‘DAD WAS DRIVING ANGRY’: JACQUES VILLENEUVE ON HIS FATHER GILLES’ FATAL CRASH

Jacques Villeneuve choked up watching the trailer for a new biopic on his father Gilles, "Villeneuve: Rise of a Legend," premiering at Toronto Film Festival on September 19. The film focuses on the elder Villeneuve's path to Ferrari, the years before he became a six-time grand prix winner and one of the sport's most fearless racers.

Jacques was eleven when Gilles died at Zolder in 1982, two weeks after a blowup with teammate Didier Pironi over team orders. The 1997 champion now tells his own seven kids—including a four-year-old named Gilles—that their grandfather "passed away because he was racing angry."

Jacques says he never raced angry himself, that he calculated risk better than his father did. Conversations with Prost and other drivers who faced Gilles wheel-to-wheel have helped him "connect some dots" about the fury that defined his father's final weekend. The movie won't show that part—it ends with the Ferrari hire—but the son's reckoning continues.