{"id":280,"date":"2010-05-08T10:30:51","date_gmt":"2010-05-08T09:30:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wp\/?p=280"},"modified":"2010-05-08T10:30:51","modified_gmt":"2010-05-08T09:30:51","slug":"gilles-villeneuve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/2010\/05\/08\/gilles-villeneuve\/","title":{"rendered":"Gilles Villeneuve"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>While I wasn&#8217;t alive to see him race, I&#8217;ve read about and seen enough of his career to know how fabulous <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Gilles Villeneuve\" rel=\"wikipedia\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gilles_Villeneuve\">Gilles Villeneuve<\/a> was.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Today, 25 years ago, <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Formula One\" rel=\"wikipedia\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Formula_One\">Formula One<\/a> lost one of its greatest ever exponents, a man whose modest record belied an impact on the sport so profound that his memory lives on today. He combined the best qualities of <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Michael Schumacher\" rel=\"wikipedia\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Michael_Schumacher\">Michael Schumacher<\/a>, <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Ayrton Senna\" rel=\"wikipedia\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ayrton_Senna\">Ayrton Senna<\/a> and <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Juan Pablo Montoya\" rel=\"wikipedia\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Juan_Pablo_Montoya\">Juan Pablo Montoya<\/a> &#8211; a dazzling talent, an unquenchable spirit and desire, and a magnetic charisma that attracted millions of fans. He also possessed an honesty and honour from a bygone age &#8211; traits which were to be contributing factors in his death.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That man was Gilles Villeneuve, whose brief but glorious career was ended on 8 May 1982, in a horrific accident during qualifying for the <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Belgian Grand Prix\" rel=\"wikipedia\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Belgian_Grand_Prix\">Belgian Grand Prix<\/a> at <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Zolder\" rel=\"wikipedia\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Zolder\">Zolder<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/sport1\/hi\/motorsport\/formula_one\/1934994.stm\" target=\"blank\">This review of his life<\/a> sums up just what made him a great driver. (<a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/sport1\/hi\/motorsport\/formula_one\/1934994.stm\" target=\"blank\">BBC Sport<\/a>)<\/p>\n<div class=\"zemanta-pixie\" style=\"margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;\"><a class=\"zemanta-pixie-a\" title=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" href=\"http:\/\/www.zemanta.com\/\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"zemanta-pixie-img\" style=\"border: none; float: right;\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.zemanta.com\/zemified_e.png?w=1165\" alt=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While I wasn&#8217;t alive to see him race, I&#8217;ve read about and seen enough of his career to know how fabulous Gilles Villeneuve was. Today, 25 years ago, Formula One lost one of its greatest ever exponents, a man whose modest record belied an impact on the sport so profound that his memory lives on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[41,17,29],"tags":[65,92,335,388,407,1171,1267,1642,1920,1975,3348],"class_list":["post-280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-formula-one","category-linkage","category-sport","tag-65","tag-92","tag-ayrton-senna","tag-bbc-sport","tag-belgian-grand-prix","tag-formula-one","tag-gilles-villeneuve","tag-juan-pablo-montoya","tag-may","tag-michael-schumacher","tag-zolder","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6OeSW-4w","jetpack-related-posts":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}