Jacques Villeneuve joins Jos Verstappen as teammate at City Challenge Baku

Published on 03 September 2012 by Niels Hendrix

The 1997 Formula 1 World Champion and the 1995 CART Champion and Indy 500 race winner, Canadian Jacques Villeneuve, is the next top-level driver to join the City Challenge GT Race on a street circuit in Baku, Azerbaijan, October 6th till 7th. For the two 30 minutes' qualification sprint races on the Saturday and for the one-hour main race on the Sunday, Villeneuve will team up with another ex-Formula 1 driver, Dutchman Jos Verstappen. The two will be racing a Porsche 911 GT3 R. Villeneuve is enthusiastic about the Baku event: "GT racing will be an entirely new experience for me, which I am really looking forward to. Racing on a street circuit is always something special, as I know from such events I have raced in before, mainly in the US."

City Challenge CEO Hartmut Beyer is delighted about the news: "Having a World Champion and an Indy 500 winner on the grid is fantastic for our event!" Jacques Villeneuve competed in a total of 164 Grands Prix from 1996 till 2006. He raced with Williams, BAR, Renault, Sauber and BMW-Sauber and scored a total of eleven Grand Prix race wins and 23 podium finishes. He won the 1997 World Drivers' Championship title, only two years after having become champion in CART, the premier North-American single-seater category. In 1995, he also won the Indy 500. After his career in Formula 1, Villeneuve raced in various NASCAR stock car series. He raced as a works driver with Peugeot in the 2007 and 2008 Le Mans 24 Hours.

Competing in the City Challenge GT Race in Baku will be a new experience for Villeneuve. "I have never been in Baku or Azerbaijan before, so that is something new, too. From what I have read and heard about the city, there is a lot of development going on. Of course, there is not much of a motor racing tradition there, so seeing race cars on the streets will be a new experience for the local people," he says.

41-year old Villeneuve will be sharing driving duties in the Porsche 911 GT3 R with Jos Verstappen, another ex-Formula 1 driver and a former Le Mans 24 Hours class winner. Villeneuve comments: "I know Jos Verstappen from the time we raced together in Formula 1. He hasn't been racing much for the last couple of years, but I am sure he will be just as determined to go out, do well and have a great time in Baku as I am! And we have the same initials, which might be a good omen..."

Niels Hendrix