Alain Marie Pascal Prost,
OBE, Chevalier de la LĂ©gion
d'honneur (born 24 February 1955 in Lorette, Loire
) is a French racing
driver. A four-time Formula One Drivers' Champion Prost won
more titles than any driver save
Juan
Manuel Fangio and
Michael
Schumacher. From 1987 until 2001 Prost held the record for most
Grand Prix victories.
Schumacher surpassed Prost's total of 51 victories at the
2001 Belgian Grand Prix. In 1999,
Prost received the
World Sports Awards of the Century in
the motor sport category along all-time greats like
Pele,
Ali,
Lewis and
Graf.
Prost discovered
karting at the age of
14 during a family holiday.
He progressed through motor sport's junior
ranks, winning the French and European Formula Three championships, before joining
the McLaren
Formula One
team in 1980 at the age of
25. He finished in the points on his Formula One
debut and took his first race victory at his home Grand Prix in
France a year later, while he was driving for Renault's factory team
.
During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Prost formed a fierce
rivalry with
Ayrton Senna,
Nelson Piquet and
Nigel Mansell. In 1986, at the last race of
the season, he managed to pip Mansell and Piquet of
Williams to the title. Senna joined Prost at
McLaren in 1988 and the two had a series of controversial clashes,
including a collision at the
1989 Japanese Grand Prix that gave
Prost his third Drivers' Championship. A year later at the same
venue they collided again, but this time Prost, driving for
Ferrari, lost out. Before the end
of a winless 1991 season Prost was fired by Ferrari for his public
criticism of the team. After a
sabbatical
in 1992, Prost joined the
Williams team,
prompting reigning drivers' champion Mansell to leave for
CART. With a competitive car, Prost won the
1993 championship but he retired at
the end of the year rather than be teammates with Senna who signed
for 1994.
In 1997, Prost took over the French
Ligier team, running it as
Prost Grand Prix until it went bankrupt in
2001. He currently competes in the
Andros
Trophy, which is an
ice racing
championship.
Prost employed a smooth, relaxed style behind the wheel,
deliberately modeling himself on personal heroes like
Jackie Stewart and
Jim
Clark. He was nicknamed 'The Professor' for his intellectual
approach to competition. Skilled at setting up his car for race
conditions, Prost would often conserve his brakes and tyres early
on in a race, leaving them fresher for a challenge at the end of
the race.
Motor sport journalist
Denis
Jenkinson described Prost as "a very warm and uncomplicated man
who doesn't rely on passion or inspiration. Nor does he indulge in
showmanship or bullshit. He is capable of a level of mental
discipline beyond the comprehension of most people."
Personal and early life
Alain
Prost was born near Saint-Chamond
, in the département
of Loire
in France
to André
Prost and Marie-Rose Karatchian, born in France of Armenian descent. Prost had one younger
brother called Daniel, who died of
cancer in
September 1986. Although short, Prost was an active, athletic
child, who enthusiastically took part in diverse sports, including
wrestling,
roller skating and
football. In doing so he broke his nose
several times. He considered careers as a gym instructor or a
professional footballer before he discovered
kart racing at the age of 14 while on a family
holiday. This new sport quickly became his career of choice.
Prost is married to Anne-Marie (born 14 February 1955). They have
two sons,
Nicolas (born 18 October
1981) and Sacha Prost (born 30 May 1990). Prost also has a
daughter, Victoria. As of 2008, Nicolas races in the Euroseries
3000 championship for the Elk Motorsport team. Prost lived in his
hometown, Saint-Chamond, until he and his Renault team fell out in
the early 1980s.
In April 1983 the Prost family moved to
Sainte-Croix, Switzerland
and shortly after to Yens, Switzerland. They lived there until November 1999, when
they moved to Nyon
in the same
country.
Driving career
Pre-Formula One
Prost won several karting championships in his teens. In 1974 he
left school to become a full-time racer, supporting himself by
tuning engines and becoming a kart distributor. His prize for
winning the 1975 French senior karting championship was a season in
French
Formula Renault, a category
in which he won the title and all but one race in 1976.
Prost went on to win the 1977 Formula Renault European championship
before moving up to
Formula Three (F3)
in 1978. In 1979 he won both the French and European F3
championships, by which time he was on the shopping lists of
several Formula One teams.
After carefully considering his options, he
chose to sign with McLaren for 1980. He surprised the
British team by declining their offer of a race drive in a third
car at the final race of the
1979 season — reasoning that the
token effort would benefit neither him or the team.
Formula One
1980: McLaren
Related article: McLaren
Prost
began his career with McLaren in 1980 alongside Ulsterman John Watson. On his debut
in
Argentina he finished
in sixth place earning one point, something achieved by only a
handful of drivers. Prost added four more points to his tally
during the season, scoring points in
Brazil,
Britain and the
Netherlands. Prost finished the year
15th in the drivers' championship, equalling points with former
world champion
Emerson
Fittipaldi. Despite the encouraging debut season, Prost had
several accidents, breaking his wrist in one of them and suffering
a
concussion in another.
At the
end of the season, despite having two years remaining on his
contract, he left McLaren and signed with Renault.
Prost has said that he left because of the large number of
breakages on the car and because he felt the team blamed him for
some of the accidents.
1981–1983: Renault
Related article: Renault F1
- 1981
Prost was partnered with fellow Frenchman
René Arnoux for
1981. Motor sports author
Nigel Roebuck reports that there were problems
between Prost and Arnoux from the start of the season, Prost being
immediately quicker than his more experienced teammate. He did not
finish the first two Grands Prix, due to collisions with
Andrea de Cesaris in
Long Beach and
Siegfried Stohr in
Jacarepaguá, but scored his first
podium finish in
Argentina. He retired in the next
four races before winning his first Formula One race at his home
Grand Prix in France, finishing two seconds ahead of his old
teammate John Watson. For Prost, his debut victory was memorable
mostly for the change it made in his mindset. "Before, you thought
you could do it," he said. "Now you know you can." Prost won two
more races during the season, as well as his first
pole position in
Germany and finished fifth in the
drivers' championship, seven points behind champion
Nelson Piquet.
- 1982
Prost won the first two Grands Prix of the
1982 season in
South Africa and
Brazil. He finished in the points
on four other occasions, but did not win again. Despite retiring
from seven races, Prost improved on his drivers' championship
position, finishing in fourth, but with nine fewer points than the
previous year. His relationship with Arnoux deteriorated further
after the
French Grand Prix.
Prost believes that Arnoux, who won the race, went back on a
pre-race agreement to support Prost during the race. His
relationship with the French media was also poor. He has since
commented that "When I went to Renault the journalists wrote good
things about me, but by 1982 I had become the bad guy. I think, to
be honest, I had made the mistake of winning! The French don't
really like winners."
- 1983
Arnoux
left Renault in 1983, and
American
Eddie Cheever replaced
him as Prost's partner. Prost earned a further four
victories for Renault during the season and finished second in the
drivers' championship, two points behind Nelson Piquet. Piquet and
the
Brabham team overhauled Prost and
Renault in the last few races of the season. Prost, who felt the
team had been too conservative in developing the car, found himself
increasingly at odds with Renault's management, who made him the
scapegoat for
failing to win a championship. In addition to that, the French fans
recalled the bitter fight that had caused their favourite, Arnoux,
to leave the team. Renault fired Prost only two days after the last
race of the season. He re-signed for McLaren for the 1984 season
within days and moved his family home to Switzerland.
1984–1989: McLaren
- 1984
The Frenchman joined double world champion
Niki Lauda at McLaren in
1984, driving the
McLaren MP4/2 using
TAG-Porsche engines. He lost the
world championship to Lauda in the final race by half a point,
despite winning seven races to Lauda's five. The half point came
from the
Monaco Grand Prix,
where Prost had been leading, albeit with
Ayrton Senna and
Stefan Bellof closing on him rapidly, when
officials stopped the race at half distance due to heavy rain.
Under Formula One regulations, Prost received only half of the nine
points normally awarded for a victory.
- 1985
In
1985 Prost became the
first French Formula One
World Champion.
He won five of the sixteen Grands Prix during the season. He had
also won the
San Marino Grand
Prix, but was disqualified after his car was found to be 2kg
underweight in post-race
scrutineering.
Prost finished 20 points ahead of his closest rival,
Michele Alboreto. Prost's performance in
1985 earned him the
LĂ©gion
d'honneur distinction in France.
- 1986
Niki Lauda retired in
1986,
and was replaced at McLaren by
1982 Champion
Keke Rosberg. Prost successfully defended his
title, despite his car struggling against the
Honda-powered Williams cars driven by Nelson
Piquet and
Nigel Mansell. Until the
latter stages of the final race of the 1986 season, the
Australian Grand Prix, Prost
appeared set to finish second in the Championship, behind Mansell.
Prost had the same amount of wins as Piquet, but he had four second
places to Piquet's three, thus placing him second before the final
race. While running third behind Piquet and Prost (all he needed to
win the title), Mansell suffered a
tyre failure
at high speed, and crashed out. The
Williams team called his teammate Piquet in to
change tyres as a safety precaution, handing the race victory — and
Championship — to Prost, who had already
pitted. Another memorable race that year for Prost
was at the
San Marino Grand
Prix. He was cruising to victory when his car began to run out
of fuel three corners from the chequered flag. Frantically weaving
the car back and forth to slosh the last drops of fuel into the
pickup, he managed to keep it running just long enough to creep
over the line and win the race. It happened again at the
German Grand Prix: while running in
fourth position, Prost's car ran out of fuel on the finishing
straight of the last lap. Instead of retiring, Prost got out of his
car and tried to push it to the finish, to great applause from the
crowd. The finish line was too far, though, and he never reached
it. He was classified sixth in the race, as the seventh-placed car
was a lap behind.
- 1987
With Rosberg retiring from Formula One for the
1987 season,
Stefan Johansson filled the McLaren seat
alongside Prost thanks to his
Marlboro
connections. Even though Prost was driving a by now outclassed
McLaren, he challenged Piquet and Mansell almost until the end,
winning three races and breaking
Jackie
Stewart's record for race victories by winning for the 28th
time. Prost considers the
Brazilian Grand Prix as his best
and most rewarding race ever. The Williams-Hondas had been dominant
during qualifying, and Prost started fifth on the grid. He had
worked on his race set-up, and with everyone else going for a
high-downforce set-up, the Frenchman went the other way. The set-up
meant less tyre wear, thanks to slower speeds in the corners while
going fast down the straights. Only one stop was necessary, and
Prost won the race by 40 seconds.
Prost finished the 1987 season in fourth place, 30 points behind
champion Nelson Piquet.
- 1988
Despite Nelson Piquet winning the Drivers' Championship and
Williams winning the Constructors' Championship, Honda decided not
to supply Williams with their engines and instead supplied the
McLaren team for
1988. Prost
had convinced
Ron Dennis to sign Senna to
a three-year contract, which played a role in luring Honda.
However, this began the rivalry that pushed two of the sport's
greatest drivers to unprecedented heights of success and
controversy. McLaren-Honda dominated the season, winning 15 out of
16 races. Prost won seven and outscored his new teammate
Ayrton Senna by 11 points, despite Senna
winning one more race than Prost. However, only the 11 best results
from the season counted toward the championship total, and this
gave Senna the title by three points. Prost went on to be a
proponent of essentially the 90's scoring system - all results
counting to the final results with the winner scoring 10, not 9,
points.
- 1989
McLaren's domination continued throughout
1989, and the Prost-Senna struggle
for supremacy put them on a collision course. Mutual admiration
turned to all-out hatred, with the Frenchman accusing his Brazilian
teammate of "
dangerous driving" and of receiving more than
a fair share of attention from both McLaren and Honda. Their
embittered season ended as many pundits had feared. In the
Japanese Grand Prix at the end of
lap 46, Senna made his move at the
chicane.
Prost turned into his teammate's path. The two interlocked McLarens
slid up the chicane escape road. Prost, thinking the World
Championship was over, climbed out of his car. To separate the
cars, the
marshals pushed
Senna's McLaren backwards onto the track. This left it in a
dangerous position, so they pushed it forwards again. As they did
so, Senna
bump-started the engine. He
drove through the chicane and rejoined. The nose of his car was
damaged and he had to pit, but he rejoined only five seconds behind
Alessandro Nannini. On lap 50,
Ayrton sliced past Nannini at the chicane to take the lead and won
the race. But it was Nannini who appeared on the podium. Race
officials had excluded Senna for missing the chicane. McLaren
appealed the decision, but the FIA Court of Appeal not only upheld
the decision but fined Senna US$100,000 and gave him a suspended
six-month ban. Thus Prost clinched his third driving title in
controversial circumstances.
However, Prost had the firm belief that Honda and
Ron Dennis viewed Senna as the future of the
team. By Suzuka, Prost recalled that he had one car with maybe four
or five mechanics, while his teammate had two cars and 20 people
around him. As a result, Prost announced in July 1989 that he would
resign from McLaren and the Frenchman quickly joined his new
employers:
Ferrari.
1990–1991: Ferrari
Related article: Scuderia
Ferrari
- 1990
The Frenchman replaced
Gerhard Berger
at Ferrari and was partnered with Britain's
Nigel Mansell for
1990. As reigning world champion,
Prost took over as the team's lead driver and was said to have
played on Mansell's
inferiority
complex. Mansell recalls one incident where at the
1990 British Grand Prix, the car he
drove didn't handle the same as in the previous race where had
taken pole position, and later found out from team mechanics that
Prost saw Mansell as having a superior car and had them swapped
without Mansell knowing. Prost won five races for Ferrari that
year, in
Brazil,
Mexico,
France,
Britain and
Spain. Notable among these was the
Mexican Grand Prix, where he won after starting in 13th position.
In both the Mexican and Spanish races, he led Mansell to Ferrari
1-2 finishes. The championship once again came to the penultimate
round of the season in
Japan with Prost trailing his
McLaren adversary, Ayrton Senna, by nine points. As in 1989, a
controversial collision between the two settled the race. At the
first corner Senna, as he later admitted, intentionally drove his
race car into Prost's, taking them both out of the race and sealing
the title in his favour. "What he did was disgusting," Prost said.
"He is a man without value." Prost finished the season seven points
behind Senna, and his Ferrari team were runners-up to
McLaren.
- 1991
In
1991, Mansell left the
Scuderia, due to his unstable relationship with Prost, to join his
previous employers, Williams. Mansell's replacement was Frenchman
Jean Alesi, who had been impressive
during the previous two years at
Tyrrell. Ferrari had entered a downturn,
partially as their famous V12 engine was no longer competitive
against the smaller, lighter and more fuel efficient V10s of their
competitors. The Ferrari chassis, despite a major revision by the
French Grand Prix (F-643) was also not up to the level of the
McLaren and the Williams models.Prost won no races, only getting
onto the podium five times. He took it out on the Italian team,
publicly criticising them (he famously described his car as
handling worse than "a truck"), and was fired prior to the end of
the season, right before the
Australian Grand Prix.
Prost was
replaced by Italian
Gianni
Morbidelli.
1993: Williams
Related article: WilliamsF1
Prost
went onto a sabbatical year in
1992, which was dominated by
Nigel Mansell in a Williams-Renault. After hearing that Prost would be his
teammate again in 1993, Mansell left Williams to race in the
CART series. The Frenchman had a clause in
his contract which prevented rival
Ayrton
Senna from joining the team that year. Prost was part of a
new-look driver line-up at Williams, with test driver
Damon Hill coming in to replace
Riccardo Patrese, who had left to join
Benetton.
Prost won
his fourth, and final, title, but in a year where he was regularly
challenged by teammate Hill, and Ayrton
Senna driving an inferior McLaren.
Shortly before the
Portuguese
Grand Prix in October 1993, Prost announced he would not defend
his world title, as the clause in the Frenchman's contract did not
extend to 1994 and Senna would be able to join Williams for the
upcoming season, and instead opted to retire as the most successful
driver in the sport's history — a record which stood for almost a
decade. On the podium in
Adelaide in 1993, Prost's last
race, he and Senna embraced, and it was as if — now that Prost was
no longer a rival — Senna saw no reason for any more hostility.
Prost was surprised by the gesture. Prost's performances earned him
an
OBE.
German
Michael Schumacher broke Prost's record
of 51 Grand Prix wins during the 2001 season. However, the
Frenchman still holds the records for the most Grand Prix starts in
turbo powered cars (126), and most
wins at home Grand Prix (six at the French Grand Prix
). He is also thus far the most recent
Frenchman to win his home Grand Prix.
Rivalry with Ayrton Senna
Prost's battles with
Ayrton Senna were
particularly notable.
The rivalry originated in 1988, when Senna joined Prost at the
McLaren team.
The most notable event during the season between the two occurred
during the
Portuguese Grand
Prix, where Senna tried to block Prost from taking the lead by
forcing the Frenchman to run close to the pitwall; Prost managed to
edge Senna outwards, taking the lead as they went into the first
corner but he remained angered by the Brazilian's dangerous
manoeuvre.
The rivalry intensified after the
1989 San Marino Grand Prix, where
the two drivers had an agreement that neither would get in each
other's way to the first corner (
cf. 1982 San Marino Grand Prix). At
the start, Senna got away in the lead and Prost followed him
through the first corner without getting in Senna's way.
Gerhard Berger's crash on lap four stopped
the race. At the restart, it was Prost this time that got away the
better of the two; but Senna forced his way past Prost in the first
corner, breaking the pair's agreement at the start of the race,
leaving the Frenchman furious with Senna. Prost himself was angered
by McLaren apparently favouring Senna, so he announced his signing
with Ferrari during midseason.
The rivalry then reached its peak at the end of 1989, when the
title was to be decided between Senna and Prost at
Suzuka. The two McLarens collided
at a chicane when Prost blocked an attempted pass by Senna. Prost
walked away while Senna returned to the track by illegally cutting
the chicane. Though he went on to win the race, the manœuvre meant
that the result was disqualified. After an unsuccessful appeal by
McLaren, the Brazilian received a further US$100,000 fine and a six
month suspension, leading Senna to accuse FIA president
Jean-Marie Balestre of favoring the
Frenchman. Senna's disqualification meant that it was
mathematically impossible for him to overhaul Prost's points total,
and so the 1989 Championship went to the Frenchman. There has been
much debate as to whether Prost intentionally ran into Senna,
whether Senna was overambitious in his overtaking manoeuver, or
whether the collision was simply a racing incident between two
team-mates who were embittered with each other.
1990 saw the two drivers
collide again. Senna led Prost, now in a
Ferrari, in the world drivers'
championship. Prost had qualified second for the penultimate race
of the season in Suzuka,
Japan, and Senna was on pole. Prior
to the race Senna had complained that his side of the grid was
dirty, meaning he would get less grip and therefore a slower start
compared to Prost who was on the clean side of the grid. The
Brazilian's appeal was rejected. At the start of the race, Prost
got the better start of the two; but whilst braking for the first
corner, Senna refused to back off and collided with Prost at ,
clinching the title for the Brazilian. Prost almost retired from
the sport, saying "What he did was disgusting. He is a man without
value." A year later, Senna admitted that the move was
premeditated, in retaliation for Prost taking the two out of the
race at the chicane on the same course the previous year when in a
similar position.
There was one controversial incident in
1991, Prost's inferior Ferrari was
unable to put up a challenge regularly to Senna's frontrunning
McLaren. At the German Grand Prix Prost battled Senna for 4th
place, however he felt Senna defended too aggressively and forced
Prost to take avoiding action by using the escape road. Prost
stalled his car rejoining the race. Ironically, Senna ran out of
fuel on the last lap at the very same point.
The Frenchman took a sabbatical in
1992 while the Brazilian struggled
as McLaren was no longer competitive with Williams. When Prost
announced his signing with Williams for the upcoming 1993 season,
Senna had wanted join that team too, as they were the top team.
However,
Prost had a clause in his contract forbidding the Brazilian as a
teammate, and an infuriated Senna called the Frenchman a coward
during a press conference at Estoril
.
During the
1993 season,
Prost and Senna continued their on-track rivalry. Prost was
escorted by police to the Interlagos circuit for the
1993 Brazilian Grand Prix due to
the hostility of Brazilians towards him. The two continued their
on-track battles at
Silverstone where Senna aggressively
defended his position against Prost. At Prost's last Grand Prix,
the
1993 Australian Grand
Prix, he was pulled up by Senna onto the top step of the podium
for an embrace.
On 1 May 1994, Ayrton Senna
was
killed during the
San
Marino Grand Prix. Prost was a
pallbearer at the Brazilian's funeral. Speaking
four years after the Brazilian's death, Prost told
Nigel Roebuck that he had "always refused to
speak about him." When Senna died, Prost stated that "a part of
himself had died also", because their careers had been so bound
together. Senna had also felt the same when Prost had retired at
the end of 1993, when he admitted to a close friend that he had
realised how much of his motivation had come from fighting with
Prost.
Only a couple of days before his death, when
filming an in-car lap of Imola for French television channel
TF1
, he greeted Prost, by then a pundit on the channel:
"I'd like to welcome back my friend Alain — we all miss
you...'. Prost said that he was touched by that.
Comparison with team-mates
During the course of his career, season-by-season Prost beat nearly
all his team-mates on total points, including five World Champions.
The only exceptions were in 1984 when Niki Lauda won by half a
point, and in Prost's first F1 season, when he was beaten by John
Watson. In 1988, although Prost scored more points in total than
his team-mate Ayrton Senna, only the best eleven of sixteen results
counted towards the championship, which Senna won.
Helmet
Alain Prost's racing overalls for the
1993 season.
Prost uses a helmet design based on the three colours of the
French flag, those being blue, white
and red, along with his name along the side. During his early
career however, Prost used a basic design of white all over with
some blue detail around the visor. During Prost's time at Renault,
he used more blue details, most notably around the rear of his
helmet. Prost kept the similar design for his second spell at
McLaren, the only variant being the change in sponsor logos.
Prost's helmet changed when he moved to Ferrari, as his helmet now
had the blue detail around the front, surrounding the visor. The
helmet design did not change when Prost moved to Williams; like his
move from Renault to McLaren in 1984, the only change to his helmet
was the change in sponsor logos.
Prost's original inspiration for the shape of the blue around his
visor was a take on the Ecole de Pilotage Elf-Winfield logo. He
graduated from the famed racing academy and also won the
prestigious "Pilot Elf" competition which helped him and many other
aspiring drivers into the junior French formulas.
The
sponsors on Prost's helmet have been Boss,
Canon, Elf, Ferrari
, Honda (Acura at American Grands Prix), KicKers, Marlboro, Michelin, Moët,
Sega and its character Sonic the Hedgehog, Segafredo
Zanetti and Renault.
Later life
During
1994 and 1995, Prost worked as TV pundit for the French TV channel
TF1. He also worked for
Renault as a
PR man.
Prost
went back to his old team McLaren, working as
a technical advisor; he also competed in the L'Etape du Tour, which is a bicycle race
held in France. More than 5000 other riders took part; Prost
himself finished 12th in his category, 42nd overall.
Prost Grand Prix
During 1989 Prost began to contemplate starting his own team, as
his relationship with his McLaren teammate, Ayrton Senna, had
turned sour. Prost and
John Barnard,
formerly chief designer at McLaren, came close to founding a team
in 1990; but a lack of sponsorship meant that this was not
possible, so Prost moved to Ferrari. After falling out with the
Italian team at the end of 1991, Prost found himself without a
drive for 1992; after the failure of extensive negotiations with
Guy Ligier about buying his
Ligier team, Prost decided to join Williams
for 1993. In 1995, when Prost was working for Renault, people began
to assume that a Prost-Renault team would be formed in the near
future. Renault refused Prost's request to supply engines for his
team, ending the speculation.
Prost Grand Prix, 1998
On 13 February 1997, Prost bought the Ligier team from
Flavio Briatore and renamed it "
Prost
Grand Prix". The day after he bought the team, Prost signed a
three-year deal with French car manufacturer
Peugeot, who would supply the team with engines for
the
1998 season through the
2000 season.
For the team's first
season, Prost kept one of Ligier's 1996 drivers, Olivier Panis, who had won the Monaco Grand Prix the previous year;
Japanese
driver Shinji Nakano
was signed to partner Panis. The team raced with the
Mugen-Honda engines used by Ligier the
previous season. Things looked promising at the start of the
season, as the team picked up two points on its Grand Prix debut in
Australia when Olivier
Panis finished fifth. The team scored a further 13 points before
Panis broke his leg in an accident during the
Canadian Grand Prix. He was
replaced by
Minardi's
Jarno Trulli. From there, things started to go
downhill slightly, the team scored only five points during Panis'
recovery. The Frenchman came back at the end of the season to race
the final three Grand Prix. Prost GP finished sixth in the
constructors' championship in its first season, with 21
points.
Prost became the president of Prost Grand Prix at the start of
1998. With Peugeot supplying
the engines for Prost GP, Mugen-Honda decided to supply the
Jordan team. Prost GP scored a
single point during the season, Jarno Trulli finishing sixth in
Belgium.
1999 was a crucial year for
Prost GP.Jean-Michel Desnoues; Patrick Camus & Jean-Marc Loubat
Formula 1 99 . Queen Anne Press. ISBN 1-85291-606-0 Prost
hired
John Barnard as a technical
consultant, Barnard's B3 Technologies company helping Loic Bigois
and the design of the AP02. Panis and Trulli agreed to stay on with
the team for the season. While the car did not prove to be a major
concern, the Peugeot engine proved to be heavy and
unreliable.
Peugeot's
final year as Prost's engine supplier in 2000 saw some optimism, Prost hiring
his 1991 Ferrari team mate Jean Alesi to
drive the lead car and German Nick Heidfeld, who had won the 1999 Formula 3000 championship, to
partner him. The season proved to be yet another disastrous
one, with newly hired technical director Alan Jenkins fired midway
through the year. Prost restructured the team, hiring Joan
Villadelprat as the managing director and replacing Jenkins with
Henri Durand as the team's new technical director.
2001 saw some much needed optimism
for the team as Ferrari agreed to be the team's engine supplier for the
season, the team now moving in the right direction. But the
money ran out at the start of the
2002 season and Prost was out of
business, leaving debts of around $30 million.
After Prost Grand Prix
During 2002, Prost spent time with his family and competed in eight
bicycle races, finishing third in the
Granite – Mont
Lozère. The Frenchman raced in the
Andros ice race series in 2003, finishing
second in the championship behind
Yvan
Muller; he also became an Ambassador for
Uniroyal, a position he would keep until May
2006.
Prost continued to compete in the Andros Trophy, winning the title
with Toyota in 2006/07 and 2007/08.
Complete Formula One results
(
key) (Races in
bold indicate pole position, races in
italics indicate fastest lap)
Further reading
- Alan Henry, Alain Prost (Champion Series) ISBN
0-946132-30-5
- Pierre MĂ©nard and Jacques Vassal, Alain Prost: The Science
of Racing (Formula 1 Legends S.) ISBN 2-84707-062-1
Footnotes
References
All Formula One race and championship
results are taken from:
External links
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