Jean Alesi

One of F1's unluckiest drivers or a man who let his heart rule his head? Jean was spectacularly fast on his day, as his early performances at Tyrrell showed, but his desire to drive for Ferrari rather than Williams cost him the chance to prove he could be a World Champion.

A single win, in Canada in 1995, was poor reward for such a talented driver but he always seemed to be in the wrong car at the wrong time.

After F1 Jean raced in DTM, Speedcar and Le Man Series. It has also just been announced that Jean will compete in the Indy 500 next year at the ripe old age of 47.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/23/us-motor-racing-alesi-indy-idUSTRE78M45B20110923

 

[Olivier]

Alesi was a hero of mine and I was appalled by his bad luck and bad decisions. But I think many people liked how hard he tried. In the track always emotional, passionate and perseverant. His last race truly depicts the rest of his career, Raikkonen hits a bump, loses the rear of his Sauber, hits Alesi who chooses the outside line only to find the Sauber running back across his bow. He gets off his car, consoles Raikkonen and offers him a handshake and then the crowd explodes is applause, a farewell to a well-liked driver.

 

[Fenderman]

Nicely put. When I was younger and could rightly be called "a fan" of particular individuals he was one them. Always a joy to watch and I always expected more from him as, I'm sure, he did too. I suspect his was a case of being in the wrong cars at the wrong times. It would have been interesting to have seen what he would have done in any of the top four or five teams when their cars were actually the class of the field. I am confident that we would now be talking about a very different Jean Alesi.

 

[RasputinLives]

Just watching the 1991 British Grand Prix on Classic races on Sky F1 and old Jean Spaghetti pulled two blinding moves from way back, first on Prost and next on Berger.

Goes an ruins it by running into a Lola he was lapping but then thats Alesi for you.

 

[Il_leone]

Put it simply the guy allowed his heart rule his head

At the time thought of the hottest thing in the paddock having dared to go wheel to wheel with Senna in the unlikely Tyrell Cosworth with Pirelli tyres

When contracts came up amazingly he put his name to 3 papers as Murray Walker put it "If you put a piece of paper in front of Jean Alesi he would sign it"


Obviously it went to the CRB to solve and Ferrari got the verdict but they also had to compensate both Tyrell and Williams

His contract and compensation to those two teams was £10million

He simply allowed the dream of driving for Ferrari cloud his judgement when he could have gone with Tyrell Honda - no doubt he probably would have done a better job than Modena. or Williams Renault just before they came competitive


5 years at Ferrari came with their worst period but it was not without effort and some appalling luck as well where in race winning position it was taken away from him cruelly like Monza 95 with brake failure

Rumours were that Alesi was so upset about the outcome of the race he drove in his Ferrari home and gave his brother the fright of his life apparently clocking 163mph. The police stopped him and he gave them his documents and did nothing seeing who he was

Move to Benetton supposedly propel him to multiple race winner whilst lacking Schumacher's application , the speed was there with 8 podiums and usually battling with Schumacher as best of the rest

Opportunities of race wins were denied at Monaco through reliability and Argentina when he stalled in the pits

People asking why Alesi did not win as much as he was proving to be an enigma in the pitlane and whether he is as highly rated as some suggest

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A first corner crash in the last race turned his relationship with Flavio sour costing his team 2nd place in constructors

From there it seems like things got worse as rumours he was going to be replaced by Brundle before 1997 reached fever pitch

The infamous running out of fuel whilst ignoring team orders citing not being able to listen properly was the death knell of his career at Benetton

A few years at Sauber bought podiums due to being in the wet and front row starts. A bust up with Herbert meant an ultimatum to Peter Sauber " Me or him next season" Johnny's initial good start was replaced with bad luck including a spanner left in his car at Monza and was forced to leave

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A last hurrah at Prost turned into a nightmare with the excess pressure from all of France seeing it as a national team to propel into F1. He even complained about the lack of power from Peugeot engines saying if these engines had 800bhp the others must have 850bhp which almost ended with Peugeot engineers striking

A clash with Heidfeld at Austria was too much for Prost to bear

With Ferrari engines in 2001 no further joy until a deal with Jordan to replace the sacked Frentzen as one last hurrah . HIs last race ended with crashing with Raikkonen