Jacques Villeneuve has decided to take a different road back into the top echelon of motor sports.

Rather than look for a seat with an existing team, the 1997 Formula One champion wants to be a driver/owner beginning in the 2011 season.

Villeneuve is preparing a bid to start a new F1 team in conjunction with Italy’s Durango racing. The group hopes to secure a spot in the grid in time for the 2011 season, although plans for the team are still in their infancy.

“I really hope together we will find a place,” Durango team owner Ivone Pinton told racing website 422race.com. “We still don’t know where the car would be built, but the team’s base will definitely be ours (in the Veneto region of Italy).”

Villeneuve, who is busy this weekend trying to qualify for the NASCAR Sprint Cup race in Indianapolis released a statement on his website confirming he’s part of the group trying to become the 13th team in the sport.

“The team will be a joint venture with Durango, and based out of Italy,” he said. “To be clear, right now all the money comes from corporate sponsorship and not from personal investors.”

The native of Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que., has not raced in the top open-wheel circuit since 2006, but had been hoping to return this season with Stefan GP, but the Serbian team was not given the green light by F1’s governing body, the FIA.

This season Villeneuve has been racing stock cars part-time for Braun Racing. He was running in second place in a NASCAR Nationwide Series race at Road America in June before a mechanical problem on the last lap dropped him to 25th.

He hasn’t raced in the Sprint Cup series since 2007, but his hoping to qualify for Sunday’s Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway — the site of Villeneuve’s Indy 500 win in 1995. If he’s successful he will have raced at Indianapolis in all three major series, IndyCar, F1 and NASCAR.

“I have a lot of good memories at the Brickyard,” Villeneuve said last week. “Winning the Indy 500 was a very big highlight in my career. This will be my first venture in a stock car there, but I am confident that we will do well.”

Villeneuve won 11 Grand Prix races over his 11-year career in Formula One and reached the podium 23 times, but he hasn’t won a race since his championship season in ’97.

Pinton believes Villeneuve will be an asset for the fledgling team on and off the track if the FIA gives Durango the open spot on the grid next season.

“As well as being the driver, I’m sure he will make a useful contribution to the company,” he said. “I think he’s preparing a job to do after he hangs up his helmet.”