Jean Alesi: ‘Ferrari are missing some little things to be perfect – they need time’

Always passionate, always entertaining, Jean Alesi has lost none of his joie de vivre with age. The 58-year-old former Ferrari driver laughs often and enthusiastically as he considers a hard-fought and often mercurial career that unsurprisingly won over many fans. Support he never took for granted.

“I was very sensitive of the public,” he says. “At Silverstone with Ferrari, it was pissing down and nobody was going on track. I said to my engineer: ‘Why don’t we go?’ and he said: ‘Jean, for what? It’s full of water.’ I said: ‘For them.’ I jumped in the car and I was alone on track. I did two or three laps then I did a 360 on the straight because there really was too much water but the fans were so happy. For me that was like winning a grand prix.”

He concludes with a booming laugh that ensures there is no sense of conceit in his story, only pleasure. There were similarly strong feelings for his only Formula One win, which came at Canada for Ferrari in 1995. “When I saw P1 on my pitboard I started to cry,” he says. “I had another 10 laps to do, so I had to say to myself: ‘Please concentrate.’ Montreal is a circuit where the stands are very close to the track, you could see the fans. They were excited it was my day.”

Alesi is enjoying a family holiday in Sicily but F1 is never far from his mind, not least when it returns to the Paul Ricard circuit for Sunday’s French Grand Prix. Of Italian descent but born and raised in France, he raced under the French flag but notes with a chuckle how he had to watch France-Italy football matches alone as he supported Italy. Yet Ricard remains special to him as the debut that launched his career.

Alesi was competing in Formula 3000 in 1989 when Ken Tyrrell needed a short-notice replacement