THE PROFESSOR
HE stands all of 165cm, but Alain Prost has cast a mighty shadow over the mightiest motorsport category of them all, Formula One, for the best part of 40 years.
The Frenchman, 64, remains involved in the sport he loves in an advisory capacity with Renault, and while he drove for what was, in effect, the French national team in the early 1980s, it was his exploits later that decade with McLaren, and into the ’90s with Ferrari and Williams, that saw him become, by his retirement, the biggest name in F1’s history books.
Prost became the most successful driver in the sport’s history when he won his 28th Grand Prix in Portugal for McLaren in 1987, breaking Jackie Stewart’s benchmark. By the time he was done in 1993, bowing out after winning the world championship for Williams, Prost had won 51 Grands Prix and annexed four titles; 26 years later, only Michael Schumacher (91 wins), Lewis Hamilton (73) and Sebastian Vettel (52) have won more races, and only Schumacher (seven world titles), along with Juan Manuel Fangio and Hamilton (five titles apiece), have stood atop the motorsport world more.
No story about Prost is complete without referencing his links to the late, great, which introduced a new legion of F1 fans to high-stakes sport like we rarely see it.
