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Monty

Villeneuve's Racing Engineer Praises Cooperation

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Much has been written about how difficult engineers find it to work with the former world champion. Sauber asked one of them for his views: Jacques Villeneuve's racing engineer, Giampaolo Dall'Ara. As it happens, the Canadian does indeed have rather unusual ideas as to what constitutes a good setup, but when the engineers actually take his wishes on board, everything turns out well.

Mr Dall'Ara, is it really so difficult to work with Jacques Villeneuve?

Working with Jacques is no more difficult than working with any other driver I've encountered in the past. Of course he's a special kind of person but I like him very much. I haven't had a single problem with him at the personal level. He's very sincere and says exactly what he thinks. I'm like that myself.

But is it true that he has very clear and sometimes unusual ideas in terms of the setup?

Of course he has his preferences, just like any driver. What was new for me was the fact that he doesn't like driving a different car in each race. As you know, each track poses quite specific demands on the car. That's why my philosophy

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Indeed it is happened all year, except at Imola, where he hs said the car is not setup for him, that is one of the reasons he is not doing well he said

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Well, if he wants a certaib setup, he's bound to get his own way, you can't really argue with a forumer WDC.

JS.

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those were problems pre Imola. The whole saga came to ahead after that diabolical Barcelona test early in the year.

At Imola, Jacques, Peter Sauber and Willy Rampf (their technical director) has a big meeting. Basically they told him he could set the car up how he wanted. If he was a success, he'd proved his point, if he failed, then he would have been in deep strife. Thankfully due to a combination of this, and a new aero package from the team, JV has his best race of the year and drove brilliantly.

By all accounts, the team and JV are now getting along well and they are learning alot from JV's input. The basic problem, as Giampaolo stated, was that the team relied very heavily on computer data for car setup, and not to the drivers, however JV felt they had hired him for his experience, hence they should at least listen to him. This was different for both Jacques and the team, and it took them a while to gel, now they seem to be getting along quite well.

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the car is basically going to be fundamentally suited to Massa since the car was designed on his and Fisi's feedback in 2004. Before I get jumped on for saying that, I'm not using it as an excuse for JV's season thus far.

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he probably already has it for all we know.

No kidding. JV's hobby is computers. Years ago he was using racing games to learn the tracks, I have no doubt he uses them now.

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he should be on the PS2 as we speak doing laps of the Turkish track! :lol:

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JV is supposed to be very good at setting up a car. The fact is he has virtually been systematically outqualified and outraced by Massa. So Massa must be some God at setting up a car.... B)

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JV is supposed to be very good at setting up a car. The fact is he has virtually been systematically outqualified and outraced by Massa. So Massa must  be some God  at setting up a car.... B)

Maybe he is, although a couple of races ago JV outqualified him by almost a second, so I am not sure if your observation is completely accurate. I suppose if you went from the beginning of the year, it is technically correct, however if you want to look at the last few races, I think you would have a problem statistically proving that Massa has dominated Villenueve.

Massa is now driving for Ferrari so maybe the guys that pay the millions know something we don't

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"however if you want to look at the last few races, I think you would have a problem statistically proving that Massa has dominated Villenueve."

it's not like that would stop them going on past experience :lol:

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I suppose if you went from the beginning of the year, it is technically correct, however if you want to look at the last few races, I think you would have a problem statistically proving that Massa has dominated Villenueve.

In the last 5 GPs (excl. US) JV has finished in front of Massa only once, and that was due to Massa retiring.

Therefore, as a human being, JV is only 25% as good as Massa........

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Meh, the fact is, once they started listening to him, he started to get better results. Hopefully he will continue this recent form.

JS.

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"In the last 5 GPs (excl. US) JV has finished in front of Massa only once, and that was due to Massa retiring."

Jacques would have beaten Massa in France had he not retired anyways, they were on different strategies and JV was within range. JV screwed Silverstone at his first stop, had 3 incidents which screwed up his race in Germany and was ahead of Massa prior to them both retiring. Numbers don't tell the full story.

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