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Villeneuve slams 'babies' playing 'video games'

ESPN Staff
June 7, 2012 « Canadian Grand Prix not sold out as protests hit | McLaren still a good option for Hamilton's future - Neale »
Jacques Villeneuve: 'They all think it's a video game and it's not ... it's very, very dangerous and it's tough' © Getty Images
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Former Formula One world champion Jacques Villeneuve has launched a scattergun attack on today's drivers, accusing them of lacking common sense and of being babies.

Villeneuve, who is no stranger to giving outspoken views on the sport as it is now, said that the current batch of drivers lacked respect for each other or for the dangers of racing.

"I think in the years when F1 was dangerous, 20 or 30 years ago, the risk of dying was very high so the drivers just didn't do that to each other, there was that extra respect," he told the Guardian. "There was common sense and also there was a bunch of drivers who worked hard to get into racing. There seems to be very little common sense going on there on the race track,"

"They weren't racers at 12 years old, [with] the financing there in place for them to race, they had to sweat for it, they weren't little daddy's boys like you have now basically. So they are driving F1 and they are still children, they are still babies and they are kept like that."

There has not been a death in Formula One since Ayrton Senna in 1994, something Villeneuve said had led to complacency. "They seem to forget and then one day it will happen and there will be a bunch of new rules and that will be an overreaction. Everybody has fallen asleep on the fact that F1 is dangerous. They all think it's a video game and it's not. It's very, very dangerous and it's tough."

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.
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