TeamLGR.com Commentary January 26, 2006

TeamLGR.com Commentary January 19, 2008

Driver Introductions: Jacques Villeneuve

By F. W. Burns, Team LGR Staff Correspondent

I can’t believe that we are almost racing again! We are only about a month away from the Daytona 500 and the new Winston, sorry, Nextel, oh sorry, Sprint Cup season. And what a season it is going to be: new cars, Toyota representing about half the field, new teammates, and a lot of new open wheel star drivers, each of these topics I will cover in future postings. For now I would like to talk about one of those subjects, all of the new drivers that you will be seeing, who they are and where they come from. So that you get a good idea of who this new breed of drivers are, I will cover one of them each week. This week I would like to introduce Jacques Villeneuve. Jacques will be driving the #27 Bill Davis racing Toyota for the 2008 Sprint Cup season.

Jacques was born April 9, 1971 in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec, Canada, but raised in the Principality of Monaco. Jacques is the son of one of the most talented and respected Formula One stars of all time, Gilles Villeneuve. Unfortunately Gilles was killed in 1982 during a practice run for the Belgium Grand Prix. Gilles was a fan favorite and will always be remembered for his incredible speed, great car control, aggressive driving style, and his winning attitude.

Okay, I know you all are saying “what has Jacques done in the past, how can he just jump in a Cup car?” “He didn’t work his way up”, etc. Let me tell you, Jacques has done so much in motor racing that he could retire today and be respected around the world for the rest of his life. A partial list of Jacques accomplishments are as follows:

1995 CART Series Champion

1995 Indianapolis 500 winner

1997 Formula One world champion

In eleven years of Formula One racing, Jacques participated in 165 races (4.5 seasons in the Cup Series), has 1 championship, 11 wins, 13 poles and 23 top 3 (not top 5, top 3) finishes.

I hope that this article helps you to understand where Jacques is coming from and what he is capable of. I look forward to doing some more research and introducing some of the other new to NASCAR drivers to this audience.

Please visit www.TeamLGR.com for all of your racing news and commentary!

Thanks for reading, and talk to you soon!

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