On this week #8: A masterclass from The Professor

Alain Marie Pascal Prost, also known as ‘The Professor', was born on this week 69 years ago. He is still one of the most successful Formula 1 drivers of all time, racking up four titles and 51 wins (a total only surpassed by Lewis Hamilton, Michael Schumacher, Max Verstappen, and Sebastian Vettel) yet France's sole world champion never quite inspired the same devoted following as many of his rivals.

Perhaps that was down to his intellectually detached approach to the sport, or his famous antagonism with the much-loved Ayrton Senna (a rift that was eventually healed before the Brazilian died in 1994). “My ideal is to take pole with the minimum effort and win the race at the slowest speed possible,” Prost once said: hardly the sort of thing that gets pulses racing.

Yet Prost's minimal effort and slowest speed was often faster than everyone else's maximum attack and his mechanical sympathy was legendary. This astonishing natural ability is what made him a role model for 2009 world champion Jenson Button, among many others.

Prost was intelligent enough to know that he couldn't rely on his talent alone, immense as it was, so he worked harder than his rivals and thought more analytically, in order to maximise every opportunity. The results were incredible.

Prost was perhaps only genuinely beaten by a team mate over the course of a full season once throughout his career – which was when Niki Lauda outscored him by a measly half-point in 1984. Of course, Ayrton Senna won the title when he and Prost were teammates at McLaren in 1988, but back then only the 11 best results were counted for the final total – and Prost actually outscored Senna by 11 points over the whole season, despite being finally classified second.

Had things worked out just a little bit differently, Prost could quite easily have been an eight-time world champion. On the four occasions he finished second in the world championship, it was never by more than three points, on three occasions. He lost the 1990 championship by the bigger margin of seven points (just five if you include dropped scores) – but only after Senna intentionally drove Prost's Ferrari off the road in Japan, in one of the biggest unpunished acts of aggression the sport has ever seen. Even Prost himself admitted in an interview earlier this year: “It sounds like a joke, but I'm completely under-rated…”

Perhaps the biggest mystery of Prost's career though was why Prost Grand Prix, the eponymous team he ran from 1997 to 2001, failed. On paper, Prost's computer-like brain allied to a reasonable budget should have delivered much more than the three podiums accumulated over five years. In practice, the project fell foul of French politics and mismanaged relationships: especially with Peugeot, who once refused to fire the cars up at Magny-Cours until they received a public apology for comments made by the Prost team about their engine's performance.

Prost himself described this at the time as the most disappointing experience of his career. Yet a similar history repeated itself as recently as 2022, after he acrimoniously left his non-executive role at Renault (which became Alpine in F1) following differences of opinion with the management.

For fans though, perhaps the biggest opportunity missed with Alain Prost was in 1996. Having retired after winning his final title in 1993, the Frenchman was in talks with compatriot Jean Todt two years later to re-join Ferrari as a back-up to Michael Schumacher, while Todt rebuilt the team. It very nearly happened, and the result would have arguably been the greatest F1 driver line-up seen since…Prost and Senna. And certainly, the most cerebrally tactical duo of drivers ever.

These days, as a grandfather aged nearly 70, Prost is as fit as always: he can still get into the same race overalls that he wore in his 20s and enjoys taking part in bicycle races in his spare time.

His son, Nico Prost, is also a racing driver, having successfully taken part at Le Mans (with a best finish of fourth overall in 2014) and Formula E, where he was third in the 2015-2016 championship.