JV retracts Button slams
“When I read it, there were a couple of quotes about Jenson that I said back in 2003 where I thought, ‘Ouch! That didn’t come out too well!’ Jenson didn’t deserve that. Some of the things I said were a little bit too harsh and a couple shouldn’t have been said at all."
Villeneuve cites the displeasure he felt at being treated as expendable by newly appointed BAR boss David Richards.
“I’d built that team, and suddenly a new team principal was saying, ‘We don’t want Jacques, he’s useless – we’ve got a future world champion in Jenson.’ Jenson had done nothing at the time and had had his ass kicked by [Giancarlo] Fisichella at Benetton. So mainly I was saying let’s just wait and see – I’ll respect him once he achieves something. And he did, so I did. It wasn’t as bad as it was portrayed and there was never a problem between us."
“He’s fast, strong, and nothing disturbs him," he observed. But he’ll have to be in a position to take a shot at the championship if we’re to see if he’s as good as [Fernando] Alonso. That’s highly probable, because he’s at least as good as Kimi [Raikkonen]."