At the Catalunya circuit in Barcelona last weekend, 22 Formula One cars left the grid under the control of their engineers rather than their drivers. Times are changing in grand prix racing. As the technicians become the stars, the sport is losing some of its human spirit, represented in recent years by men such as Michele Alboreto, the last Italian to win a grand prix in a Ferrari, who died on April 25th aged 44.
Although Enzo Ferrari was reluctant to put drivers of his own nationality into the cockpits of his racing cars - fearing the pressure of patriotic expectations might provoke accidents and the consequent bad publicity - he could not resist Michele Alboreto. Intelligent, gracious and thoroughly simpatico, the Milanese driver came close to rewarding the old man's faith with the world championship.
Michele Alboreto left the world of Formula One in 1994, aged 38, his fortunes having slumped after a 12-year career which yielded five victories. No longer wanted at the sport's highest level, but still passionate about racing, he switched to saloons and sports cars. His racing debut came in 1976, in a Formula Monza car built by friends. A year later, he finished third in the championship, and graduated to Formula Italia. In 1980, he won the European Formula Three Championship. By this time, he was also a member of the Lancia team that competed in endurance sports car races, paired with his compatriot Riccardo Patrese, already a fully-fledged grand prix driver, under the management of Cesare Fiorio.
His first Formula One experience came when he tested a Williams in the winter of 1980-81. At the San Marino Grand Prix in 1981, Ken Tyrrell offered him a one-off drive. Impressed, by his speed and competence, Tyrrell offered him a permanent seat on his team. His two grand-prix victories with Tyrrell - in Las Vegas in 1982 and Detroit the following year - were the last the team achieved in Formula One.
At the end of 1983 he received an offer no Italian could refuse. It came, he later related, as a result of an interview he had given after his win in Detroit, in which he criticised Ferrari for failing to hire an Italian driver. He had been advancing the claims of Patrese and Elio De Angelis, but Enzo Ferrari responded by inviting him to visit the team's headquarters in Maranello. An offer was made and accepted, and, when the 1984 season began, he was a Ferrari driver.
"For any racing driver to drive a Ferrari, and to drive for Ferrari, represents the most profound moment of his career," he later wrote in the Gazzetta dello Sport. "So you can understand how much more important it is for an Italian driver."
Quickly establishing his superiority over his team-mate, the fading French star Rene Arnoux, Michele Alboreto won the Belgian Grand Prix in his first season. In 1985, he took the chequered flag in Canada and Germany, and installed himself as the favourite for the championship, ahead of the likes of Alain Prost, Nelson Piquet and Nigel Mansell, until a series of engine failures allowed Prost to slip ahead and claim the title.
There were two more seasons with Ferrari, latterly with Gerhard Berger as his team-mate. Within days of the death of Enzo Ferrari in the autumn of 1988, the two drivers finished first and second in the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, unleashing a tidal wave of emotion among the fans. At the end of that season, however, he was replaced by Nigel Mansell.
He spent the 1989 season back with Tyrrell, but for the remainder of his time in Formula One he moved from team to team, slipping further and further down the grid as he switched from Footwork to Lola, and finally to Minardi.
Thereafter he concentrated on sports cars, competing in Ferraris, Porsches and, for the last three years, with the all-conquering Audi works team. Victory in the Le Mans 24-hour race in 1997, sharing the wheel of a Porsche, was the highlight of the final phase of his post-Formula One career.
Grand prix racing is losing a sense of the value of its own history. But there are plenty of people who will continue to remember Michele Alboreto as one of the warmest men to drive the red cars - as well as, on his day, one of the fastest.
Michele Alboreto: born 1956; died, April 2001
