Villeneuve looks to collect more titles

Montreal:

Being a pop singer is fun but Jacques Villeneuve says his real career remains in auto racing. And his agent Craig Pollock says Villeneuve's challenge is to amass the most impressive collection of racing titles ever. The former Indy Car, Indianapolis 500 and Formula One champion from Canada is close to getting started in American stock cars and will also race the famous Le Mans 24-hour event June 16-17 in France. "He can't win seven Formula One world championships - Michael (Schumacher) has already done that - but potentially, he can be one of the great race drivers in the world by winning all sorts of different championships," Pollock said on Monday at Villeneuve's record launch. "He wants to win Le Mans. "It's something he's never done before. He's done open wheel racing. People might find him going to NASCAR unusual, but which Formula One champion has ever had a chance to win the NASCAR series? "And then why not rally (racing), for fun?" Musical speedster A five-song concert for the media at his restaurant, Newtown, showed that, as a musician, Villeneuve drives the speed limit straight up main street. Behind a wheel, he hopes to do some serious speeding on stock-car ovals and road courses, although this year will likely be spent mostly learning a new style of driving. Pollock said he is "very close" to lining up a title sponsor for a ride in the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) series to get Villeneuve installed on a team with a serious chance to win. "There may be certain teams that really don't want to be involved with him but there are other teams, very good teams, that do want to be involved," Pollock said. Villeneuve is in no rush and will wait for the best deal from the best team to start, he added. Fellow CART and Formula One rival Juan Pablo Montoya already has made the jump to US stock cars. "Jacques is 35 and Mark Martin, who was leading the Daytona 500 until the last seconds, is 48," he said. "Dale Jarrett is 50. "So Jacques has 15 years. He still wants to race, but he wants to race in such a way that he has a fair chance, every time, of competing to win." Martin was edged at the finish line by Kevin Harvick at the pretigious stock-car event on Sunday. Villeneuve may do some driving on the Automobile Racing Club of America circuit _ a second-tier stock-car series, NASCAR's third-tier Craftsman truck series and NASCAR's second-tier Busch series, which has a race in Montreal on August 4, before moving up to the top-level Nextel Cup.