Seuraavassa Autosportin sivuilta, Ask Nigel osiosta Alboreton liittyvä juttu, ehkä nyt ymmärrätte miksi Michele oli myös minun suosikkini.
Dear Nigel,
I was shocked and saddened by the news of Michele Alboreto's death last week. For me it was not about Senna, Prost, Mansell or Piquet, it was always Alboreto who I followed from his first GP for Tyrrell, until his most recent win at the Sebring 12 Hours. I was wondering what your memories of Michele were and what will you miss most about him?
Darren Gibbons, Denver, Colorado
Dear Darren,
Like you, like anyone who knew him, I also was stunned to learn of Michele Alboreto's death last week. I have written about him in this week's AUTOSPORT, but to give you an idea of the sort of person he was, let me tell you about a dinner in Estoril in 1987.
This was Michele talking not about himself – he was never the self-obsessed type – but it might get across the wit of the man, and his love of racing. He was a wonderful raconteur, and that night he had me, and everyone else at the table, in near hysterics, as he regaled us with 'Brambilla stories'.
The Brambilla brothers, Tino and Vittorio, citizens of Monza, were around a long time in motor racing – considerably longer, in fact, than anyone anticipated, since their track behaviour frequently suggested they may not have been a hundred percent steady in the head. Tales of their exploits are legion, and Alboreto came up with one or two I hadn't heard.
"You know the one about the F3 mechanic at Monza? No?" Michele smiled in anticipation, this clearly one of his party pieces.
"It was in the days when Tino was in F3, with a Tecno, and Vittorio was his chief mechanic. They were testing alone at Monza one day, and Vittorio hears the engine cut out, round the back of the circuit. 'I think he's run out of fuel,' he says to Pino, the young mechanic. 'Sounds like at Lesmo. Take some fuel out to him.'
"So Pino sets off, reaches Lesmo, and Vittorio is right: the car is parked, out of fuel, Tino standing next to it. They put the fuel in, and the engine starts. 'Get on the back, Pino,' Tino says, and I'll take you back to the pits...
"So, OK, they start off. Into first... then second..."
Sadly I cannot on paper do justice to this part of Michele's story, to the engine sounds, the rising revs, the gear changes. Suffice it to say that Tino gets the thing into fifth, and seriously so...
"So, Tino comes into the pits. 'You were right, Vittorio,' he says. 'I was out fuel. Thank you for sending Pino out to me.
"'No problem,' Vittorio says. 'But... where is Pino?'
"Tino hits his forehead with the heel of his hand. 'My God,'he says, 'he was on the back...'
"You know what?" Alboreto smiled, "it took them an hour to find him. He was face down in the run-off area at Parabolica!"
Tino, it seems, had arrived there in fifth gear, and turned into the corner at normal racing speed, a path the hapless Pino, clinging desperately to the roll-over bar, had found himself unable to follow...
Did he survive, we asked? "Oh, yes," Michele said. "He was a bit knocked about, you know, but OK – in fact, he still works for the Brambillas!"
Not all of the evening was given over to reminiscence, though. Alboreto was that rarest of men, a straightforward racing driver. You could interview him, reach a controversial point, volunteer to switch off the tape recorder, and he would say not to bother: "No, it's OK. No secrets..."
It was a gentler time, in many ways. Alboreto, I remember, spoke glowingly of Prost, the man he ran close for the championship for much of 1985.
"Alain is unbelievably quick, and clever. He's also very relaxed now, and because of that he's much more dangerous as a rival than before. When he was looking for the World Championship, he was very nervous like me now. But now he's relaxed, and it's made him even quicker. He makes fewer mistakes than anyone."
For Ayrton Senna, though, there was less enthusiasm. Michele did not at that time care for Senna, and did not much care, either, who knew it.
"I've never had a problem with anyone else, not like with Senna. And it's not possible to talk with him about it. He is still the same as he was.
"There is a limit, that's the point. You cannot push people off on the grass because you don't want to lose a position. In Hockenheim I was furious. At one point he missed a gearchange, and I went to overtake him on the right – he chopped across. So I went to the left – and he did the same again. Right again – and the same thing happened. We were this far apart, flat in sixth, and I could have been in the trees! This is sport, you know, not war. If you make a mistake you must expect to lose a place. I think he has to change: he is so good and so quick that he doesn't need to do things like that. He is one of the best – he can win anyway."
Alboreto, you can see, said what he thought – including about Ferrari, which was particularly brave for an Italian – and I always admired him for that. In terms of loving racing for the sake of it, he was very similar to Mario Andretti – indeed Mario remained his hero throughout his life.
He left F1 at the end of 1994, and after that I saw little of him for a few years, but when I bumped into him at the Goodwood Festival of Speed a couple of years ago – he was there to drive the Audi sports car and also an Auto Union – we picked up as easily as if we'd chatted only the weekend before.
Michele, in the right mood, was a magnificent racing driver, and I'll remember him as a really fine man, one of the best I have known in this sport. As Gerhard Berger said last weekend, "So many times I said to him that he should retire, but he loved it too much – he just couldn't leave it. And he died doing what he loved."
