Formula 1 | Ferrari remembers Gilles Villeneuve for the fortieth anniversary of the GP in Montreal

There are many strange things in an old photo from almost forty years ago. For example, the fact that the winner wears a heavy jacket over his tracksuit, or that he celebrates not with the traditional bottle of champagne, but with a magnum of beer (sponsors counted even then).

That weekend of first rain and then freezing cold could have been made even stranger by the fact that that Canadian Grand Prix, the first hosted by the city of Montreal, had initially been scheduled for the following Monday, Thanksgiving Day. But TVs were already important too, in 1978, and the races were on Sunday. But perhaps the strangest thing is that that short and oblong runway built close to the Olympic basin, that oval interrupted by chicanes that runs through the greenery of the Ile de Notre Dame, running alongside the majestic San Lorenzo river, at first the pilots didn't like it . Some said it had been made especially for their local colleague, the reckless Gilles Villeneuve.

Not even on purpose, that Sunday, he won: his first success in F.1, on the T3 of the Scuderia Ferrari. Coming back angrily on Jones and Scheckter, his future teammate, only to find his path cleared by Jarier's retirement. Gilles is no longer with us, even if those like him, in reality, always remain with us a little. But the track, the one we didn't like at the beginning, remained and has become a classic of the world championship. And of course it bears his name: Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.