham. I'll do what I should have done at Imola."
Off we went to Belgium, to Zolder, and there, in the closing minutes of qualifying, Villeneuve crashed to his death, after tangling with a backmarker who was tooling back to the pits.
For some of us, particularly at a time when so much else was awry with racing, the loss of Gilles was almost too much to take in. Lauda said it best: "He was the greatest driver in the world, with more talent than any of us. And I liked him even more than I admired him."
Had he lived, would he have moved to Williams or McLaren for 1983? Whatever else, he told me, he would not stay at Ferrari if Pironi were there, and there is no doubt he was infuriated by Piccinini's refusal to acknowledge Pironi's duplicity at Imola. For all his deep love of Ferrari, I don't doubt he would have left at the end of the season.
