Italian driver steering towards world title

Press, 21 June 1985, Page 23

Italian driver steering towards world title

The Italian racing driver, Michele Alboreto, heads the points table after five races in this year’s world drivers’ championship. The 28-year-old Ferrari driver scored his first win this season in the recent Canadian grand prix at the Gilles Villeneuve circuit in Montreal.

For both Alboreto and the spectators, the win was an emotional one as the scarlet Ferrari bearing number 27 took the chequered flag. The late French Canadian, Gilles Villeneuve, who was killed in Belgium in 1982, also drove for Ferrari in a car bearing the same number.

If Alboreto can maintain his advantage for the rest of the season, he will become the first Italian to win the title since the late Alberto Ascari won for Ferrari in 1953 and 1954.

Ironically, Alboreto’s car has the chassis number 156/ 85. The last time Ferrari used the 156 prefix was when Phil Hill, of the United States, won the world title in 1961.

With second placings in Brazil, Portugal and Monaco, as well as his Canadian victory, Alboreto, at this stage, would appear to be the one most likely to

wrest the drivers’ and constructors’ titles from Niki Lauda (Austria) and the Marlboro McLaren International team, respectively. Bom on December 23, 1956, Alboreto’s racing career began in the national Formula Italia single-seater category and he soon graduated to Formula Three with the Euroracing team run by Gianpaulo Pavanello. Driving a Euroracing March Alfa Romeo, Alboreto won the 1980 European Formula Three championship and, the next season, he moved up to Formula Two, driving for the Minardi team. One of the shrewdest talent scouts in Formula One, Mr Ken Tyrrell, a wealthy timber merchant from Surrey, who guided Jackie Stewart (Scotland) to three world titles, agreed to provide a car to Alboreto for three races at Imola, Belgium and Monaco.

Alboreto was impressive and Tyrrell wasted no time seeking a sponsor to back his newcomer for the rest of the season.

In 1982, Alboreto broke the Tyrrell victory drought with a well-judged win in the Las Vegas grand prix. The next year, he also

reaped rewards with an equally impressive win at Detroit.

Without turbo power, Tyrrell had little hope of retaining Alboreto’s services when a good offer came the Italian’s way. The most sought after offer in grand prix racing came for Alboreto in 1984, from his countryman Enzo Ferrari. The grand old man of motor racing has his first Italian driver’s signature on a contract since Arturo Merzario way back in 1972.

No sooner had the ink dried on his contract than Alboreto was proving his worth with a brilliant win in

the Belgium grand prix at Zolder. Ferrari was delighted, as this was the first win by an Italian in a Ferrari since the late Ludovico Scarfiotti was victorious at Monza in 1966.

This season’s opening race in Brazil was won by Alain Prost (France), in a McLaren. The second race in Portugal went to the brilliant Ayrton Senna (Brazil), and Senna’s teammate, Elio de Angelis, scored a fortuitous win at Imola, thanks to Senna running out of fuel three laps from the finish and Prost being disqualified for an underweight car.

Prost scored his second consecutive Monaco win through the narrow streets of the tiny Mediterranean principality, and the scheduled fifth round of the series, the Belgium race at Spa-Francorchamps, was postponed until later in the year.

Predictions are difficult to make in a sport as unpredictable as Formula One racing. But the reliable, fast Ferrari team, led by Alboreto, seems a good bet so far. GEORGE TANNER