Racing driver Jacques Villeneuve remembers the day as if it was yesterday.
He would regularly pester his mother to allow him to buy a video game from the shop which lined the route back home, though she rarely relented.
On this occasion, to his surprise, she did. Smiling, he walked back with his new video game that Friday afternoon.
Soon after, the phone rang. “I could feel something – something wrong,” he said.
His mother answered. His father, Gilles – a Formula One driver with Ferrari and rising superstar of the era – had sustained a broken neck after a horrific crash during qualification for the Belgian Grand Prix. He died later that night.
“The moment he died I became the man of the family and that’s what gave me the strength to then become the racer I became,” Villeneuve told CNN’s The Circuit.
“In a sad way it was a good thing for me that he passed away, for who I am today and for the father that I am today as well.”
Now 44 and a fiercely proud patriarch of three sons, Villeneuve speaks eloquently and openly about his father and how he struggled to impress and earn respect from him.
“I hadn’t seen him in two years,” said Jacques, who was 11 at the time of his Dad’s death.
“He wasn’t a father basically, for two years. For a year and a half I hadn’t been living at home.
“I had been living in the mountains at a friend’s house and going to school there because there was no family life anymore, so he would disappear for two months, then the moment he would come home, he wouldn’t even come home, he would come and play on his boat.”
Gilles’ death from his accident at the Zolder circuit sent shock waves through the sport.
Although he won only six of his 67 races and never managed to win the world title, he was widely admired as one of the most exciting and talented drivers on the circuit.
On May 8 1982, Villeneuve was chasing pole position after losing out in his previous race.
Just two weeks earlier, the Ferrari driver had been left incandescent with rage after his teammate, Didier Pironi, disobeyed team orders to claim victory at the San Marino Grand Prix.
At Zolder, Villeneuve had wanted to ensure he started ahead of Pironi, who led qualifying – but on his final lap, disaster struck.
As Villeneuve accelerated, he caught the back of Jochen Mass’ March car and was hurled into the air at around 225 kilometers per hour (140 mph).
The front of the car was destroyed and Villeneuve was thrown in the air, across the track and into the fence. Drivers stopped their cars to come to his aid while medics rushed to his rescue.
He was taken to University St Raphael Hospital in Louvain where he was was found to have suffered a fatal neck fracture.
At 9.12 pm that night, he was pronounced dead.
His contemporaries, in tribute, lavished praise on their former opponent.
Jody Scheckter, F1 world champion of 1979, called him “the fastest driver the world had ever seen,” while Alain Prost, who would go on to claim four world titles of his own, called Villeneuve “the last great driver – [who made] the rest of us [just] a bunch of good professionals.”
But his son, Jacques, was going through very different emotions.
“There wasn’t even a family unit anymore and it was, you know it was the other generation where daughters were loved but not sons, so it was a little bit strange.”
However, the death of his father, according to Jacques, was the key factor behind his rise from a self-confessed cry baby to a champion racer.
He left for boarding school, began ski racing and with the strength of his mother and sister, began to embark on a career which would take him to the very top of motorsport.
By the time he was 15 he enrolled at Jim Russell Racing Driver’s school in Quebec where his late father had learned his craft.
Under the guidance of his uncle, also named Jacques, he showed the talent and aptitude to succeed at the very highest level.
His sense of adventure – and helped by the encouragement of his mother – enabled Villeneuve to chase his dream and hone his thirst for adrenaline.
“As a kid, I was one of the biggest risk takers,” he said. “At school when we were skiing, if there was a cliff to jump I would make sure that I would be the first one to jump it and would jump the highest, that no one else could jump.”
Villeneuve’s innate ability catapulted him to success in CART Championship, IndyCar and F1.
He won the big prize at the Indianapolis 500 before moving to F1 where he won the drivers’ championship in 1997.
In 11 years on the F1 circuit he won 11 races, recorded 23 podiums and claimed 13 pole positions.
Having retired from racing in 2006, Villeneuve has had time to reflect ahead of this weekend, when the F1 circus arrives in Canada at the track named after his father.
More than 33 years have passed since the death of Gilles Villeneuve but he is always remembered, memories of one of the sport’s most exciting drivers are exchanged and the name which thrilled thousands lives on.
For his son, the reverence with which his father his held in is no more evident than in his native Canada and in Quebec where he grew up.
“There haven’t been many international sportsmen from Quebec,” he said.
“To have this amazing event, because F1 is a huge sport, where it brings people together from the whole world is very special.
“It’s special when you go there and realize that the track bears my Dad’s name.”
While the world will watch on and wait to see if drivers’ leader Lewis Hamilton can get his title campaign back on track after losing out at Monaco, Villeneuve’s thoughts may be elsewhere.
“He was my hero,” said Villeneuve as he reflected on the conflicting emotions he experiences when he remembers his father.
“But for some reason there was something that was wrong which, I can only know about it now, because I’ve been told by my mother and other people.
“It was hard for about a week, or two of course, because suddenly you see oh, OK, well that won’t be there anymore, mostly when it’s someone you look up to, not as a father but as … and often when you do not have the love of a person, you look up to them even more.
“It’s really strange. As a kid, because you want to impress them, you want their respect and so on. You’re basically never good enough.”
