Don Kennedy: Senna-Prost rivalry recalled

Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost begin to patch up their bitter rivalry on the podium in Adelaide in 1993. Photo / Don Kennedy

There have been some great driver rivalries since the official F1 world championship began in 1950.

The more notable ones include Juan Manuel Fangio and Stirling Moss, who were Mercedes teammates in 1954, Jim Clark and Graham Hill in the ‘60s, Niki Lauda and James Hunt in the ‘70s, Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna in the ‘80s and Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill in the ‘90s. In the millennium, Schumacher dominated for the first four years until Fernando Alonso took his crown in 2005 and 2006, but then he lost out to Sebastian Vettel for four years from 2010 on when they were respectively with Ferrari and Red Bull.

From 2014 through to 2020, we had the Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes-dominant era, albeit with a hiccup for Hamilton in 2016 when his teammate Nico Rosberg beat him in the championship. Hamilton, though, won six titles in that period to go with the first title he took in 2008 as a McLaren driver, and joined Schumacher as a seven–time champion. Hamilton seems desperate to make it eight, but the last two championships have gone the way of Red Bull driver Max Verstappen. In 2021, he had a battle with Hamilton that was controversial for some, decided on the last lap at Abu Dhabi when Verstappen passed Hamilton after FIA race director Michael Masi had allowed racing to resume for one lap following a safety car intervention.

Last year, Verstappen ran away with the title after taking 15 victories in a 23-race season. His teammate, Sergio Pérez, was only able to win two races by comparison, and was beaten for second place in the championship by Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc, who won three races. It is a well-known adage that if you want to win an F1 race and then the championship, first you must beat your teammate, given he has the same car. Quite a few championships have been fought out between teammates because it is often determined by which driver has the best car.

The best example of that is when Prost persuaded McLaren boss Ron Dennis to sign Senna up for the 1988 season as his teammate. Prost had joined McLaren in 1984 as a teammate to Lauda, and although he scored more wins than Lauda - seven to five - he lost the title to Lauda by half a point.

Jay Vine, winner of last week’s Tour Down Under cycle race in Adelaide, is a big Prost fan. Photo / Don Kennedy

Prost won the Monaco GP, but that race was stopped before the 75 per cent mark, and Prost only got 4.5 points instead of 9. In 1995 he easily beat Lauda, who then retired, and Prost won again in 1986 after William’s teammates Nelson Piquet and Nigel Mansell had tyre issues, the latter having a massive tyre explosion, while leading the race, on the long and fast Brabham straight at the Adelaide circuit. In 1987, Piquet and Mansell bitterly fought for the title, with Piquet taking what would be his third title.

The Prost-Senna pairing dominated the 1988 season, with Senna winning eight races and Prost seven. The only race not won by a McLaren was the Italian GP, which Gerhard Berger took for Ferrari. Senna won the championship by a margin of three points, but only because at that time, curiously, drivers could only score points in 11 of the 16 races.

Prost actually scored 105 points compared to 94 for Senna, before points were dropped. A strange and rather stupid rule in hindsight. The following year, Prost and Senna fell out famously when the latter reneged on an agreement that they would not overtake one another going into the first corner at Imola, to make sure they both got through safely. Senna overtook Prost and the two didn’t speak to one another for the rest of the season. It ended in Prost’s favour when the two collided at the chicane in Suzuka, Japan.

With Prost out, Senna got a push-start from marshals and actually crossed the line first, but was disqualified for taking a shortcut, handing the title to Prost. As Frenchman Jean-Marie Balestre was at the time the FIA president, Senna was convinced his disqualification was political, as Prost was also French. So, the following year, when they returned to Japan, with Prost then driving for Ferrari, Senna deliberately took Prost out at the first corner and was rewarded with a second title. There was no investigation into what Senna had done, even though after taking his third title in 1991, he admitted he had taken Prost out in 1990 in retaliation for what happened in 1989.

When Prost won his fourth title in 1993 driving for Williams, he retired, knowing that Senna would also be driving for Williams in 1994. He was not prepared to be a teammate of Senna’s again. When Nico Rosberg announced he was retiring five days after becoming world champion in 2016, it was for a similar reason. The thought of battling with Hamilton for another season was too much for Rosberg to stomach.

When Senna won the final race of the 1993 season in Adelaide, Australia, with Prost second, he hauled Prost up to join him on the top step of the podium. He was extending an olive branch to Prost, knowing the latter would no longer be a rival. Tragically, Senna would be killed at Imola in the third race of the 1994 season, driving for Williams, having spun out of the first two races, which Michael Schumacher won.

A four-part documentary on Prost is currently being made by French TV to recognize the four-time world champion, who is now sometimes overlooked in discussions about who the greatest F1 drivers are. No doubt the poignant moment before the start of that fateful Imola GP in 1994 will feature in the documentary. While sitting in his car in pole position on the grid, Senna had a special message for Prost on his car radio.

“A special hello to my dear… our dear friend Alain, in France. We all miss you, Alain.”

Prost has revealed in an interview with French broadcaster L’Euippe that after he had retired, Senna began to communicate with him a lot.

“We communicated so much with Ayrton the days after my retirement,” Prost said. “I felt he was not well. He called me often. Sometimes twice a week.”

“He never phoned me while I was still racing. He had, without me, lost his bearings. I was probably his source of motivation. It’s hard to understand.”

Prost, along with Berger, Hill, Emerson and Christian Fittipaldi, Rubens Barrichello, Johnny Herbert and Sir Jackie Stewart, was a pallbearer at Senna’s state funeral in São Paulo in Brazil in May, 1994.

There has probably been no rivalry quite like Senna versus Prost in the history of the sport. The Prost documentary will undoubtedly revive interest in his career, his 51 Grand Prix victories, often achieved with a great race strategy, and his uncanny ability to know when to take risks, which earned him the nickname “The Professor”. Australian cyclist Jay Vine referenced Prost after winning the Tour Down Under in Adelaide last week.

“I’m a big fan of Alain Prost from Formula 1, and you know, his philosophy was take the risk when you can, and when you have the opportunity, go all in,” Vine told the press after his win. Given the 27-year-old wasn’t even born when Prost last won a Grand Prix, that tells you something about his legacy.

Schumacher had a relatively bitter rivalry with Damon Hill, who was Senna’s teammate the year Senna was killed, because Hill nearly stole the crown from Schumacher in the last race in Adelaide. Schumacher was leading the championship by one point and leading the race from Hill when he hit the wall, unseen by Hill, who instinctively dived inside the gap Schumacher in his crippled Benetton had left, only to find that Schumacher had turned in on him. They collided, and Schumacher’s car went up on two wheels and crashed into the barrier. Hill carried on, but his car had a broken wishbone and he couldn’t continue, meaning Schumacher was world champion.

The following year they had further collisions, but Schumacher repeated as champion. It was only when Schumacher moved to Ferrari in 1996 that Hill was able to capitalise on having a superior car to become world champion.

Fast-forward to 2023, and F1 fans will be hoping for a revival of the Verstappen–Hamilton rivalry that came alive, bitterly and controversially at times in 2021, when we witnessed Hamilton punting Verstappen off at Copse Corner at Silverstone, and a few weeks later, when they ended up on top of one another at the first chicane in the Italian GP. Then came that last-lap drama in Abu Dhabi, which has left a bitter taste in Hamilton’s mouth and is something his Mercedes boss Toto Wolff still mulls over every now and then.

Last year, Hamilton had a car that was not competitive in the first half of the season at least, but by the time Mercedes got to Brazil, they had a car good enough to give Hamilton’s teammate George Russell his maiden F1 win, with Hamilton making it a Mercedes 1-2, as the team had done numerous times in a span that brought them eight consecutive Constructors’ titles. The Brazilian race also gave Hamilton the opportunity to race side by side with Verstappen for the first time in 2022, with the two colliding at the first corner, for which Verstappen received a time penalty.

Hamilton has had 310 race starts, and was reminded recently that any driver is yet to win beyond their 300th start. His not-so-modest response was: “But there has never been a driver like me.”

Sources: F1.com.