Your memories of .........

[marcus]

just out of curiosity i was wondering what peoples meries were of certain drivers from the past..i was reading an old article today and it jogged my memory of drivers who may have not made it to the top in racing but at least made it to formula One and had their moment in the sun.

i will start off by mentioning Ivan capelli.

what are your first and current memories if Ivan capelli.

mine are when he was with the Leyton house march team for which he became surnonamous with ..back in 1987 he started with them and continued until the end of 1991..before moving to ferrari and then obscurity.

my biggest memory of him was France 89 (i think) when he lead the race ahead of Alain prost in the Ferrari and almost won the race but for an engine problem that dropped him back to 2nd at the finish..what a great drive that was and what would have happened to his carrer if he had of won that day ???

to me ivan always seemed like a driver that was ready to be world champ..but his move to ferrari was not only ill timed but a very unfortunate experience for him..and very unreliable and uncompetitive car greated him and before the year was out he was replaced by the teams test driver nicola larini..93 saw him start with the jordan team but never really got going there before his f1 carreer was over.

i dont have a clue as to what he done since then but i have read somewhere that he does italian commentry for F1 races but as far as i know hasnt done alot of racing since then.

definately a driver whose talent was never really seen in my books and one that will go down in ages as a could have been

what are your thoughts on Ivan Capelli ???

[angst]

Capelli was a driver I followed from his F3 days (as I did with alot of drivers, trying to judge who would be the next F1 stars) and thought he was going to be brilliant. He was, but the cards didn't fall kindly for him. It was 1990 that he so nearly won the French Grand Prix and I remember willing it to happen, but it wasn't to be). He moved to Ferrari at the wrong time (I believe he should have left Leyton House at the end of '91) and suffered by being an Italian at Ferrari when they were at one of their lowest points. He wasn't the same driver when he moved to Jordan. Pity.
But this could be the start of along list of drivers who showed all the signs of being 'the next big thing' but for whatever reason never made it. Alain and Michel Ferte spring to mind, Nicola Larini, Alex Caffi, Erik Comas, Pier-Luigi Martini, Jean Alesi, Stefan Bellof, Mike Thackwell, Bruno Giacomelli, Elio de Angelis, Beppe Gabbiani, etc., etc.
Only two or three of those drivers made any real impact in F1, but each of those looked the business earlier in their careers.
Johnny Herbert, Stefan Johannson, Stephen South, Corrado Fabi, Riccardo Patrese, Derek Warwick, Derek Daly, Andrea de Cesaris, Eddie Cheever, Thierry Boutsen, Stefano Modena....I could go on.

[TimD]

Ivan Capelli was in Touring Cars in the mid 1990s. Certainly in the Italian series, possibly the German 2 litre championship too.

But my first recollection of him was as another of the extraordinary young hotshoes that Ken Tyrrell used to have a knack for finding and hiring. He was doing crazy things with a Tyrrell at Brands one year, and from memory, it was the '85 European GP - Nigel Mansell's first win. But I also remember the race for the Tyrrell which went far quicker than it ought until eventually the engine cried enough and spun him off.

I agree - another driver for whom the chips always seemed to fall the wrong way. As the old saying goes "if he didn't have the bad luck he'd have no luck at all."

[Craig]

When I first heard the name Ivan Capelli mentioned, the first thing which sprung to mind was the Ferrari shambles... It is only once you think harder you remember he was highly rated at Leyton House/March.

When Leyton House was forced to close it's doors, I attended the auction where they were selling off the team's assets - and to see how basic their premises were, and how old their tooling was, you realise the scale of their achievements in those last few years. Teams nowadays take more equiptment to the track than the Leyton House team owned back then!

[SL]

It seem Ivan was really only famous for the Leyton House cars. But I recall seeing him in sports cars after the F1 days, probably at Le Mans.

As a side note one of my favourite stewardesess asked me some time ago for any photo's or information I had of an ex F1 driver. The reason was because she had seen him a few times and he had mentioned that he used to drive F1's. I think she thought it male bravado until I found not only a Silverstone and Le Mans programme with his name in but a feature in Motor Sport including a very flattering photo. Needless to say she was speechless.

She is still seing him on a regular basis but he has nothing whatsoever to do with racing. I keep dropping hints to get them to a Karting event as a ringer but to no avail so far.

I can see his and probably Ivan's point in that an exciting sport that promised fame and fortune suddenly dropped them like last weeks news. They do not need reminding of what could have been.

Simon