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Formula One World Championship career:Active years: 1980–1991, 1993
Teams: McLaren, Renault, Ferrari, Williams
Races: 202 (199 starts)
Championships: 4 (1985, 1986, 1989, 1993)
Wins: 51
Podium finishes: 106
Career points: 768.5 (798.5)[1]
Pole positions: 33
Fastest laps: 41
First race: 1980 Argentine Grand Prix
First win: 1981 French Grand Prix
Last win: 1993 German Grand Prix
Last race: 1993 Australian Grand Prix
Alain Marie Pascal Prost, OBE (born 24 February 1955) is a French racing driver. He retired from Grand Prix racing at the end of 1993 after becoming Formula One World Champion for the fourth time. Only Juan Manuel Fangio and Michael Schumacher have won more Formula One World Drivers' Championship titles. 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 . Prost now races on ice in the Andros Trophy.
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 the Renault Factory team.
Prost employed a smooth, relaxed style behind the wheel, deliberately modelling 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. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Prost formed a fierce rivalry with Ayrton Senna, who joined him at McLaren in 1988. The two had a series of controversial races, 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. After a dismal 1991 and a sabbatical in 1992, Prost joined the Williams team, where he dominated the 1993 season before finally retiring at the end of the year. In 1997, Prost took over the French Ligier team, running it as Prost Grand Prix until it went bankrupt in 2001. In 2006, Prost started his fourth year in the Andros Trophy, which is an ice racing competition.
Alain 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. Prost was not happy with Senna's man,,uvre. 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. 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 and Senna returned to the track by illegally cutting the chicane — a man,,uvre that resulted in a disqualification after the race had finished. Prost admitted years later that he had knowingly not let Senna through despite Senna having the inside line at the chicane.
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 and Prost collided, forcing them both to retire and leaving Senna as champion. 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.After Prost returned for the 1993 season, he and Senna continued their 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 the Williams of Prost.On 1 May 1994, Ayrton Senna was killed at 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 Alain Prost. At Prost's last Grand Prix, the 1993 Australian Grand Prix, Senna pulled Prost up onto the top step of the podium for an embrace. 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.
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