F1 Legends - Alain Prost - 1080p - SDTV Transcode - [[OptimusPr1me]]

Four World Championships, 51 wins, and a podium strike rate of better than one in two shows just how consistent Alain Prost proved to be over his 13 years in the sport. That's why he fully deserves his place among the elite.


A star of the Renault-backed French junior formulae in the late 1970s, he made his F1 debut in 1980 with McLaren - where he would return later in the decade to enjoy huge success - but his initial race-winning exploits came with Renault's works team. Fittingly his maiden win came in France at Dijon in 1981, the first of nine victories in his three years driving for the manufacturer which saw him finish as runner-up in the championship in his final season.



Prost's return to McLaren came in 1984 and he would again just miss out on a first title, this time to hugely experienced team-mate Niki Lauda, with the difference between master and apprentice an agonising half a point - despite winning Prost seven times to the veteran Austrian's five.



He would only have to wait 12 months for that maiden crown, however, as the then 30-year-old conclusively overcame his triple World Champion team-mate this time with five wins, including Monaco, Silverstone and Monza no less.

While that 1985 maiden crown was wrapped up with two rounds to spare, securing back-to-back championships a year later was a rather more tense - and famous - affair. Heading into the Adelaide season finale trailing Nigel Mansell, and only just ahead of the other Williams of Nelson Piquet, Prost looked set to miss out as the Englishman led the race. However, when Mansell's tyre blew, Williams pitted Piquet as a safety precaution, leaving Prost as a double World Champion.

F1's new standard-bearer would be joined by the prodigious Ayrton Senna in McLaren's line-up for 1988 and, as it turned out, the touch paper had been lit on arguably F1's most explosive team-mate pairing of all time.

Despite being the Woking squad's established star, the younger Senna beat him to the title in that first season together despite Prost taking seven wins. The Brazilian would invariably have the edge in qualifying but Prost more often than not came into his own over the longer race distances thanks to some canny tactics. Indeed, he duly edged the battle in 1989, although he clinched his third drivers' crown in controversial fashion as he collided with the oncoming Senna at the chicane. Senna did go on to take the chequered flag, but was later disqualified for cutting the chicane after his incident with Prost.


With tensions between the pair having by now grown increasingly strained, Prost jumped ship to Ferrari to take on Senna from the outside and the championship again came down to a head-to-head duel in the penultimate round at Suzuka. This time the red mist came down on Senna who unceremoniously punted his arch rival off after being beaten into the first corner, putting the title out of Prost's reach.



The pair's battles would never reach quite the same intensity again; Prost failing to win a race for the first time since his debut season during a tumultuous 1991 at Ferrari which eventually saw him fired for likening the handling of the 643 to worse than that of a "truck".



There was still one Drivers' Championship still to win, however. After taking a year off, Prost joined World Champions Williams alongside an inexperienced Damon Hill for 1993 and enjoyed a relative cruise to his fourth title. He won another seven races to take his overall F1 victory total to 51, a record tally that stood for eight years until Michael Schumacher surpassed it.

Later in the decade Prost returned to front-line F1 involvement as a team owner after buying the long-established Ligier squad and renaming it after himself. Although initial results with countryman Olivier Panis were promising, the team gradually began to fall down the grid and, amid spiraling debts, went bust in early 2002.

That episode may have tarnished Prost's reputation as a team owner, but as a driver no one could ever question his world-class abilities.

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