It has been 14 years since the last time Jacques Villeneuve attempted to qualify at the Daytona 500. Back in 2008, driving for Bill Davis Racing, he came up short in his bid for a spot at the line.
At the 2022 Daytona 500 duels, though, a 50-year-old Villeneuve punched his ticket by posting the fastest time of the cars racing for a spot in time trials.
"To be able to make such a big race at such a high level is amazing and when I'm in the race car I don't realize that I'm 50, which is good," Villeneuve said, according to ESPN. "As long as it carries on like this, I can't imagine myself stopping racing."
There have not been many Canadian drivers to start in the NASCAR Cup Series, and only one Canadian has ever collected a win on NASCAR's biggest stage.
Sporting News breaks down Villeneuve's driving career, and the history he can make at the 2022 Daytona 500 on Sunday.
Jacques Villeneuve racing career
NASCAR is about the only side of racing where Villeneuve lacks in major experience.
Villeneuve, the son of former Ferrari driver Gilles Villeneuve, began his career racing primarily internationally while going to school in Switzerland, picking up racing experience with Italian Formula Three racing, Toyota Atlantic Championship and Championship Auto Racing Teams. In 1994, when he finished sixth in the Drivers' Championship, he was named Rookie of the Year in the sport.
The next year, he became the youngest Indy 500 winner in history at age 24 and was the youngest to win the IndyCar Championship. The next year, Williams moved him to Formula One, and he picked right back where he left off, winning four races and coming second overall to Damon Hill. In 1997, Villeneuve was named the Formula One World Champion as he claimed seven individual race wins.
Villeneuve finished fifth in 1998, and continued to struggle to return to the top of the Formula One world, ultimately leaving the racing class in the middle of the 2006 campaign.
It wasn't until 2008 that Villeneuve picked up another race win, when, as a Team Peugeot driver, he picked up a win in the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps with teammates Nicolas Minassian and Marc Gené.
Villeneuve has won just one race since then, winning at Vallelunga in the 2021 NASCAR Whelen Euro Series, but he has raced just about everywhere. He has raced in the 24 Hours of Le Mans (2008), Speedcar Series (2008-09), FIA GT Championship, NASCAR Sprint Cup Series (2010, 2013), NASCAR Nationwide Series (2008-13), World Rallycross Championship (2014) and others.
Villeneuve has raced in the Cup Series before, but it has been a long time. He first raced with Bill Davis Racing at the 2007 UAW-Ford 500 (21st) and the 2007 Checker Auto Parts 500 (41st). He next appeared in 2010 at the 2010 Brickyard 400 (29th) before most recently driving for Phoenix Racing in 2013 at the Toyota/Save Mart 350 (41st).
Canadian NASCAR drivers
There have not been many Canadians to race at the NASCAR Cup Series. To date, only three drivers have raced more than 30 times in the Cup Series.
Trevor Boys has the most Cup Series starts at 102, with Don Biederman and Patrick Carpentier behind him with 42 each.
Earl Ross, who started 26 races, is the only Canadian to win a Cup Series race, when he won the 1974 Old Dominion 500 at the Martinsville Speedway in Virginia. That year, he was named the Rookie of the Year.
Ron Fellows holds the Canadian record for most wins in a NASCAR series as he claimed four race wins in the Xfinity Series between 1995 and 2013 and two Camping World Truck Series wins. Stewart Friesen is tied with Fellows with two Camping World Truck Series wins and, as a current driver in the series, has the most active starts among Canadian drivers with 116.
Oldest NASCAR driver to win a Cup Series race
Villeneuve is a long-shot to win at Daytona, but he is on the track.
Should he pull off the unbelievable, however, he would make some history as the oldest driver to win his first Cup Series victory, surpassing Harry Gant, who was 42 when he won his first Cup Series race. Gant later became the oldest driver to win a Cup Series race overall, when he won the 1992 Champion Spark Plug 400 at the age of 52.
Still, Gant is far from the oldest driver to have raced in a Cup Series event. That title belongs to Morgan Shepherd, who at 72, raced in the 2014 Camping World RV Sales 701.
Open-wheelers to race in NASCAR
Villeneuve has primarily been an open-wheel driver throughout his career in racing and is now set to race in one of the biggest stock car events in NASCAR at the Daytona 500.
There have been several open-wheel drivers that went on to find success in NASCAR. Dan Gurney was the first driver to win a race each in Formula One, IndyCar and NASCAR. Mario Andretti and Juan Pablo Montoya are the only two drivers to have accomplished the feat since. Each of the three drivers began with open-wheel racing. Mario's brother, John Andretti, also made a successful transition from CART to NASCAR.
A.J. Foyt found plenty of success with open-wheel racing, picking up wins in the Indy 500 and in Formula One before eventually racing in NASCAR.
Tony Stewart has both IndyCar and NASCAR championship wins, and he, too, got his start in open-wheel racing. Eight years after Stewart's move to NASCAR in 1999, Montoya made the move, which kicked off a wave of open-wheel drivers to make the move to NASCAR.
Not all drivers that have made the transition have found success, however. Dario Franchitti was a four-time IndyCar Series champion, but in 10 races in the Cup Series, he never finished in the top-10. In 18 Xfinity Series races, only twice did he finish in the top 10.
Sam Hornish Jr., a three-time IndyCar Series champion, raced 167 times in nine years in the Cup Series, and had only 12 top-10 finishes and no wins.
Canadian-American Paul Tracy dominated in CART races and was the World Series champion in 2003, but in six races in the NASCAR Busch Series in 2006, his highest finish was 24th.
