Grand Prix Entries: 202
Grand Prix Wins: 51
Pole Positions: 33
Nationality: French
Alain Marie Pascal Prost was born in February 24, 1955, in Saint Chamont in France. He is a French four-time world champion. Only Juan Manuel Fangio and Michael Schumacher have won more championships than him in formula one. From 1987 till 2001 Prost held the record of most Grand Prix victories, with a total of 51 victories, until Michael Schumacher broke that record. Prost won several kart championships in his early age. In 1978 and 1979 he won both the French and the European F3 championships. McLaren offered him a seat in 1979, as a third driver for the team. He surprised the team by declining the offer. Finally he signed a contract with McLaren in 1980, as a driver.
In his debut in Argentina he finished in sixth place and scored one point, something that is achieved by only a few drivers in their debut race. He scored four more points that season finishing 15th in the championship that year and equalling Emerson Fittipaldi's points that year. Prost had also some accidents, one of them causing him to brake his wrist and an other one caused him a concussion. Though he had a contract with McLaren for two more years, he left the team to join Renault saying that the felt the team blamed him for some of the accidents.
Prost raced with Renault alongside the also French Rene Arnoux, in 1981. He did not finish his first two Grand Prix due to collisions he had with Andrea de Cesaris. He had his first podium finish in Argentina. He retired in the next four races before he took his first formula one victory at his home Grand Prix in France. He won two more races that season and took a pole position in Netherlands. He finished fifth in the drivers championship just seven points behind champion Nelson Piquet.
In 1982 Prost won the first two races of the season but he retired from seven races in that season. He improved his championship position by finishing fourth in it. The relationship between Rene Arnoux and Alain Prost got to a very bad point after the French Grand Prix. In 1983 Rene Arnoux left Renault and Eddie Cheever replaced him as Prost's teammate. Prost won four more Grand Prix these year and finished second in the championship, just two points behind champion Nelson Piquet.
Prost joined McLaren team in 1984, as Niki Lauda's teammate. Although Prost won seven races that season and Lauda won five, Prost lost the championship to Lauda by only half a point. In 1985 Prost became the first French formula one world champion. Prost finished the season 23 points ahead of the second driver in the championship Michele Alboreto.
In 1986 Lauda retired and he was replaced by Keke Rosberg. Prost successfully defended his title that season. Mensell and Piquet were also very competitive as all three of them went to the final race fighting for the championship. All seemed like Prost would finish third in the championship behind Mansell and Piquet, but after Mansell had a tyre failure and crashed out the Williams team called his teammate, Piquet, for a pit stop to change tyres as a safety precaution. This helped Prost win the race and the championship once more.
In 1987 Keke Rosberg retired, and Stefan Johansson replaced him in the McLaren team. Prost challenged Piquet and Mansell almost till the end, winning three races and breaking Jackie Stewart's record of most wins, after he took his 28th victory. The Brazilian Grand Prix should be mentioned as it surely was one of his best races. The Williams were dominant in the qualifying and Prost started his race at fifth place. He had worked on his race set-up, and with everyone else going for a high-downforce set-up, Prost went the other direction. With only one stop he won the race by 40 seconds. He finished the championship in fourth place 30 points behind champion Nelson Piquet.
In 1988 Honda stopped supplying Williams with engines and started supplying McLaren. The McLaren team was dominant this season, winning 15 out of 16 races. Prost won seven of them and outscored his new teammate Ayrton Senna by eleven points despite the fact that Senna had one victory more than Prost. However only the 11 best results counted for the championship title and Senna won the title. This began the rivalry between the two of the sport's greatest drivers.
In 1989 the Prost-Senna relationship got even worse as the controversy turned into hatred. At the Japanese Grand Prix, Senna made his move to pass Prost in a chicane at the end of lap 46. Prost turned into Senna's path and they were both out of the track. The marshals pushed Senna's McLaren back in the track. He had to pit because the front of the car was in a bad condition and had to be fixed. But he rejoined the race just five seconds behind Alessandro Nannini. On lap fifty he passed Nannini to take the lead and he finally won the race. But FIA disqualified Senna for missing he chicane. McLaren appealed but the FIA not only did not accept the appeal but fined Senna $100,000 and gave him a suspended six month ban. So in the end Prost won the championship instead of Senna, although many people thought this was totally unfair.
The next season Prost left McLaren to join Ferrari. He won five races that year for Ferrari. Two of them he made the Ferrari 1-2 with teammate Nigel Mansell. The championship was taken to the last race once again. At the first corner Senna actually admitted that he turned his car into Prost's taking them both out of the race, sealing the title in his favour. Prost said that what Senna did was disgusting, but may be he forgot that he did the exact same thing the previous season. Senna won the title that year with Prost being seven points behind.
In 1991 Ferrari signed Jean Alesi as Nigel Mansell's replacement. Prost won no races that year. He just got to the podium five times. He criticised the team for that actually describing the car as “a truck”. He was fired for that just before the Australian Grand Prix and he was replaced by Gianni Morbidelli. In 1992 Prost had a bad year dominated by Nigel Mansell in Williams. When Nigel Mansell heard that Prost is going to be his teammate again in 1993, he left Williams to race in the CART series. Prost took his fourth championship and his last as he retired after that.
Alain Prost competed in 202 races and won 51 of them. He had 106 podium finishes and won 4 world championship titles. He gathered 768,5 championship points in his career, winning 33 pole postitons and setting 41 fastest laps.
Credits: F1reviews.com
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