Back in the mid-90s, Italy was on course to produce the next biggest racing star after the likes of Riccardo Patrese and Ivan Capelli. A young Jarno Trulli was making the headlines with his karting exploits. After becoming a karting world champion, Trulli made his Formula 1 debut for Minardi in 1997.
A couple of years later, the late Eddie Jordan’s team quickly lapped him up, and he started to break into the top 10 of the drivers’ standings consistently. A tumultuous stint at Renault saw him lose out on a championship drive in 2005 after getting the sack from Flavio Briatore midway through the 2004 season. Despite this, he won the crown jewel of F1—the Monaco GP—that year.
All these exploits led him to believe that a call from Ferrari was always in the offing. But he never got one. He raced with Toyota for five seasons, before moving to a bevy of midfield teams and finally called it quits on his F1 career after the 2012 season.
Looking back in hindsight, the Italian racing ace believes that the reason he never really got a call from the Scuderia was because of Michael Schumacher.
“He [Schumacher] was the greatest in Formula 1. I lived through the whole era of his triumphs with Ferrari and perhaps that’s why I never received a call from Maranello,” he said as quoted by La Gazzetta dello Sport.
If you’re going to win one race in #F1, where better than the #MonacoGP?
Jarno Trulli took his sole victory #OnThisDay in 2004 for Renault pic.twitter.com/ztGJjtYDgC
— Formula 1 (@F1) May 23, 2018
Schumacher won five titles on the trot with Ferrari between 2000 and 2004—reaching a tally of an unprecedented seven titles. That said, it doesn’t mean that the German racing driver didn’t know just how good Trulli was.
“The first time I met him, I was the world karting champion and he was the F1 world champion, but he wanted to come to a test with Tony Kart in Lonato just to challenge me, since the owner Roberto Robazzi had told him I was the best,” revealed the 50-year-old.
Schumacher’s dominance in the sport was stopped by the man that Trulli was hoping to beat—Fernando Alonso. On his day, Trulli had the measure of Alonso. But at Renault, with Flavio Briatore backing the Spaniard, Trulli never really stood a chance.
Despite leading Alonso in the standings in 2004, Briatore, who was also Alonso’s manager, decided to snip the Italian’s lifeline within the Enstone-based team. With three races to go, Trulli got the pink slip.
And while Alonso went on to win two titles in 2005 and 2006 (his only titles to date), Trulli was left with a solitary Grand Prix win to show for his 16-year-long career at the pinnacle of motorsport.
