Alain Prost: A Brief Biography
Alain Prost’s position as one of Formula One’s most celebrated drivers is unquestionable, yet in spite of his monumental accomplishments, the Frenchman’s legacy is one tarnished by frictions and disputes that dogged him throughout his career. Although Prost raised the championship trophy four times, he also left his teams on embittered terms an equal number of times. Although indisputably talented at converting the pressure on the race track into a victory, an assertion testified by his impressive 51 career triumphs, Prost was less adept at handling the many controversies that came to plague his career time and again. The Frenchman’s acrimonious rivalry with the legendary Ayrton Senna is perhaps the most vicious feud the history of Formula One has witnessed, “A bitter feud… [That] brought the best and worst in them both.” Remarkably however, only Michael Schumacher and Juan Manuel Fangio have lifted the champion’s trophy on more occasions than the mercurial Frenchman.
Born on February 24th, 1955, close to Saint Chamond in the Loire region of central France, Alain Prost was an energetic young boy who threw himself with vengeance into wrestling, roller skating and football, breaking his rather notably long nose on more than one occasion. An athletic young lad, Prost set his sights on a career as a gym instructor or a professional football player if his luck would allow. Yet, the young Frenchmen’s attention soon turned to go-karts, an appetite he was to discover at the age of 14 when he was holidaying at the French South with his family. The go-kart would immediately capture the sturdy teenager’s fascination, and the youthful enthusiasm rapidly evolved into a career choice as Alain Prost hastily established himself as a formidable talent in his country prior to his meteoric ascension onto the international stage.
In 1974, Prost discontinued school education to follow his dream of becoming a professional motor racer and made ends meet by tuning engines and marketing go-karts. His 1975 victory at the French senior kart championship would win him a season long drive with Formula Renault, where he would triumph twice before making a switch to Formula three. By the end of the 1978 and 1979 seasons, the young Frenchman’s trophy cabinet was burgeoning under the happy burden of both the French and European F3 championship titles, and not surprisingly, his dazzling performances had caught the attention of numerous Formula One bosses, all ready to add him to the payroll.
Choosing to use the McLaren side as a springboard in 1980, the aspiring young Frenchman experienced an injury blighted rookie year before walking out controversially on the two-year deal with his mentors to drive for Renault for the coming season. Regardless of the ill feeling generated by the switch, it was a move that was to pay dividends; he would record his first victory on the home ground at the 1981 French Grand Prix at Dijon. About triumphing with a French machine, on French soil, Prost remarked: “Before, you thought you could do it. Now you know you can.” Yet, this was only the beginning of what was to be Formula One’s most illustrious careers.
The ambitious Frenchman tenure with Renault would see him produce an impressive nine wins before coming to an unhappy end after spanning three seasons amidst the worsening relationship between the two sides. Prost then took his wife Anne-Marie and their son Nicolas to Switzerland to realign himself with former employers McLaren in 1984. The move proved to be a masterstroke, and in his highly successful-six year spell at the British-based team, Prost put on a series of stunning performances that eventually bagged him 30 race victories and three driving titles. Yet, this dominance was soon to be cut short by the emergence of a phenomenally talented teammate, Ayrton Senna, a Brazilian who had taken the racing world by storm. Thus began the epic Prost-Senna feud that ultimately carved out the path for Prost’s resentful exit to Ferrari for the 1990 season. It was Senna, his nemesis, who would controversially steal the title from beneath Prost’s nose at the season ending race in Japan at Suzuka, and the subsequent years saw the Frenchman’s influence over the sport waning under the shadow of Ayrton Senna’s burgeoning dominance. The French “Professor” finally decided to hang the driving gloves for good in 1993, explaining: “The sport has given me a lot but I decided the game wasn’t worth it anymore.”
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