Formula One Features — July 1990

Riccardo Patrese is having a tremendous season. With the new Williams-Renault combination he is enjoying his best results for years. In Rio, on the day he became the most experienced Formula 1 driver in history, he started from the front row of the grid and led the race in the early stages...

Hard though it may be to believe, one year ago Jean Alesi had not won a Formula 3000 race - and he hadn't really looked like winning one.

They were drinking champagne and bouncing off the walls with joy in the Leyton House pit. The team had pulled off the greatest comeback since Lazarus. A fortnight before neither Ivan Capelli nor Mauricio Gugelmin had qualified for the Mexican Grand Prix. Now they were celebrating. Capelli had been beaten, but it had only happened in the dying moments of the race when his fuel pressure suddenly dived and Alain Prost swept by.

Eric Bernard was right on the pace during pre-Grand Prix testing at Silverstone. It was no big surprise. If it wasn't for Jean Alesi, Eric Bernard would be a very successful young Grand Prix driver. The amazing Jean has stolen much of Eric's thunder with his sparkling performances in the Tyrrell 019.

Fifty years ago the British armies in France were driven into the sea by the marauding Panzer divisions of the German army. With their backs to the beaches, the British fell back on a place called Dunkirk. The armies were rescued by an armada of little boats and suddenly, somehow, Dunkirk became a famous victory. It had been a disastrous defeat, yet the British turned it into an episode of glory -- and success.

For four years Michele Alboreto was a Ferrari driver. He won five Grands Prix and was second in the 1985 World Championship but in 1988 his F1 career went off the rails. Michele fell from favour at Ferrari and was looking for a new team for the 1989 season...

British race fans like to have a hero to cheer. After James Hunt there was John Watson and then along came Nigel Mansell. With 'Our Nige' retiring at the end of the year Martin Donnelly is the obvious candidate to replace Mansell as Britain's new racing star and the object of the public's affection...