Blast from the past ... Jean Alesi

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Written by Kate Walker

Saturday, 06 February 2010 13:10

As a former student of history, it feels beyond odd to call someone born in 1964 a blast from the past.

The Beatles had been in the British charts for a couple of years before Jean Alesi was born in the summer of '64, and had his parents been hippies he could have toddled in the mud at Woodstock. Hardly times of yore.

But I stumbled across a video of the 1990 Phoenix Grand Prix, and this week's piece was set. The on-track battle between Alesi and superstar Ayrton Senna is a fabulous piece of racing – Senna passes Alesi, who was running in front, and the Frenchman steals the position right back. Senna retakes the lead, but Alesi refuses to give up. The two men are driving inches apart, in a manner more akin to aerial dog-fighting than Grand Prix racing (and more's the pity – who wouldn't want to see driving like that every Sunday?) before Senna finally seals the lead and takes the chequered flag. Feast your eyes and ears on the below:

The clip is made all the more poignant by Senna's post-race interview, wherein he mentions the on-track battles with Alesi and says that clean fighting of the sort that characterised the Phoenix race is a highlight of F1 racing. But back to Alesi.

In 1989, the Frenchman made his F1 debut for Tyrell, driving alongside Jonathan Palmer, and sharing the second seat with Johnny Herbert and Michele Alboreto. Alesi made the move to Formula 1 while also driving in the F3000 series; when the two series had racing commitments in the same weekend, Jean defaulted to the F3000 drive. The mid to late eighties saw Alesi make the move from rallying to single seater racing, where he had successes driving in the Renault 5 championship, Formula Three, and F3000. His 1989 F3000 victory secured a future in Formula 1, but it was a career whose initial promise never quite paid off as expected.

Alesi's first full season in Formula 1 saw him take second place in the US GP, with the brilliant driving shown in the clip above. He followed up his American performance with another second place at Monaco, a drive which put the Frenchman high on many team's most-wanted lists. In 1991 Alesi turned down offers from Williams and Tyrell to make the move to Ferrari, a decision which put him alongside countryman and F1 legend Alain Prost. It was a decision that would have a negative impact on his career – while Ferrari were beginning a downwards turn that would last for much of the decade, Williams were on the ascendancy, winning five of the six constructors' crowns available between 1992 and 1997.

When Michael Schumacher made the move to Maranello, Alesi and Ferrari teammate Gerhard Berger swapped over to Benetton. It would prove to be a challenging season for the French driver, and Flavio Briatore let him go at the end of 1997. Alesi retired from Formula 1 at the end of the 2001 season, having driven for Prost, Jordan, and Sauber in the intervening years. It was while driving for Sauber in 1998 that Alesi took third place in the ill-fated Belgian Grand Prix, a race which was assured a place in the F1 history books with the 15-car pile-up shown in the clip below. Fortunately, only two drivers suffered minor injuries.

While Alesi never quite lived up to his early promise, his was a career dogged by bad luck. Despite that, he did manage to rack up a number of records that would ensure his legacy. He is a member of the 200 Club, the list of drivers to have achieved more than 200 Grand Prix starts. Alesi can also be found on the top 10 list of retirements, having suffered 82 over the course of his career. If that's not a sign of bad luck, I'm not sure what is!

Jean Alesi can now be found alongside fellow Ferrari man Giancarlo Fisichella in the Scuderia's 2010 Le Mans effort, where he will be up against British debutant, former F1 World Champion Nigel Mansell. Kate Walker for Girlracer Magazine

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