Ferrari icon was adored by Tifosi but won just one race before Michael Schumacher swap

Few drivers could win just one race and be regarded as a legend of the sport, but Jean Alesi is no ordinary man.

More than two decades after he raced in Formula 1 for the final time, his surname remains one of the go-to options when remembering the key players of the sport in the 1990s. It's right up there with the likes of Senna, Mansell, Hill, Schumacher, Hakkinen and Berger.

Given his reputation, those who never got the chance to witness that era might think he was a serial race-winner, forever in the hunt for world championship glory. While he was rarely counted out of title race, only once did he ever manage to stand on the top step of a podium.

Not that he was a stranger to being in the top three. That solitary win, which came on his 31st birthday at the Canadian Grand Prix, was one of the 32 separate occasions that he would finish in the top three. Exactly half of those came in his five-year stint as a Ferrari racer, with the others spread out across spells with Tyrrell, Benetton and Sauber.

That penchant for consistently strong results was perhaps why he was given five years to prove himself at Ferrari, and why he was so adored by the team's fanbase. During that time he broke the record for the longest spell without a race win in the team's history – 67 – but he was still delivering the goods at a time when the Italian team was struggling.

In the early 1990s Ferrari had gone off the boil. Alesi had been recruited after Williams backed out of a deal to sign him to instead welcome back Nigel Mansell, and formed what should have been a formidable line-up alongside Alain Prost. But the 1991 car was unreliable and the following year's effort was even further off the pace.

Gerhard Berger joined him at Ferrari