Friday favourite: The F1 champion who became a "perfect team-mate"

When Olivier Panis left his role as test driver for McLaren to get back into a Formula 1 race seat at British American Racing for 2001, he knew what he was letting himself in for. His new team-mate Jacques Villeneuve had made a point of psychologically destroying his previous two stablemates in Heinz-Harald Frentzen and Ricardo Zonta, and the 1997 world champion's position as a BAR shareholder made him the unquestioned number one.

Yet 1996 Monaco Grand Prix winner Panis remembers his two years alongside Villeneuve fondly, and cites the Canadian as his favourite team-mate from a long career in which he also partnered Martin Brundle, Jarno Trulli and Cristiano da Matta.

“I knew him a bit from the past,” says Panis, who almost beat Villeneuve to win the 1997 Spanish Grand Prix while they were at Ligier and Williams respectively. “I respected Jacques a lot but, Jacques respected me a lot as well. I had already some experience and I was a winner of a grand prix and maybe this helped.”

For Panis, having a strong relationship with Villeneuve was important as they fought a losing battle to prevent BAR from plateauing in the midfield, following its encouraging improvement in 2000. He made an immediate impression on his race return in the 2001 Australian Grand Prix, only to be denied fourth by a 25-second penalty for passing Nick Heidfeld under yellow flags, then netted fourth in Brazil two races later. But while Villeneuve scored two podiums in 2001, at Barcelona and Hockenheim, both were the result of attrition as BAR slid back from fifth to sixth in the constructors’ championship.

Archive: Why BAR's first podium wasn't a turning point for Villeneuve 

The arrival of David Richards and Prodrive at the start of 2002 took time to