- Lap-by-lap report from Circuit Paul Ricard
- Get in touch! You can email John or tweet him
Giles Richards spoke to a Ferrari mainstay of the past in Jean Alesi.
“Lewis is unique,” he says. “When Michael [Schumacher] took seven championships everybody said: ‘That’s over for the next 40 years.’ Then Lewis arrived. He is really impressive. When you are spoiled in terms of results like he was, because a good race is P1, a shit race is P2, that was his life. But now he is driving a car that is jumping on the straight like a kangaroo and for him to stay motivated to talk to the engineers, to improve the car, that is … Wow. What a champion.”
Despite only taking one win – a record that does not reflect his talent, especially in the wet – Alesi recalls his career with fondness and still adores the sport. The Scuderia were far from their best during his time with them. The 1991 car was unreliable; Alesi retired nine times that season and his teammate Prost, who had fallen out with Ferrari, was fired after he described the car as a “truck”.
We were hoping to be a lot closer than we are. I was thinking we might be 0.2secs or something like that. But we’re a second off and I don’t have an answer for that.
For whatever reason, we seem to be a lot further off this weekend, but the whole pack is. The two top teams are in their own league, really.
