Alain Prost is one of the Formula 1 greats. But does he have a point about how he’s perceived today – especially in comparison to his sainted nemesis Ayrton Senna? In a rare interview, he reflects on a high-achieving racing life with Damien Smith
PORTRAITS: JAYSON FONG
He divides opinion. Always has done. And it tends to distil to a single, fundamental question: are you for Senna, or are you for Prost?
Even Motor Sport can’t resist. We have been asking racing drivers that very question every month for our Life in Cars page, as if their answer identifies the deep-seated philosophy they live by. How they choose to express their art of motor racing. Pure, unadulterated, no-compromise speed borne from an instinctive passion; or a clinical, restrained sophistication emanating from a scientific approach to the business of winning? You don’t need us to tell you which camp Alain Prost represents. Lest we forget, he was the Professeur.
We’ve just tipped beyond 30 years since that final podium they shared in Adelaide 1993. A little under six months later Senna was gone, his blinding light extinguished against the Tamburello wall – his beatified legend only just beginning to shine. Prost, already in retirement, simply… survived. The McCartney to Senna’s Lennon. He toyed with a comeback, but fatefully chose instead to buy a team. Ligier became Prost Grand Prix and for five seasons made his existence a near-constant misery. He openly admits it was the biggest mistake of his life.
Today, at 68, the man remains something of an enigma, a figure from a fast-vanishing Formula 1 world who’s somehow fallen out of tune, caught in the everlasting after-burn of Senna’s white heat legend. Even Prost’s low-key presence as a guiding hand at Alpine turned sour, cast adrift in 2022 by CEO Laurent Rossi who would eventually too be shunted out of the F1 frame.
And yet. This is still the man who won those 51 grands prix and four world championships, who set the benchmark that Senna himself (and all the rest) strove to match through a full decade and beyond. This is Alain friggin’ Prost for Chrissake! A racing demi-god who belongs among the all-time greats – and who should be universally revered. Yet you sense he’s not. Why? Is there a tarnish that’s set in? If so, what’s caused it? And does he care?
As we discover, Alain Prost absolutely does care how he’s remembered. In fact, he’s angry and hurt by how too many choose to frame him. It’s time he reclaims his own stor
