Welcome to the fifth entry in a series of short shows brought to you by Sidepodcast, called F1 People. So far this series we’ve looked at Colin Chapman and Murray Walker, now it’s time to look at Jean Alesi.
Giovanni Alesi was born on June 11th, 1964 to Italian parents in France. His early racing career was in rallying, which he preferred to the single seater style series, but he worked his way to take part in the Renault 5 championship. He took part in French Formula 3, winning a title, and International F3000, again taking the title. His Formula 1 debut was in 1989 at the French Grand Prix with the Tyrrel-Cosworth team. He finished fourth, after running second for a portion of the race, and he decided to drive in both the Formula 1 and F3000 series in the same year. He was successful and claimed another F3000 title.
The next year, 1990, he took up F1 full time, still with Tyrrell. At the US GP that year, he made his name, by leading the race in an underperforming car, and battling with Senna along the way. Eventually, he had to concede the lead to Senna but his popularity soared. Several teams wanted his services and by mid-season, Tyrrell, Williams and Ferrari all claimed that they had signed Alesi for their own for the following season. Williams had also signed Nigel Mansell, and Alesi decided his best bet was to go with Ferrari. They were the dominant force at the time, and teamed with Alain Prost, Alesi assumed he would be learning from the best in the best team. It was also a popular decision with Italian’s, given Alesi’s heritage.
Welcome to Sidepodcast’s series Days that Shook the F1 World. So far we’ve looked at the US Grand Prix in 2005, Ayrton Senna’s death in 1994 and more. Today we’re looking at a pivotal moment in Formula 1 history, and the date was 9th October 1991.
It’s fair to say that Max Mosley is not the most popular person in F1 at the moment, and his tenure at the top of the FIA may soon be drawing to a close. However, when he first got the job back in 1991, he was definitely the preferred option.
It was the events of the 1989 Japanese Grand Prix and the subsequent fallout that first promoted Max to stand against the then president of the FISA Jean-Marie Balestre.The FISA was the sporting part of the FIA, and they were suffering from a case of bad reputations. Already we have discussed the lacklustre attempt at banning ground effects, which ultimately led to more accidents and deaths.
In Japan, an accident between Senna and Prost caused the Brazillian to be excluded from the race, handing the ’89 World Championship to Prost. Further to that, an appeal by McLaren served to see Ayrton’s super-license suspended and he was given a fine for $100,000. Predictably Senna spoke out about the decision and his comments claimed championship manipulation by the FISA. This angered Balestre, so much so that Senna was called before the World Motorsport Council to explain himself. The courts decided to take away Senna’s superlicence altogether, and he wasn’t going to be allowed it back unless he apologised for his comments.
The following February, Senna was finally persuaded to make the apology and his licence was returned. Max Mosley started to solicit support to become the FIA President. Although this obviously had something to do with the incident with Senna, it may also have had origins in the history between Mosley and Balestre. A vicious war had been raging between the FISA and the FOCA.
The FOCA was headed up by Bernie Ecclestone with Max Mosley as his right hand man. They were working on the team’s behalf to increase revenue share and make sure that everyone had their say. The FISA was fighting against them.
Eventually, the war drew to a somewhat amicable resolution, with Balestre taking over as President of the FIA and continuing to make the rules for Formula 1, whilst Ecclestone took over the commercial rights for the sport and divied up the cash.
In 1991, Balestre’s FIA presidency was up for renewal, and Max Mosley stood against him. Mosley easily gained the presidency. For a while, teams were satisfied. Max was working with them instead of against them, rule changes began to happen and everything was hunky dory. Teams and drivers felt so comfortable that Senna was able to speak out against the former President without fear of losing his licence. He denied making any apologies about the manipulation claims.
Of course, the happiness couldn’t last, and you’ll find politics rearing up almost every day now. But it’s safe to say that at the time, Mosley was the best thing that could have happened to the sport.
That’s all for this episode of Days that Shook the F1 World, and all for this series. Please visit Sidepodcast.com to leave your comments about this and any of the other shows in the series. Thanks for listening.
This is F1 People, the Sidepodcast series taking you behind the scenes of the lives of some of the important names in the sport. Our last show features Ayrton Senna.
Ayrton Senna da Silva was born on March 21st 1960 in Sao Paulo, Brazil. He was a creative child at school, doing well in gymnastics, art and chemistry, but struggling with maths and English. His father was a wealthy landowner and businessman and started Senna off with a small kart at a young age. Senna excelled inside the kart, it brought him out of himself and really made him happy. When he turned 13 and was legally allowed to, he entered and won the South American Championship. He went on to be a runner up in the World Championships a couple of times. He adopted his mother’s maiden name Senna as a way to distinguish himself from the many da Silvas in Brazil.
In 1981, he entered the Formula Ford competition in Europe, and won it that year, and the next. In 1983, he moved to the British F3 championship, and won it. His natural ability meant four Formula 1 teams wanted him for a test – Williams, McLaren, Brabham and Toleman. He joined the latter in 1984. The Monaco Grand Prix of that debut year brought Senna the attention he deserved. He qualified a slow and difficult car in 13 th and on a wet day, he passed everyone except the leader before the race was stopped because of the weather.
Senna broke his contract with Toleman to join Lotus in 1985, and he achieved his first pole position at the opening round in Brazil. He retired from that race, but the rest of the season was more successful, with two wins, four other podium finishes and fourth place in the championship.
A few more years of success but no world championships, led Senna to McLaren in 1988, where he partnered with double-world champion Alain Prost. A fierce rivalry emerged between the pair, and after McLaren won 15 out of 16 races that year, Senna finally got his first world championship. Even when they were not team mates in following years, the battle continued. The championships yo-yoed between the pair, and the controversial incidents began to stack up. At one point Senna’s superlicence was suspended briefly for his conduct on track. However, he ended up with three world championships to his name, so it wasn’t all bad.
The early 90s saw a drop off in performance for McLaren, and although Senna still kept winning, his championship prospects were suffering and he started to look around for alternatives to his current team. His discontent led him to Williams in 1994. He had tried to join the team in 93, but they had Alain Prost who had a clause in his contract to keep his rival away from the team. When Senna joined in 94, Prost retired.
His early 1994 performance was good, and he took pole position at Imola – the third race of the season. He was rattled by other accidents and a death that weekend, but decided to race. On the 7 th lap, the car flew off track and hit a concrete wall. It took the medical team a long time to arrive at the scene, Senna was taken by helicopter to hospital and pronounced dead.
The Brazilian government declared three days of national mourning, and he was given a state funeral. It was discovered after his death that Senna had been donating millions of dollars of his own money to children’s charities – something he had kept secret while he was alive. The gentler side of him was only just beginning to emerge from the ruthless and talented, competitive driver that the world had seen. But no matter how many controversial incidents he was involved in, his popularity never wavered.
Ayrton Senna was the last driver to be killed during a Formula 1 race and his death continues to haunt the sport even after more than a decade.
That’s all for this episode, and this series of F1 People. Seven shows is not enough to do justice to everyone who deserves a biography, so look out for another series of F1 People in the future. Thanks for listening.
Welcome to Sidepodcast’s History of F1. After the safety concerns of the ‘70s, the ‘80s saw many more steps forward in developmental terms.
The 1980s saw the introduction of turbocharging, which is another banned technology that took the forefront of a lot of the team’s attention. The Lotus team were concentrating on the ground-effect principle, whilst Renault re-entered F1 in with the first ever turbo. The technology was new, quick and exciting, but there were reliability problems, and the Renault did not finish an entire race distance until a year after the introduction.
1980 saw the first big disagreement between the two main F1 governing bodies, FISA and FOCA. The power struggle resulted in the Spanish Grand Prix being boycotted, and to avoid such situations in the future, the first ever Concorde Agreement was drafted up in 1981.
1980 also saw Team Williams dominating with their driver Alan Jones, whilst Ferrari were struggling with their own turbocharged car.
Despite the emergence of the turbo technology, Cosworth engines still dominated the grid, with 11 teams under their power in 1982. Turbos continued to improve, but Ferrari suffered more problems, this time with their drivers. Didier Pironi and Gilles Villeneuve were under team orders that Villeneuve should be given preference. Pironi overtook him at the San Marino GP, and Villeneuve decreed he would never speak to his team mate again. This turned out to be tragically true, when Villeneuve was killed whilst qualifying for the Belgian GP. The accident was terrifying, with the Ferrari skidding across the track and throwing the driver from the car, into the sand.
More accidents occurred this year, with Ricardo Paletti, a little known driver in a little known team Osella, killed at the start of the Canadian Grand Prix. He was coming through from the back of the grid, unaware that Pironi, in the Ferrari, had stalled at the front. Pironi also suffered from leg injuries in practice later that year, which put an early end to his racing career.
McLaren brought out a turbo powered car, steered by Alain Prost and Niki Lauda, and in 1984, the team won 12 out of 16 races, and took a record number of points to win the title. Lauda actually pipped Prost to the driver’s title, by only half a point. Hang on, half a point? This was due to the Monaco GP that year being stopped because of a massive thunderstorm. Half points were awarded to teams and drivers.
Ayrton Senna joined McLaren in 1988 and took the championship in Japan, despite a deciding race that saw him stalling on the grid. 1989 saw Senna and Prost in-fighting after a broken agreement about not challenging each other on the track. Senna overtook Prost and the pair fell out, and later in the season, the pair collided and went off track. Prost took the championship, whilst Senna’s superlicense was revoked, causing him to comment on the manipulation that may have been happening behind the scenes.
Turbo charged engines were banned in 1989, but a couple of years earlier, another major piece of technology was beginning to take shape. 1987 saw the one year that Williams took the crown from seven McLaren titles. But it was Team Lotus that introduced the new “active suspension”, that was computer controlled. This technology was the turning point of the sport - from normal-ish cars into more technologically complex machines.
That’s all for this episode of Sidepodcast’s History of F1. Next time we’ll take a look at the 1990s, where it was all about two very different but brilliant drivers.
We could have a series of unpredictable and exciting combinations here; the attempts to pass could go on for nail biting lap after nail biting lap...there again it might not work as well as that but it is a step in the right direction as far as i'm concerned.
