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Free Film Club: The making of a stirring F1 documentary
🕑 Added 2025-08-11 08:29:04 +0000 UTCTwo years ago, the feature-length documentary Villeneuve Pironi: Racing's Untold Tragedy was released, telling the powerful story of two of Formula 1’s fastest ever racing drivers, 1981-82 Ferrari team-mates Gilles Villeneuve and Didier Pironi.
With the recent addition of Film Club to our Patreon collections, we wanted to reshare this special podcast episode - one of Edd Straw's favourites - for those of you who may have missed it at the time, or have joined the Members' Club since then.
Ahead of the documentary's 2023 release, Edd spoke to some of the key players in the project, including the director Torquil Jones, Gilles’ wife Joann Villeneuve and Didier’s partner Catherine Goux.
The documentary goes well beyond the established story of how the Villeneuve-Pironi relationship pivoted dramatically from friendly to fatally fractious over the course of one April afternoon in Imola in 1982.
Edd discovered how the project came to life, how the narrative was shaped, the lengths the creators went to discover archive footage, and how the deep wounds left by this dramatic period in F1 history were explored.
Comments
Philip Bain
they never held out a "hold station" sign at Imola '82, that would have been the "OK" signal, instead they held out the "SLOW" signal which only meant that they were under no pressure and not to strain the equipment. I frankly expect better from The Race!!
Bruno
It’s a fantastic documentary, thanks for covering it Edd!
Simon Pope
Amazing documentary I'd highly recommend this
Stijn Claessens
Niche comment: for thé Belgians amongst us: the docu is available on VRT Max until thé 19th
