JULY 3, 2006

Villeneuve talks NASCAR

Jacques Villeneuve has done a decent job this year with BMW Sauber but at 35 years of age, Jacques knows that the chances are that his future in F1 is limited and that the team's test driver Robert Kubica has done well this year in Friday practice and is 14 years younger and his salary is cheaper. Experience does have a value in F1 but with Nick Heidfeld under contract BMW already has a driver with many thousands of miles of F1 testing going back 10 years. Jacques also knows that if BMW does not take him next year, it is unlikely that any other F1 team is going to take him on. The options is to race in America but Jacques has been there and done that and does not consider either Champ Car or IRL as a good move. And that means that if he wants to go on racing in a serious capacity the only choices are outside the single-seater world. The biggest series available to him would be NASCAR and while Villeneuve says he would consider such a move, it has yet to proved if any the teams would have any interest. It is not as it looks as Christian Fittipaldi showed a couple of years ago when he tried to make it in NASCAR. That petered out. NASCAR has a few older drivers but the focus in recent years has switched to youngsters and it is hard to imagine that any of the serious teams would take a chance on Jacques. The best he could hope for would be a programme in the Busch Series, the second level of NASCAR. Jacques, however, has new priorities in his life with a new wife and ambitions in the singing business.