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Jacques Villeneuve will reunite with the Williams Formula 1 team he won the 1997 world championship with, 27 years after his first stint.
Villeneuve has rejoined Williams as an ‘ambassador’ for 2025 alongside the returning 2009 world champion Jenson Button (who rejoined Williams in 2019) and three-time W Series champion and Indy NXT race winner Jamie Chadwick.
Villeneuve won Williams’s last F1 title in 1997 in only his second F1 season after switching from racing in CART in America.
He left Williams at the end of 1998 to join F1 debutant British American Racing (BAR) for a point-less 1999 season. While the results improved thereafter, Villeneuve never got anywhere near replicating the success of his Williams stint with two podiums in the following seven seasons.
Relive Villeneuve's eventful run to his only - and Williams's last - F1 title with 1997 Revisited, an exclusive bonus podcast series for The Race Members' Club recounting that epic season race by race.
Villeneuve said he was “ecstatic” to be rejoining Williams as an ambassador alongside Button and Chadwick in 2025.
For Button and Chadwick that ambassador role has included occasional historic F1 car demonstration runs alongside media and sponsorship activities.
The role shouldn’t prohibit Villeneuve from carrying out his own broadcast duties - his appearances on Sky Sports F1 in 2024 even caught the attention of Daniel Ricciardo - with the Canadian previously expressing his desire for more punditry in 2025.
Chadwick, a member of the Williams family since 2019, will continue to dovetail her ambassador role with serving as an advisor to Williams junior driver Lia Block in F1 Academy, and is part of the Genesis/Hyundai sportscar programme after her IndyCar ladder exit.
Button also has a busy year, as he will race a Cadillac in the World Endurance Championship.
