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I hesitated so much to do this.

I don't want it to be hurtful to anyone.

But this story is about a very deep betrayal.

It is hurtful...

...to a lot of people.

The story of Gilles Didier...

It's complicated.

So many people don't know the truth.

Two friends trying to be the greatest.

But destiny decides something else.

Young Quebec driver Gilles Villeneuve

was fastest qualifier, breaking the track record

by over a second.

I met him when I was sixteen.

Being so young I didn't have much references to go by.

You met on a blind date, right?

Well that's a long story, blind date and all of that...

we'll have to go on for hours on that.

Gilles was the kind of person that you fell in love with

for his mind and his passion.

She decided to buy the package.

Well she had to, she didn't have the choice.

He was a natural born racer.

We were just two kids from Quebec.

We had no money.

I got pregnant...

...and then we got married.

He came home one day and said, "We're moving".

Well, I sold the house.

He said, "I've bought myself a ride in Formula Atlantic".

The winner... Gilles Villeneuve!

The only thing that I wanted was that I would be there

with him all the time.

And he got to be with the kids.

A lot of the memories I have of my dad are very short moments.

Gilles Villeneuve wins the Player's Maritime.

Did you imagine them? It's all smiles...

Is it what people have told you?

Is it pictures you've seen?

It all gets mixed up.

But I remember that it was fun.

The racetrack was a playground.

You're just bathing in this environment,

and that's all you know, and you love it.

I would like to thank each and every one of you

for coming here today and supporting...

It was great being with him.

When you're a kid you don't really understand what speed is.

All you know is that it's fun, so you just want him

to go faster all the time.

There was a Formula Atlantic race in Three Rivers.

European Formula One drivers would come in to the race.

I went over there and raced against him and got thrashed.

You didn't have to be much of a brain surgeon to spot his talent.

That was a life changing moment.

We get a phone call, there was someone on the line saying

"Who is this kid that drives snowmobiles?

I would like to see him".

It was Enzo Ferrari.

At that time in '77...

...I was the only woman in the racing department.

And I was the only English person.

I had 199 men and me and I had a whale of a time.

Enzo Ferrari... The Old Man, we called him.

He was a fearsome character.

Ferrari doesn't normally take a chance on a driver at all.

Enzo just saw something in Gilles.

The pressure from the start was immense.

Considering his astonishing lack of experience,

Gilles embraced being a Ferrari driver.

He was immensely spectacular.

Gilles Villeneuve... Triumph!

His first win was his home Grand Prix.

His mum and dad were in the crowd...

...It was like a dream world.

Canada hadn't had a Grand Prix winner before.

Phwoar.

It was terrific! It surely must be the biggest day of your life?

Yeah, it's the biggest day.

Gilles would drive as hard for fifth place as he would for a win.

He had this daredevil persona.

Across the world the spectators loved him.

My name is Alan Jones, I just won...

...and I'm sitting next to Gilles Villeneuve!

At the end of the season in 1980...

...we met with a driver

who was going to be next year's teammate for Gilles.

This feeling overcame me...

woman's intuition, I guess.

I said to Gilles, "You should be very wary of him".

"What you see is not what you're going to get".

I met Didier, I was 18, Didier was 21.

He was a charming racer with beautiful eyes.

Wonderful smile, blonde hair. A real gentleman.

But with the women... Pfft!

He has had a reputation to be with lots of girls.

Lots of seduction, lots of charisma.

When I met him there was a spark.

But nothing happened. We just stayed friends.

Didier grew up outside of Paris.

It was a wealthy family.

He had had a very good education.

Didier was sophisticated, intelligent.

He was a hugely ambitious competitor.

He went through the Renault system...

...and then Formula Three, Formula Two...

Wherever he was in the world, Didier called his mother every day.

She was always very strong.

She said to Didier "I let you race".

"But you have to come first".

Didier think that destiny doesn't exist.

Everyone can make his own destiny.

If you were talking to him, his manner was almost timid.

But beneath the surface...

...there was steel.

At Ligier he had often been fearsomely quick.

Didier was the logical driver for Ferrari to go for.

Gilles represented passion and flare and emotion.

He had a huge natural ability. And now a massive global following.

Didier was a courageous racing driver. More analytical.

His focus was laser-like on his aspirations

to win a World Championship.

Eleonora Vallone!

They are strong in their head, they are strong in their body,

and they are very charismatic.

Being with them, on the edge all the time.

It's amazing adrenaline.

Do you have any special friends in racing?

Gilles and Didier... My boys.

Together they were terrible.

I was friends with Didier and Gilles.

They were unbelievably competitive about the speed.

You could think that Gilles would be the craziest.

He was not, Didier was much, much worse.

They all had licences to fly and they should never have been

allowed to be in the cockpit.

Didier went to Ferrari genuinely believing

he was the fastest driver in the world.

He was aware though that Ferrari had become very much

Gilles Villeneuve's team.

Through 1981, Ferrari had this terrible, terrible car.

Gilles was routinely quicker than Didier.

With a difficult car, Gilles was always amazing.

He was like a magician.

At Monaco, Gilles was on the front row...

...and won the race.

Didier was two rows from the back.

Didier realised through that year...

"I've not had a teammate like this before."

Ready when you are. Right, OK, I'm going.

Gilles, how can you be so cheerful at the end of a race like that?

Gilles had a lovely sense of humour.

There wasn't a malicious bone in his body.

Gilles was somebody that I really appreciate on the human side.

He was humble, honest.

And in a car he was very fast, but very fair.

He was able to do unbelievable things.

That was Gilles.

Gilles was one of the most charismatic drivers...

...in the history of motorsport.

Italy fell in love with him instantly.

Gilles was their driver.

He was just a normal guy.

He took his family around with him.

My dad had moved his motorhome to Europe.

He wanted us all to be together.

So we basically lived out of that motorhome,

driving to every European Grand Prix.

We were the gypsies of Formula One.

The family life for him was grounding.

And that was endearing to the people.

They could see themselves in him.

Enzo Ferrari's son, Dino, died in his twenties of muscular dystrophy.

The effect on Enzo was devastating.

He never got over that.

He used to go every morning to the cemetery to salute his son.

It's very difficult to say with The Old Man

exactly what his feelings were with people.

He was more interested in the machine than the drivers.

But if he took somebody under his wing, he would be super loyal.

Compared with his fellow drivers, Gilles stood out.

Enzo adored him.

They had a beautiful friendship. For Gilles, Enzo was this father figure.

And Enzo saw Gilles as a spiritual son.

My dad was my hero when I was a kid.

But once we got to Europe and then Ferrari...

...life really changed.

Jacques was a boy and so for my dad, a boy doesn't cry

or a boy has to be a little bit tougher.

He wasn't involving me.

So my mother often would force him to bring me along.

The memory I have of going to Ferrari

is just sitting atop of a tree.

I would sit all day just watching him drive.

He was very hard on Jacques.

Melanie was Daddy's girl.

She could do no wrong.

But Jacques had to be the perfect boy.

Gilles thought that if he pushed hard,

he was going to perform better.

I had migraines continuously.

I was really worried also, I was stressed with him racing.

I was just needing a father.

His life was 24/7 what he was in a Formula One car.

He was a very selfish man.

But for him, that sole focus...

...that's what he needed to push the limit.

How do you know when you push a little more

that you're just not going to fall off the edge?

Well sometimes you fall off the edge.

You always know it's dangerous.

But you can't live in fear 24/7.

You're drawn into the whirlwind.

In Formula One... death was more acceptable...

...because it was happening so often.

Nobody was super shocked if somebody got killed.

They were there to do a job, to win races.

Gilles had this philosophy.

Every time you see an accident, you think "Can it happen to me..?

No. Because I'm not going to be in this situation".

You force yourself to believe that that cannot happen to you.

Maybe I will have a big accident.

But I'm not going to get killed in a car if you want.

Why, I can't say, but that's the feeling I have.

Didier was the president of the Grand Prix Drivers' Association.

At that time, nobody wanted the GPDA, other than the drivers.

This was the era of ground effects.

Cars had essentially no suspension.

At the same time the cornering forces were hugely dangerous.

Didier could have been a politician.

He was very forthright and straight to the point.

Didier understand the danger.

But at every moment he tried to be in control.

You have to control the machine because at one moment...

the machine is going to control you.

In 1982 Ferrari had made a much more sophisticated car.

The gains in technology seemed to enable Pironi

to come up to Villeneuve's level.

That was the first time that the two Ferrari drivers

seemed equally matched.

The principal sponsor of Ferrari at that time met with Didier in Paris.

There was a plan being laid out to see how the support

in Ferrari could be shaped more towards Didier.

In the mind of Didier... You've had Gilles now here now for four years,

driving the wheels off the car, and in some cases literally.

He's won races, but he's not won a World Championship.

I'm the person that you should now put your support behind to win

the next World Championship for Ferrari.

Didier was driven to be World Champion in his own mind.

It's not an easy trip.

To get there you've got to have a lot of people on board with you.

The Old Man had a lot of faith in Marco.

Marco was a very intelligent person.

In the meetings they had... it was always Marco who had the last word.

Didier asked Marco Piccinini to be his best man.

May not have been his best friend, but he was going to be

his best man at his wedding.

Would that be a political move?

We found out that Didier had gotten married

when we arrived at the racetrack at Imola the week after.

We had not been told, not been invited, nothing.

It was a disappointment to Gilles.

He considered Didier as a very, very close friend.

Gilles was completely without guile.

He was so absolute in everything.

Including in his trust of people.

Old Man Ferrari liked to put people against each other

in the team.

He felt that motivated them more.

But I had a great relationship with Gilles.

Everything was to make the team better.

We trusted each other.

Going into the race at Monza in '79, if Jody won,

he was going to be World Champion.

Ferrari had a rule...

if the Ferrari's were running first and second,

the order in which they were running when they became first and second,

that's the order they go over the line.

You don't pass your teammate.

There were periods in that time he could have tried to overtake me.

But I knew Gilles as a person.

Gilles obediently sat behind Jody for the rest of the race.

Knowing that in so doing, he was ending his own chances

of winning the World Championship.

He was a good person, he was very honest.

Maybe to the extent of being naive.

1982 My dad was seeing '82 as his season.

The same way '79 was Scheckter's.

He had given so much to Ferrari that he deserved something back.

He knew he had a winning car.

He was going for the Championship that season for the first time

in his F1 career.

So in his mind, '82 was his.

He didn't need to worry about his teammate.

In 1982, politically there was a battle

over who controls Formula One.

Most teams boycotted Imola.

It was going to be a race between Ferrari and Renault

with Rene Arnoux and Alain Prost.

Before the race, Didier, Gilles, Rene and myself had a discussion.

Because we had very little number of cars, we decided to make a show

for all the fans...

trying to overtake each other at the beginning.

Middle of the race we fight.

And then before the end of the race, we don't overtake anymore.

The one leading the race should win.

That was the deal.

Mauro Forghieri was not at the racetrack at Imola

for family reasons.

I blew up the engine.

I was out of the race very quickly.

Ferrari are running one-two and Gilles is leading.

We go back to the Ferrari rule.

This should be the order in which they cross the line.

The Ferrari drivers were given the slow sign.

Which was a reminder of the team orders.

The signal was going out...

Hold position!

That weekend, Gilles had been super quick compared with Didier.

So he backed right off, couple of seconds a lap.

Gilles was cruising.

But then he made a mistake.

Didier was now in front.

He picked up the pace.

Gilles got back in front.

And slowed it up again.

This pattern was repeated several times.

The pair of them were in a battle.

Gilles took the lead again.

OK. We've put on a show for the crowd.

Now we just cruise to the finish.

The last overtaking spot on the last lap.

That was it.

I'll never forget how angry he was.

He was raging!

Gilles didn't even want to go up on the podium.

If you beat me fairly, I'm good.

But if you cheat...

that's not racing.

Gilles felt this enormous betrayal

from someone he thought was a friend.

The week after I was on my phone for hours trying to calm down Gilles.

He could not calm down.

For Gilles it was all about friendship.

He could not get over how his trust had been betrayed.

Gilles said "I'm not going to speak to him again ever".

"I've declared war".

Gilles never saw it coming.

Where to me it was like "Yeah sure... I told you..."

Having understood that Marco was Didier's best man at his wedding,

Didier knew that he wouldn't be reprimanded.

It was an illustration of his single mindedness.

"Gilles Villeneuve, I don't give a damn about you".

"I'm racing for myself".

Understandably, Gilles was deeply upset.

Enzo initially stood behind Didier.

Then the next day retracted and said what had happened was wrong.

But by then Gilles felt betrayed by the whole situation.

It's not only the agreement.

But it's the way that Ferrari react.

That means that justice does not mean anything.

It was one of the few races I didn't go to.

Melanie was doing her first communion.

I thought, you know, first communions come once in a lifetime.

There are going to be many more races.

It was the qualifying session.

Didier was fractionally quicker than Gilles.

In motor racing, emotion is dangerous.

Gilles used two sets of qualifying tyres.

The best had been taken out of them.

But he wanted a third qualifying run.

He was only focused on Didier's time.

When you start to have this motivation that is the maximum risk.

I was in Monaco.

I received a call from Jody Scheckter.

He explained to me that Gilles just had a big accident.

It was very serious and I had to fly to Belgium immediately.

I couldn't comprehend what he was telling me.

I kept thinking, "Well he's going to be OK, so it's OK."

Gilles was closing very quickly on Jochen Mass.

He tried to take the long way round.

Jochen did nothing wrong, he was trying to get out of the way.

In a split second Gilles took the wrong action.

When I got to the hospital, I could not bring myself to...

...understand it.

He was already hooked up to all the machines.

They explained to me that the spinal cord had been cut.

They can't fix that.

There's nothing you can do or say.

You just sit there by his side.

And wait for the end to come.

When someone gets very sick and it's a slow process,

you have the time to say goodbye.

This kind of thing you don't.

Also it's not going to be private. It's going to be public.

It was very uncomfortable.

I didn't like to see him there.

It lasted for days it feels like.

The whole of Canada had just stopped.

As a kid it didn't make sense.

We knew our dad was special.

But seeing that kind of reaction...

he wasn't ours anymore.

For me firstly, Gilles was the most genuine person I ever knew.

He was the fastest racing driver history has ever known.

After Gilles' death, The Old Man made this statement.

"His death has deprived us of a great champion.

"One that I loved very much.

"My life is full of sad memories.

"Parents...

"brother...

"son.

"I look back, I see the faces of my loved ones...

"and among them...

"I see him".

Didier got pole position in Montreal.

He stalled at the start.

Young Riccardo Paletti who was starting from the back of the grid,

and was unsighted by all the cars in front of him.

He hit the parked Ferrari.

The impact had killed him, he died.

No.

By the time we got to mid summer, Ferrari had the quickest car

at that time, and Didier had won the Dutch Grand Prix as well as Imola.

He was emerging as the principle World Championship title contender,

with the potential of being the first ever French World Champion.

It was a practice session at a very high-speed circuit.

In conditions which were very, very bad.

In Hockenheim when you had the spray, because of the trees

it stays in the air for a long time.

You could not see anything.

Not many cars went out.

Except for Didier.

He was running, running, running,

and he was really trying to show to everybody

that he was the best, he was at the top.

Didier was normally able to rationalise the situation.

But he didn't need to be doing what he was doing.

I was on my first lap.

Derek Daly was behind me...

and then Didier.

Didier was closing very quickly on Daly.

Maximum commitment.

He drove into a ball of spray.

And was blinded.

The car went like this beside me.

I went and looked at Didier's car.

The shock was really, really awful.

When Didier had his accident I might have thought "Oh, well done".

You know, or... you know, that little vengeful part of you

that says that.

But then when you sit down with yourself and you say,

"Do you really think that?"

No.

You can't want bad on someone.

At the time I was also at hospital.

I was suffering from an illness.

Didier called me because I was also in pain.

He thought that maybe I will understand more

than the others, what he is feeling.

He had more than 30 surgeries.

His leg broke and broke again.

He was amazingly courageous.

He said to me, "I want you to come to live with me".

And then it starts...

We were both broken.

And we tried to reconstruct each other in the silence of the forest.

Didier loved astronomy.

We had a big telescope at home.

We were looking at the stars.

He was fascinated by the galaxy.

He changed a lot after his accident.

Like a star, he become a shadow.

I see his eyes when he speak about Gilles.

To know that he's never going to see him again...

...and to talk about what happened at Imola.

He has a big, big regret.

Gilles' death...

It's what he has to carry all his life.

Gilles was my teenage sweetheart. He was the other half of me.

After Gilles' accident I had

to learn to do everything on my own.

It took many years to process.

I was very angry.

The anger left to some extent and it's just pain.

But it's not the pain of a 48 year old,

it's the pain of an eight year old that is being recycled.

You have to find a focus.

I had two children that were left without a father that needed me.

If your son comes to you one day and says,

"Papa, I want to do what you do".

Sure son, that's what I want him to do in fact.

I have already bought him a little motorcycle.

- How old is he? - He's eight now. He was... Are you nuts?

Oh it's no problem with him.

I would like him to be in racing.

I knew at five years old I would be a race car driver.

How can I tell my son not to do what his father did?

I couldn't bring myself to not let him do what he loved.

In the first few years of racing, my mother really helped me.

For me there was this weight and pressure while he was alive.

And this was gone.

It really had a huge impact on who I then became.

Jacques... ...Villeneuve.

He's in the most glamorous racing world, Formula One.

Jacques' father Gilles, a swashbuckling racer.

That legacy, son of Gilles, has dogged him ever since.

Hey!

I'm not trying to walk into his shadow or to do better than him.

I don't want to know if I drive like him. I don't really care.

I was racing because I was wanting to race.

Not because I wanted to carry on what my dad had started.

Which is what a lot of people were wanting to see.

Whilst Didier was trying to get back to Formula One,

he has to put his energy somewhere.

When Didier arrived in the sport of offshore,

he was totally committed to it.

Here was a guy who arrived on the dockside and said,

"I'm going to win a championship".

Didier built a race boat called Colibri.

As a design it was beautiful.

It was 20% lighter than any other boat,

with more powerful engines and basically nothing

to give it any directional stability at all.

In the summer of '87, Didier and I decide to have a baby.

He loved children and he really wanted to have a family.

Because of my illness, the only way for us, it's to have IVF.

It was my fifth attempt.

Out of the blue the hospital say, "Your result is positive".

Then I just start to cry.

We found that we have twins.

Didier said, "I have done two instead of one".

This is again competitivity.

He was so happy.

And then he went to England for his next race.

When the flag dropped, two boats were leading the race.

One was Didier in Colibri.

The other one was Pinot di Pinot.

They swapped the lead about four or five times.

On lap two, in front of them...

...was this slow moving tanker.

The rules of the sea say that if you are the overtaking boat,

you need to take proper precautions.

The Pinot di Pinot boat altered course

to cross the wash of the tanker at a right angle.

Didier did not make that adjustment.

He wasn't prepared to alter course.

He wasn't prepared to alter speed.

They met the wash travelling at 94 miles an hour

at an angle of 45 degrees.

The boat rolled over in a barrel and went in upside down.

None of them had a chance.

I received a phone call.

Didier was dead.

I can't scream.

I can't do anything.

I have two babies in me.

I was moved to the hospital for the rest of my pregnancy...

six month.

I enter in summer...

...I see the autumn...

...I see the winter.

There were a lot of complication with the pregnancy.

But then 6th of January 1988...

I gave birth to the twins.

They say, "You tell the name".

And then I say, "Didier...

"and the second who will come...

"..it will be Gilles".

This idea came from a photo.

Enzo Ferrari with Gilles and Didier on each side of him.

Catherine called me to see if I would mind.

It was sort of strange for me, but then again I thought

it would be just petty of me to say no.

You know, it was OK.

That's your father with his first car.

Some of them I don't know, actually.

That's an important one.

This nurse was the one I have every day in my room. He was...

In our childhood we were surrounded by pictures of our father.

That was like a very heavy legacy.

You see all those images and you think...

who really was your father?

What was the real story?

When you have a twin, it's like having a teammate but for life.

You always try to be a bit better or slightly in front.

Competitivity, that's what's in the blood.

I joined Mercedes in 2014 as an engineer.

I wanted to be appreciated for who I was and the value that I was adding.

As opposed to who my father was.

It was a party in Saint-Tropez...

Every single year for our birthday, our mum tells us the story again

about our father.

This one is great. Great photo. Oui.

Great photo. He had to face adversity.

His legs got destroyed.

To come back from that, I have a huge respect

for this part of his career.

Given what our mother went through, the fact that our father

wasn't there, our relationship is quite unique.

And I'm sure he would be proud of that, yeah.

Do you enjoy racing yourself?

Not really. - Not really? - No.

I don't think I would be a good spectator.

Gilles transmitted his passion for racing to me.

So I was stuck with it, wasn't I?

It wouldn't let go of me.

In F1, I was given this platform to actually really be me.

I won the World Championship with my team.

It's just euphoria.

Gilles was hard on Jacques as a father.

But he also was extremely proud of everything he did.

He would have been so happy.

Coming back to the track here...

which is Gilles' last race...

there still are a lot of emotions.

After Gilles' death, a lot of blame was put on Didier.

But nobody ever forces you to put your belt on, your helmet on

and go out.

Pironi never told my dad to go back on the track.

You can blame Pironi for dishonesty, for disloyalty.

It was such a betrayal.

And that anger that came from it,

it's something that stays with you.

But Gilles' accident...

...it can't be on him.

Even today I have young kids coming to me with tears in their eyes,

saying, "He's an inspiration to me today".

That tells you that your life, even that short,

gave something to people.

After all these years, people only talk about Gilles.

Nobody speaks about Didier.

Which is sad.

After you have to get used to normal,

because the crazy was your normal.

So many times I thought "This is going to be the last day

of my life".

But I love it.

All this sensation, life, it's very empty without all that.

They wanted to have children, we were really wanted.

It's a true act of love.

My name is Didier Pironi.

I'm so proud to have this name today.

For many years I couldn't even see his face in my mind.

He's more of a positive presence for me now.

He's there to watch over me.

He had promised that he would die with me

when we were in our eighties.

Every minute you spend with someone...

...spend it to the fullest.

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