Alesi was one of my favourites when I started watching F1, dragging crappy Ferraris around with his flamboyant style. He didn’t always have the best race craft but he deserved more than one F1 victory. Above all he was fun to watch.
After 1990, he could take one seat of Williams in '91, but unfortunetly he chosed the Ferrari. I'm sure, he could be a Wolrd Champion minimum one times.
Jean Alesi's car still looks very intriguing with the first high-nosed design. Tyrrell always came up with revolutionary ideas: six-wheel design on P34 and elevated nose cone on 019.
@jwdogfst 1.5 seconds faster?! Unbelievable! Remember, this is the same Frenchman who shocked Senna at the US GP with a Tyrrell-Cosworth and LED for 15-20 laps! Even Ken Tyrrell was shocked. This is like using a Yugo to beat a Corvette. Unfuckingbelievable. Jean Alesi is still one of the greatest of the underrated drivers F1 has ever seen.
Alesi was also a master in rain conditions.... I was at the MTL grand prix when he scored his only victory, people were jumping from the stands onto the track, with cars still going by.... that was scary
@@gallardogt that position allows you to rely on your lats to move the steering wheel, instead of your arms and shoulders Bc they didn't have power steering back then, reducing the load on your arms and shoulders would probably increase your car control
This is awesome. You dont see them squirming around like that anymore. Damn shame. Jean Alesi is one the all time underachievers. Had the skills to match anyone, but to his undoing, his heart belonged to Ferrari.
Such an unfairly underrated driver. I was overjoyed to see him finally win in Canada. He OWNED everyone in Monza the same year but the damn car had to blow up when a surefire win was in sight. I know he would have won that race too. Ironically, he damn near won Monaco the following year but the bad luck gods must really hate him: his Benetton's suspension failed several laps from victory as he was leading and had fastest lap of the race.
I remember seeing this footage! At the time, it seemed like Alesi had the world at his feet. If only he'd chosen Williams and not Ferrari. I still can't believe he won only one race. But think of Spa '91, Monza '94, Monza '95, Europe '95, Monaco '96...so many unlucky races.
@swistral1 Agreed. Alesi seemed to be the only one who could fight Schumacher in the rain. He did pretty well at Spain in '96 by finishing second (Schumi won and Hill crashed!).
Montreal95 - Yes that Tyrrell of 90' was one of the best chassis, a lot of the time the best. It was at power tracks where the car couldnt shine at times. At circuits like Monaco and Phoenix where the very slow speed and the nimbleness needed from the chassis is where that car shone.
Actually, I very much agree there :P Well stated! I remember hearing stories my grandpa told me, about Nuvolari; apparently my great grandpa worked for Auto Union's team in their glory days. Interesting stuff.
Un. Be. Liev. Able. Alesi was the modern Nuvolari...so unlucky in his career though...but gave Ferrari something to smile about through some of their worst years!
what a legend. they just dont drive like that nowadays!! in my opinion, alesi was one of the all time f1 greats .... but 2 bad decsions meant he only ever won 1 race ... picking Ferrari over Williams just as the Williams came good and ferrari lost it ... and then leaving Ferrari just before they started to take over f1. i can't imagine how many world titles would have been possible if he had picked Williams to begin and then moved to Ferrari afterwards!!
your point being? benetton wasnt the same in 96' as it was in 95. still he got 8 podiums and outqualified Berger 12-4 and scored more than twice his points. ferrari won only 2 races more in 96'(Schumacher) than 95'(Alesi)- consistent upward curve in performance of the car. what all that has to do with Alesi? outclassed by everyone? whom? you have problems with facts as some others here as well.
@BorlandRIP7 I agree but I feel he did better at Benetton in '96 even though the damn car broke down when he was leading at Monaco. The Benetton didn't look like an easy car to drive - teammate Berger lost control of it and crashed when they were first introduced to it. Interestingly, Jean sometimes preferred a full steering wheel so he could keep his hands at the 2 and 10 o'clock positions while most of the others had those funny looking square "wheels".
Monaco was the only place where the chassis was really competitive(at phoenix, if you forgot, they still used last year's unchanged chassis!) but still not the best as Mclaren and Ferrari were better. Alesi's driving however made it competitive at all places really, where is shouldn't have been. at power tracks of imola and monza of all places he qualified 7th and 5th, and was running 5th and 3rd respectively at end of lap 1. at interlagos, with the 89' chassis still qualy 7th as well etc. etc.
your argument on the turbo era works both ways: if you look at the stats from 87' season ALL gaps there are bigger, as because of the way the turbo works all mistakes are magnified. and 1 more thing: 87' we're talking Senna F1's all tiume gretest qualifier, who has sometimes beaten Prost by more than a second in the same car with 3 full seasons behind him against a rookie Naka. in 90' its Naka after 3 seasons behind him while Alesi has done only 8 races.
@DAH210774 1)very few people showed the kind of skill you're talking about in changing team fortunes 3 to be exact: Stewart, Lauda, Shumacher and no one else of even the great champions. 2) when you slide you're overdriving yes, trying to overcome the shrotcomings of your car but NOT ALWAYS YOU LOSE TIME. for example the fastest way to take the old Rascasse was exactly the way Jean did. I saw his onboard lap from 95' and he did it exactly the same way! reason only he did so- it's very risky!
Wasent the 1990 Tyrrell the first with the "High nose", thereby setting a standard which others would follow?! I believe it allowed better airflow underneath the car = more downforce! Jean Alesi was an underrated driver...very unlucky!
@starlionblue Actually in the FIA 1995 review Alesi is called to be the rainmaster (mostly for his drive at European and Japanese GP) and Schumacher was marked as the only one to be able to compete
and btw rally requires far more brains than F1 because of the pace notes and is also more difficult to drive as well. imagine powersliding near a cliff wall at 150km/h. serious balls
Oh yeah, and who finished in 6th place at Monza with the same car, no other than Nakajima for gods sake! - NakaJima usually qualified midfield in a Tyrrell which spoke wonders of the car! - And he was hopeless! - far closer to Jean Alesi than he was to Senna. Nakajima even in a very good Lotus couldnt do better most of the time than 18th-20th on the grid!
If there is anyone who got screwed with lowsy equipment it was Ivan Capelli at Ferrari. And how they treated him and blamed all the cars faults on him was chickenshit. I never liked them after that!
Looking at the stats, it was actually embarrasing how close in time Naka was to Alesi, when you compare how he performed against Senna. I admit, I jumped the gun on how Nakajima qualified, but 1987 was the turbo era, so its understandable him qualifying further up the grid, but the time gap to Senna was in a different planet.
@eyelesskiller8 Read way better grip from the tyres, better downforce , better brakes, bettter chassis and better suspension. In 20 years a lot of progress has been made in Formula 1, despite the fact that they used 3,5 litre engines back in 1990, and only 2,4 litre engines today.
@hazzamfc22 Maybe... Could he lead a team and develop the car though?? He did have awful luck at Ferrari but then other drivers have shown you can make your own luck and convert cars that aren't competitive into winners. Jean was one of my favourites, and this kind of car control at Monaco is an exceptional example of his outstanding skill.. But when you slide you're overdriving the car and losing time..
@beetleman64 Yeah, he has a great natural car control, the wish to overtake everytime, I hope so much he´ll have better luck than Alesi (or many other drivers of this driving style like Peterson, Gilles Villeneuve, Mansell and Montoya) !!!
I agree. He was by far no Nuvolari. He did at times have great cars also. I personally thought he overdriven the car too much. It was never a case of putting a car where it shouldnt be on the grid. That Tyrrell of 1990 had the best chassis period.
He was no Nuvolari, but was Championship material and bureaucracy and politics ruined. Check what he did with the Prost Peugeot at the 2000 Monaco Grand Prix. To end up 7th with that shitbox in qualification has to be a thing of miracles.
@@albertorodriguezfernandez5956 he had great moments, but the thing for me that always stood out was Alesi's performance in the 1996 Benetton. A car that Schumacher probably would've won another title with. At times he looked mediocre, meanwhile Schumacher in an even worse Ferrari won 3 races that wasn't better than the 1995 car and we all know who drove that!
@@weallfollowmanutd I agree that he did not adapted to the B196 fast enough, specially in the beginning of the season. That being said, to me also the B196 was not easy to drive, i'm not so sure that it was truly a championship contender. The Williams was so much better than the Benetton. Berger had a ton of problems with it too, maybe because it was done for Schumi's driving style. Alesi had bad luck at the Monaco GP, he should have won that one. To me he should have ended 3rd in that championship, and the car second on the constructors championship, but they ended very very close.
@@albertorodriguezfernandez5956 the 1995 Benetton was also difficult. Berger said he didn't understand how Schumacher could drive it. Alesi or Berger should've got third, because the Ferrari finished even less races!
Yep. And to add salt to the wound he could not manage to win with Benneton, but Schumacher could win 9 races with them in 95 and 3 races with Ferrari in 96. All they did was swap teams. Now Alesi and Schumacher were not on the same level, but just ONE win. He continually got out classed by everyone...... except on a wet surface.
mallamoozoo - I agree with all of your points, however I don't judge rally drivers as a second category. There have been many outstanding rally drivers in the past that would've shone in F1. Henri Toivonen was as good as the best F1 drivers.
sure. right. didnt develop technique. nothing to do surely with driving difficult cars that needed to be driven at 110 percent in order to be remotely fast. while driving the 92' Williams even Mansell can drive with precise technique like he's on rails. when Alesi won F3000 in 1989 he was driving very cleanly most of the time because he had a good car for the cathegory, he still had oversteery style that was his by nature but so had Schumi and Senna throughout their careers e.g. Senna 93-4
Alesi had great talent no doubt. But he was kind of moody. A modern Nuvolari? I think not. Nuvolari's win in Nurburgring 1935 in an underpowered ancient Alfa, versus Rosemeyer, Caracciola in Mercedes and Auto Union cars which were superior in every aspect is the miracle win of the 20'th century.
why aren't you checking the facts first before posting this crap? there are plenty of websites where u can get them. Nakajima qualified only twice all season in 18th place in 1987. only once he was lower coz of changing weather. mostly in 1987 he qualified midfield 12-16. inMonza 1987 he qualified 14th, the same as 1990. Senna was 4th, just 1 place higher than Alesi in 1990. compare all races from 87' to 90' and you'll see that Alesi beaten Naka by comparable margin to Senna, just slightly less.
Excellent car control, but the guy is more like a hobbyist and not a person who can lead and improve a car/team. If he would've developed more technical knowledge and strategy he could've grown into championship material.
didn't have great cars. overdriven at times cause his cars were so bad, had to give 110% to get any result out of them. never a case of putting the car where it shouidn't be? didn't do your homework properly it seems. Tyrrell best chassis of 1990? you're quite funny. its chassis was by far better than its engine but the best?? No expert at the time thought its the best, by far, and no one still does, apart from you. maybe you know some things no one else does? if so, share them please.
