1,000 Greatest Drivers: Michele Alboreto

I missed the intended Jaime Melo post yesterday in part because I was doing some of my other work for my ex-Sports Reference colleague Shane Holmes and in part because I knew that would be pretty hard to write since all his great accomplishments were in sports cars from 2004-2011, which is long enough ago that I can’t really find any lap time data to determine whether he or his ALMS-championship winning teammate Mika Salo was doing most of the work. I’m betting Salo given his open wheel reputation but Melo and his co-driver Matteo Bobbi did beat Mika Salo and his co-driver Rui Águas the previous year in the FIA GT Championship, so maybe they were actually evenly matched. I wasn’t sure I was informed enough to write that column right away, but I might make that up on another day in April if I’m ahead of schedule on my regular daily entries, which I wasn’t really today.

But I know I’ll be ready to write about almost any open wheel, stock car, or touring car driver that comes along. Get it, “I’ll be ready”? I can’t find a pun I won’t riff on. I think Alboreto is really underrated and I always have because although there were admittedly a few ‘80s and ‘90s F1 drivers who had major accomplishments outside of F1, the time when Alboreto was peaking was around the same time when Bernie Ecclestone started discouraging F1 drivers from racing in other series and all the top drivers basically became F1 specialists. Alboreto was an exception as he was part of a wave of Italian-trained F1 drivers who competed in F1 and the World Sportscar Championship like Riccardo Patrese and Eddie Cheever (who might’ve been an American, but certainly trained in Italy) at a time not many people were doing that, and he definitely hit a higher peak than those other two (even if Cheever beat him in his rookie season). He also remained relevant in sports cars until the very end of his career, and really accommodated nicely in his short-lived oval attempt in the IRL where he took a Dick Simon Racing shitbox and earned four top tens in five starts including a podium despite no oval experience (although admittedly, the number of drivers who had any relevant experience in that IRL season was rather low). When I saw F1metrics only barely rank him in the top 100 and give him only one top ten season, that sounds very wrong to me for a driver who gave Minardi its last win anywhere for 26 years, then gave Tyrrell their only two wins in their last 20 seasons. Alboreto was one of only two drivers along with Ayrton Senna to lead my model in multiple years in the ‘80s, which is a sharp contrast to F1metrics’ result. I don’t know whether my ranking him 1st in 1982 and 1984 or F1metrics ranking him 16th and 13th is closer to the truth. I think both are wrong, but my rankings look better here to me… He wasn’t a one-year wonder even though people think about him that way. (The real one-year wonders for Ferrari were obviously Didier Pironi and Eddie Irvine…)