To spend time with Jean Alesi is to be reminded that Formula 1, for all its modern sheen of algorithmic optimisation, was once populated – perhaps even defined – by men who emoted first and calculated later. Alesi is, and he always has been, a paradox in racing overalls: universally appreciated, instinctively trusted, yet somehow persistently misunderstood. Everyone who encountered him – team-mates, rivals, mechanics, engineers, journalists, fans, and above all tifosi – liked him. Many loved him. Yet few, I think, ever truly got him.

Perhaps that is because he never tried to conceal the aspect of his personality that others learned to hide: his passion. He wore it on his sleeve; it shimmered in his eyes; it crackled in his voice; and occasionally it overflowed, inconveniently but resplendently, at precisely the moments when lesser drivers might have chosen composure over candour. In those moments he sometimes obscured from view the truth that would otherwise have been more evident: that he was not only passionate but also prodigiously fast.

But let us start at the beginning. “My father, Francesco, left Sicily when he was 20. He moved to France because in the early 1960s work was hard to find in Sicily, and he had relatives in the Avignon area, so that’s why he chose it. He and four friends left Palermo by train and two days later they arrived in Avignon. He liked cars, he was good with his hands, he started working as a mechanic, after a while he opened his own workshop, and it’s still there today. That was more than 60 years ago. My dad is 84 now, he still goes to work every day, and he has 75 people working for him. It’s a family business – my brother and sister both work there. So I always feel a bit embarrassed, because I was the lazy one.”

It is such a gloriously Alesi word, lazy – self-deprecating to the point of absurdity. For there is nothing in his story, nor in his driving, that suggests indolence. If anything, I have always detected in him the opposite: a restless and irrepressible energy that might sometimes have been indisciplined, but only because it required guidance, not because it would have benefited from greater application.

Let us return to his story. “I spent a lot of time in my dad’s garage when I was a kid and I have to say that that helped me in my early days because I knew everything about my race cars, every single part. But at that time I was more into rally and hillclimb, not racing, because the Avignon region was more into rally and hillclimb than racing. My dad used to compete in the Mont Ventoux hillclimb and it was my ambition to do that, too.”

It is worth our pausing here: the dream was Mont Ventoux, not Monte Carlo; gravel and gradients, not glamour and grandstands. There is something almost pastoral about that ambition, something that sits intriguingly at odds with the incandescent F1 star that Alesi would later become. “Oh no, I never imagined I’d ever get to F1. F1 simply wasn’t on my radar screen. OK, I wanted to drive competitively, and one day to be doing the Mont Ventoux hillclimb, like my dad, but I had no plans bigger than that.”

Yet, as so often happens in motor sport, the road from modest beginnings to the pinnacle is paved not with grand designs but with small and stubborn steps. Karting was an early waypoint on the route, as it is so often, albeit hardly in the polished and professionalised form that we now associate with future grand prix winners.

“I went karting, yes, but only from 16, and the kind of karting I did was in supermarket car parks on circuits marked out with straw bales, and I did it for only two years,” he tells. “Then, when I was 18, I started racing Renault 5 Turbo Cup cars, because we could work on them in our garage, we had free Dunlop tyres, and if you did well you got a bit of prize money from Elf. Then, at 19, I went to the École de Pilotage Winfield [the famous racing school at Le Castellet whose graduates include many French F1 drivers of the 1970s and 1980s] and something important clicked in my head as a result of that.

“I moved up to Formula 3000 in 1988 with ORECA, but it wasn’t a good season for me”

“Everyone wants to win the Winfield Volant, the speed competition to decide the best driver of the year, and I’d done the quickest lap time. Éric Bernard was also in contention, but then he spun, so I thought I was going to win it. But they let Éric go again, and he beat my time, so I ended up second. I was upset, of course, and in the car on the way home my dad spoke to me very seriously. ‘We’re not here to play,’ he said. ‘We’re here to win, and, if you want to be a racing driver, you’re going to have to deliver.’ As I say, something important clicked in my head when he said that.”

It was an epiphany for Alesi. His talent had always been there – raw, instinctive and unpolished – but now it acquired purpose, and the centime dropped: racing was going to require hard graft. “In 1984, when I was 20, we started doing French Formula Renault. We didn’t have a great car, but I was doing OK –finishing second, third and fourth – although I wasn’t winning. It was the same in 1985. But in 1986, when we started doing French Formula 3, I began to win. I won twice that year [at Albi and Le Mans Bugatti] and I finished second in the championship [behind Yannick Dalmas].”

By 1987, he was French Formula 3 champion, victorious seven times [at Nogaro twice, Paul Ricard twice, Pau, Rouen and La Châtre], yet even then F1 remained an unobtainable chimera. “No, I still wasn’t thinking about F1. I was just thinking, ‘What should my next step be in my mission impossible?’”

That expression – mission impossible – reveals both ambition and doubt, and perhaps it also encapsulates the Alesi enigma more neatly than any early career statistic ever could. But perhaps ‘mission improbable’ would have been more apposite still, for his journey to F1, as it transpired, hinged on a moment of heartbreak followed swiftly by a handshake with a man whose eye for talent was as sharp as his flair for opportunity.

“I moved up to Formula 3000 in 1988, with ORECA, with whom I’d won the French F3 championship the year before, but 1988 wasn’t a good season for me [he finished 10th] and the ORECA guys said they wouldn’t offer me a drive for 1989. So I spoke to my brother, José, who was working with me, and, although we were upset to have been dropped, we decided not to give up but instead to enter the Macau Grand Prix [in November 1988]. In the first heat I finished second behind Eddie Irvine, and I was leading [on aggregate in] the second heat until I had a tyre blow-out.

“I was so upset, really upset, but then Eddie Jordan walked up to José and me, and he said I’d driven well, and we started chatting with him, and that conversation changed my life. We did a deal – and, without Eddie, I have to say that I’d never have made it. I’d have been a nobody. He was fantastic. I raced for him in F3000 in 1989, I lived in his house in Oxford, with his wife and family, and on Sundays I went to Mass with Marie [Jordan’s wife]. At first I wasn’t achieving the results he’d expected, and he was very tough with me, but I listened and I learned, and in the end I won three races and the 1989 F3000 championship. And actually it was Eddie who helped me to get my F1 chance with Ken Tyrrell. I was testing Eddie’s F3000 car at Monza, halfway through the 1989 season, and he called me and said, ‘You have to fly to England, to do a seat fit at Tyrrell, because you’re going to be racing in the French Grand Prix at Paul Ricard.’”

Alesi’s F1 debut, when it came, was nothing short of sensational. “I was taking over Michele Alboreto’s car, and, when I got to the Tyrrell factory I found that his seat fitted me almost perfectly. Then we went to Paul Ricard and I qualified 16th and finished fourth in my first ever F1 grand prix. Ken was delighted – and Eddie did a deal with him for me to race the rest of the 1989 season for Tyrrell in F1, as well as finishing the F3000 season for Jordan. I was a busy boy that year.”

It was the kind of F1 debut that demanded attention, but what followed in 1990, especially in Phoenix and Monaco, commanded more than that: serious admiration. “That 1989 Tyrrell was a great little car,” a smiling Alesi explains, visibly warming to his theme. “It was designed by Harvey Postlethwaite and Jean-Claude Migeot, and they were a fantastic combination. Honestly, it was like having Adrian Newey and Ross Brawn in the same team. And you know something? Harvey never wasted any time. After the last session on Fridays, and again on Saturdays, he’d come up to me and ask, ‘What do you need to be faster?’ So I’d answer – ‘A bit better traction here, a bit better braking there’ – and he’d reply, ‘OK, cool, you can go to the hotel now.’ Compare that with the long, long meetings we used to have when I joined Ferrari then Benetton – what a waste of time.

“Before Phoenix 1990 we did a shakedown at Silverstone, on Goodyears [the tyres run by Tyrrell for the previous 18 seasons], the car felt good, then I flew to the States. When I arrived I was told that we’d be using Pirellis. ‘Are you joking? We’ve never done any running on Pirellis,’ I said. But they weren’t joking. Anyway, the first session was a bit tricky, but we soon found that in low-grip conditions the Pirellis were actually better than the Goodyears. I managed to qualify fourth, which was very good, but even better was that we’d worked out that on Pirellis we could do the whole race without a tyre change.

“It was only my ninth grand prix, I made a fantastic start, I took the lead at the first corner, and I was 2.4sec ahead of everyone by the end of lap one. I was thinking of my family and friends in Avignon, watching on TV. Our car had a Cosworth V8, which needed about 20kg less fuel than the more powerful V10s and V12s, but they were ultimately faster than us, so I had a weight advantage at the start but, as the race went on, and the fuel loads came down for everyone, they got quicker and quicker and they began to catch me. Even so, I led almost half the race before [Ayrton] Senna caught me in his McLaren [which was powered by a famously potent Honda V10], we had a good fight for a few laps, and in the end he went through and I was second. But still, to be standing on an F1 podium next to Senna, at the point when he was definitely the best driver in the world, was an incredible moment for me.

“But there’s a funny story here, too. Unless you knew him really well [which Alesi did not], Ayrton was a very private person. He was easy to talk to if you wanted to discuss racing issues with him, but not personal matters, not even casual stuff like ‘Where are you going on holiday this winter?’ So, at Phoenix, after the press conference, he was chatting to me in a friendly way about fuel loads and tyre wear and all that – and, because we were chatting happily, I said, ‘Well, I was able to finish second because there was a Senna in your car and another Senna in my car, too.’ ‘What do you mean?’ he said. So I explained that before the race I was putting on a normal T-shirt to wear under my race overalls, and Joan Villadelprat [the Tyrrell team manager] said, ‘Don’t you have a fireproof vest?’ I told him that I didn’t. So Joan borrowed one from McLaren, because he had friends there from when he used to work there before, and when I put it on I saw that it had ‘Ayrton Senna’ written on it. So I explained all that to Ayrton – and he was furious. He said, ‘Give it back to me immediately,’ so I did.”

Monaco followed three grands prix later, and with it we caught another glimpse of Alesi’s developing blend of ambition and ability. “After Phoenix I was seventh at Interlagos and sixth at Imola, and I was very excited about the next race, which was Monaco. I said to Ken, ‘You wait, I’m going to destroy everyone at Monaco.’ But Ken kept trying to calm me down. He said, ‘I’ve visited far too many F1 drivers in hospital, and I’ve been to far too many F1 drivers’ funerals, too, so be very careful at Monaco.’

“When we got there, our car was perfect. I qualified third. There was a shunt on lap one, and a restart, and Alain [Prost] retired, so I ended up second, splitting the two McLarens of Ayrton and Gerhard [Berger].”

Then came the career crossroads – is it to be Williams or Ferrari? – a choice that would define not only Alesi’s career but also, perhaps, his legacy. “That was at the end of 1989. I was offered a contract by Williams, a three-year contract, for 1991, 1992 and 1993. Eddie Jordan helped me with it, but there was one paragraph that didn’t look right. It allowed Williams to back out and it gave me no protection, so my lawyer advised me not to sign. Eddie said, ‘Go and see Frank [Williams, the Williams team principal] yourself.’ So I did, but you have to remember that I was only 25, and Frank was not only an F1 legend and an F1 hero, but also an F1 monster. Those guys were scary. So it was difficult for me, at just 25, to negotiate with such a man. Anyway, Frank refused to alter the paragraph, and I felt I had to sign, so I did.

“Then, six months later, at Imola [in May 1990], Cesare Fiorio [the Ferrari sporting director] came to see me and he said, ‘After the race come and see us at Maranello.’ So I did, with my brother José. And at Maranello they made me an offer for 1991, 1992 and 1993. I said, ‘I’m so sorry but I can’t accept it.’ ‘Why not?’ Cesare said. ‘I’m committed to another team for 1991, 1992 and 1993, but I can’t tell you who that is,’ I replied. And Fiorio looked me in the eyes and he said, ‘It’s never a good idea for a driver to say no to Ferrari.’

“I was offered a contract by Williams but there was one paragraph that didn’t look right”

“In the car afterwards I said to José, ‘Can you believe that we just said no to Ferrari?’ José said, ‘Don’t worry. Do a good job with Williams and maybe one day you’ll get another chance with Ferrari.’ What he said made sense and that helped me relax a bit. But, all the same, I called Frank. I asked him when we were going to announce my move to Williams, and he wouldn’t say. I began to panic. I called Frank again a little while later and still he wouldn’t say. Anyway, two months after that, at Paul Ricard [in July 1990], I went to see Nelson Piquet, who I was very close to at the time, and I asked his advice. And he said, ‘You must force Frank to make the announcement now, otherwise you may end up in the shit.’