Background and career
Jean Robert Alesi (French pronunciation: [ʒã a.lɛ.si]; born Giovanni Roberto Alesi, 11 June 1964) is a French former racing driver, who competed in Formula One from 1989 to 2001. Alesi won the 1995 Canadian Grand Prix with Ferrari. Born and raised in Avignon, Alesi started karting aged 16 with a desire to eventually compete in rallying. He progressed to open-wheel racing at the age of twenty, winning the French Formula Three Championship in 1987 and graduating to International Formula 3000. His subsequent title with Jordan in 1989 led to a Formula One drive with Tyrrell, replacing Michele Alboreto from the 1989 French Grand Prix onwards, where he finished fourth. Alesi scored his maiden podium at the opening round of the 1990 season, repeating this feat in Monaco. He signed for Ferrari in 1991 to partner Alain Prost, scoring several podiums across five seasons before taking his sole victory at the Canadian Grand Prix in 1995. He left at the end of the season after twice finishing fifth in the standings, swapping seats with Michael Schumacher in 1996 to join Benetton, where he scored thirteen podiums across two seasons. He spent a further two seasons with Sauber—scoring his only podium for the team at the 1998 Belgian Grand Prix—before joining Prost. He remained at Prost until 2001, when he joined Jordan from the Hungarian Grand Prix onwards and retired at the conclusion of the season. During his time in Formula One, Alesi was noted for his ability in wet weather, as well as being a mercurial and passionate racer. Alesi holds the joint-record for most podium finishes before first win (fifteen). After leaving Formula One, Alesi raced full-time in the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters from 2002 to 2006, winning several races. Alesi then competed in the all-star Speedcar Series in both of its seasons, as well as entering the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2010 and the Indianapolis 500 in 2012, before retiring from motor racing in 2012. Since 2013, he has been an ambassador for Pirelli. Alesi was appointed a Knight of the Legion of Honour in 2006.
Alesi was born Giovanni Roberto Alesi on 11 June 1964 in the southern French town of Avignon to Sicilian parents. His father, Franco, was from Alcamo and his mother from Riesi. His father ran an automotive bodywork repair garage in the town, where Alesi spent much of his formative years and developed a love of cars. In addition to spending time in the family garage, Alesi's father also provided his first taste of motorsport, being a keen amateur competitor in rallying and hillclimb events. On weekends that he was unable to compete he would sometimes lend his rally cars to family friend and future Monte Carlo Rally-winning professional rally driver Jean Ragnotti, who would commonly return them "destroyed". Starting his career with a passion for rallying rather than racing, Alesi took up karting at the age of sixteen and then graduated to cars in 1983 by entering the French Renault 5 Turbo championship, where he raced for two seasons. He won the 1987 French Formula 3 title before moving up to International Formula 3000 in 1988. The 1988 season was a disappointment, finishing tenth in the championship with two podium finishes, not helped by problems within the team. However, in 1989 he joined the Jordan Formula 3000 team and won the championship. Both crowns were after duels with his rival Érik Comas. In 1989, Alesi tied on points for the F3000 title with Comas, but won the title on number of wins, having scored three to Comas' two. After clinching the F3000 title, Alesi also made a one-off sportscar racing appearance, debuting the Ferrari F40 LM in the IMSA GT Championship round at Laguna Seca in October, between the Spanish and Japanese Grands Prix. He qualified second, led for six laps and finished third overall in the semi-factory car, behind the Audi 90s of Hans-Joachim Stuck and Hurley Haywood. He also raced in the Le Mans 24 hours in the same year, but a fire forced him to retire in the fourth hour of the race.
While Alesi was seen as a talent of the future, his start as a Formula One driver was somewhat fortuitous. Prior to the 1989 French Grand Prix, Ken Tyrrell had signed a deal to run Camel cigarette sponsorship on his previously unsponsored cars. However, this caused problems for Michele Alboreto who was personally sponsored by rival cigarette brand Marlboro. The sponsorship clash forced Tyrrell to release Alboreto and find another driver. The team decided to look at whoever was leading International Formula 3000 at the time, and Alesi was signed as the replacement. Alesi debuted in the 1989 French Grand Prix at Paul Ricard in a Tyrrell-Ford and finished fourth, having run as high as second during the race. Ken Tyrrell was sufficiently impressed to give him an eighteen-month contract. He drove most of the rest of the season for Tyrrell while continuing his successful Formula 3000 campaign, occasionally giving the car up in favour of Johnny Herbert when Formula 3000 clashed, scoring points again at the Italian and Spanish Grands Prix. With Jonathan Palmer having retired from driving at the end of 1989 and a new teammate in Satoru Nakajima, Alesi amazingly became Tyrrell's lead driver in 1990 for what would be his first full year in Grand Prix racing (prior to the start of the 1990 season, Alesi only had eight race starts in Formula One). At the first event, the United States Grand Prix at Phoenix, he led for 25 laps in front of Ayrton Senna with a car powered by a customer Ford V8 considered as vastly inferior to the factory-developed Honda V10 in Senna's McLaren, and also re-passing Senna after the Brazilian had first overtaken for the lead, before ultimately finishing second. Second place in the Monaco Grand Prix followed, and by mid-season top teams were clamouring for his services in 1991. A confused situation erupted, with Tyrrell, Williams, and Ferrari all claiming to have signed the driver within a very short period. The results dropped away during the rest of the 1990 season, and Alesi finished ninth in the championship, with thirteen points. There were signs of Alesi's talent in the Italian Grand Prix at Monza where he qualified the under powered Tyrrell in fifth place less than a second slower than Senna's pole time. At both the original and restart (caused by Derek Warwick's Lotus crashing heavily), Alesi passed the more powerful V12 Ferrari of reigning World Champion Alain Prost for third place and within a lap would be harrying McLaren's Gerhard Berger for second. On lap five, though, he spun into the barriers at the Rettifilo chicane.
Alesi initially signed a contract with Williams for the 1991 season. However due to Williams delaying the announcement of his signature with the reasoning eventually given they were pursuing Ayrton Senna, Alesi eventually grew tired of the constant delays, as a result he then opted instead to sign for Ferrari as the second driver alongside fellow countryman Alain Prost, and the Ferrari team had to pay Williams a fine of four million dollars. The move to Ferrari initially appeared to be a logical choice from a results perspective too, for Alain Prost had mounted a serious world championship challenge at Ferrari the previous year, and the 1991 Ferrari set good lap times in winter testing. Alesi had third-place finishes at Monaco, Germany and Portugal, and finished in the top six at Brazil, France, Hungary and Spain (despite a stop and go penalty for a jump start in the Spanish Grand Prix). The 1991 Ferrari also turned out to be unreliable, and he had nine retirements during the season, including a mechanical failure while leading the Belgian Grand Prix. Having a dismal 1991 season, Alesi's teammate Prost was sacked after the Japanese Grand Prix when he publicly described the car as a "truck" and took a year-long sabbatical from racing, and thus Alesi became the team's number one driver for 1992. Alesi scored 21 points and finished seventh in the championship.
Alesi was partnered by Ivan Capelli in 1992, when the Ferrari F92A was even further from the pace than the 1991 Ferrari. Capelli had a disastrous season and was replaced for the last two races by Nicola Larini. Alesi had no realistic hope of winning a race, and retired with engine failure in the first two races of the season, but he finished fourth in the third race of the season, behind the Williams drivers and Michael Schumacher. He finished third in the Spanish Grand Prix, after a strong wet-weather drive, in spite of making contact with Gerhard Berger and Mika Häkkinen during the race. He ran third at the San Marino Grand Prix, but retired following a collision with Gerhard Berger. The subsequent races brought a series of retirements, although Alesi had a strong third-place finish at Canada and produced another outstanding wet-weather drive in France, producing lap times on slicks that were comparable to those of Nigel Mansell's Williams, before retiring with another engine failure. In the Belgian Grand Prix he was given the F92A / T, an improvement over the previous model, but retired due to a collision with Nigel Mansell's Williams. He qualified a strong third at Monza, but retired with a fuel pump failure early in the race. He finished in the points during the last two races of the season, leaving him seventh in the championship with 18 points.
Alesi was joined by Austrian Gerhard Berger in 1993 who was returning to Maranello after three seasons with McLaren. The Ferrari F93A was very slow during pre-season testing. Mainly due to the unreliability of the "active" suspension of the F93A, there came four retirements in the first five races of the season and an eighth-place finish at Brazil, causing Alesi to even consider leaving Ferrari. However, he finished third in the Monaco Grand Prix, and in July, he signed a further two-year contract with Ferrari. However, subsequent races continued to feature frequent retirements and finishes outside of the points. In Hungary, he had a collision with Christian Fittipaldi, resulting in a leg contusion, and came close to having a brawl with him afterwards. The Ferrari improved towards the end of the season, and Alesi finished second at Monza and then led early in the race at Portugal, eventually finishing fourth. Alesi finished sixth in the championship with sixteen points.
Sources
Net-worth figure: Celebrity Net Worth (October 2026), in USD. Biography and career facts: the person's Wikipedia article and linked reporting. Snapshot date for all StarWorth figures: 28 October 2026.
