Jacques Villeneuve – AUSmotive.com

Is Ricciardo being favoured over Vettel?

Right from the season outset Daniel Ricciardo has shown he’s neither intimdated nor inferior to Red Bull Racing’s golden child Sebastian Vettel. The young Aussie is comfortably ahead of the four-time world champion in the 2014 standings and has more often than not been the best of the drivers left in the wake of the runaway Mercedes AMG drivers.

Neither of the Red Bull drivers had a weekend to remember in Austria, but Ricciardo collected some consolation points, while Vettel suffered yet another retirement. Is Vettel’s poor run simply down to bad luck, or is it something more?

Jacques Villeneuve, the 1997 world champion who now works in the media, says something more sinister is at play.

“Heâ€™s a four-time World Champion who has earned the titles won, but now Red Bull Racing is treating him like they were to Mark Webber,” Villeneuve said in an interview with OmniCorse.it [translated].

Villeneuve goes on to suggest that the season is all but over for Vettel, as far as Red Bull is concerned.

“They seem to have decided to focus only on Daniel Ricciardo,” he added. “Now they want to ‘kill’ Sebastian because the German is not able to give another image of Red Bull. Of course, he cannot stand one more season.

“Helmut Marko has now also started to criticise him. When you lose control of the team and the policy begins to have an ever-increasing weight, youâ€™re finished.”

Yet, Villeneuve’s most emphatic statement was yet to come. The former F1 champ says Vettel must leave Red Bull Racing.

“Vettel is finished there, he needs to change team.”

According to Villeneuve Ferrari would be Vettel’s most likely destination, claiming Alonso will be tired of carrying the team on his own, while Raikkonen lacks the finesse to drive a modern F1 car.

These comments from Villeneuve, made early last week, may well be chasing headlines, but what a headline!

[Source: RichlandF1 | Pic: Red Bull/Getty Images]

Supercheap Auto Racing chase Jacques Villeneuve

Melbourne’s Herald-Sun newspaper is reporting that Supercheap Auto Racing is chasing 1997 F1 World Champion Jacques Villeneuve to fill the seat left vacant by Paul Morris.

Morris is the team principal of Supercheap Racing and he thinks the Villeneuve deal might just come off, “This is real. Absolutely. He is pretty keen to do it,” Morris said.

“It would be the full season. Not just one race. If we can make a bit of a buzz about it then I think it can definitely happen.

“We would have to write about $2 million in sponsorship so we could run the car and pay him to drive.”

Paul Morris knows ex-Aussie Barry Green, a key member of Villeneuve’s management team, and the topic of Villeneuve in a V8 Supercar came up midway through 2008. The newspaper report claims Villeneuve was offered a drive at last year’s Bathurst enduro race but time commitments saw it fall through.

However, Morris, who is travelling to the United States next week, is keen to talk to Green again to see if a deal to bring Villeneuve to Australia can be worked out. “The next step would be to get him out here to drive the car,” he said.

Watch this space. If Villeneuve was to race in the V8 Supercar category he would certainly attract a broader motorsport audience to the series.

Source: Herald-Sun (Thanks to Chris for the tip.)

Update 10 January: There’s some great attention seeking quotes HERE from Paul Morrisâ€”he was just getting started when he said this, “We need people in there who have got profile. The current crop of drivers are more worried about where their sunglasses are sitting on top of their hat; they are all as boring as bat shit and not many of them have any real personality.”