ALAIN PROST, AN UNDENIABLE TALENT

The year 2025 is proving to be particularly important for Alain Prost. It coincides with the 40th anniversary of the first of his four F1 world championship titles. To mark the occasion, Legends Magazine reveals some lesser-known facts about Alain Prost: his Armenian origins, his brother Daniel Prost, who died of cancer in 1986, and his ties to Switzerland, where he has lived for over 40 years and where he has developed a watch with Richard Mille that is unique in both its form and its complexity.

COMPLICATION. This is a word that has followed Alain Prost throughout his career, right from the start. Unlike Max Verstappen, who was “programmed” for a career in motorsport, Alain Prost entered the world of four wheels completely by chance. In the Prost family, which had two sons at the time, it was the eldest, Daniel, born in 1953, who was passionate about motor racing. His younger brother, Alain, was mainly interested in soccer. He wanted to play for St-Etienne, a soccer town just 15 km from St-Chamond, where Alain Prost was born on February 24, 1955. You have to admit that it’s rather complicated to envisage a career in F1 when you’re more interested in soccer than cars.

But that was before a family vacation on the French Riviera in 1968. To make his brother happy, who was suffering from a brain tumor, Alain Prost agreed to go karting in Antibes. And that’s where he had his revelation. After ten minutes of practice, a small race was organized, and Alain Prost won! He enjoyed this first experience so much that he decided to make it his favorite sport. Through hard work and determination, he soon made a name for himself. French karting champion in both 1974 and 1975, he then turned his attention to motor racing, a much more expensive discipline than karting. But how could he do that when he wasn’t the son of a millionaire? By attending the Winfield racing school at the Castellet circuit!

“AND THEN, IT WAS A REVELATION. AFTER TEN MINUTES OF TRAINING, A SHORT RACE WAS ORGANIZED, AND ALAIN PROST WON!”

 

At the end of the season, on October 25, 1975, the best students at this school were invited to a final, at the end of which the fastest among them was crowned “Official Elf Driver,” a status that allowed him to compete in the 1976 French Formula Renault championship without spending any money. You know the rest. Alain Prost won the French championship title in his first season. He did it again the following year, still in Formula Renault, but at the continental level! The same was true at the next level up, F3: Prost won the national title in 1978, then the European title in 1979.

THE BEGINNINGS IN F1

The next step could only be Formula 1, where he made his debut in 1980 at the wheel of a McLaren. It wasn’t the best car in the championship, but Prost made a name for himself by finishing 6th in his very first race! He managed to do even better in the second Grand Prix, finishing 5th. And although the next three races ended in three retirements, two of which were due to mechanical problems, Alain Prost finished 6th again in both the British Grand Prix and the Dutch Grand Prix. Alain Prost’s talent was undeniable. He moved to Renault in 1981, where he scored his first three F1 victories and finished the championship in fifth place with a total of 43 points, compared to 50 for Nelson Piquet. When you consider that a victory is worth nine points, you realize that Alain Prost could have been crowned world champion in 1981 if he had won one more race! The title seemed assured in 1982 when he won the first two Grand Prix races of the season. However, this was not to be. The Renault car was unreliable and six retirements due to mechanical problems prevented him from finishing higher than fourth in the final championship standings. Many believed that 1983 would finally be the year that Prost and Renault would win the title. But once again, it was not to be. In the final race of the season, which would decide the world championship, it was Nelson Piquet, driving a Brabham-BMW, who had the last word. Alain Prost had to settle for the title of world championship runner-up, and his relationship with Renault’s management became increasingly complicated!

“ALAIN PROST’S TALENT IS UNDISPUTED.”

Alain Prost wins the Monaco F3 Grand Prix in 1979, the year he was crowned European F3 champion. Photo Alamy

Alain Prost competed in three F1 seasons with Renault. The best of these resulted in him becoming runner-up in the world championship in 1983. Photo Alamy

WITH NIKI LAUDA AT MCLAREN

The split with Renault was inevitable, and Alain Prost signed with McLaren for 1984. Alongside two-time world champion Niki Lauda, this season also proved to be complicated, especially in terms of results. The French driver, who now lives in Switzerland, won seven races to Lauda’s five, but it was Lauda who took his third world title… half a point ahead of Prost, who once again finished second in the championship! His victory in the Monaco Grand Prix, which was cut short, only earned him half the points: 4.5 instead of 9. With the full points from the Monaco race, Prost would have already been world champion in 1984!

1985 would finally be his year. At the wheel of his McLaren-TAG Porsche, Prost became the first French Formula One world champion. His supremacy was such that he clinched the title three races before the end of the season. His fourth place finish in the European Grand Prix, held on October 6, 1985, at the Brands Hatch circuit, was enough to put him out of reach of Michele Alboreto’s Ferrari, his most dangerous rival in the championship.

“1985 WILL FINALLY BE THE YEAR. AT THE WHEEL OF HIS MCLAREN-TAG PORSCHE, PROST BECOMES THE FIRST FRENCH F1 WORLD CHAMPION.”

 

October 21, 1984 – Portuguese Grand Prix: Alain Prost wins the last race of the season, but it is Niki Lauda, who finishes second that day, who wins the world title by half a point ahead of the French driver. Photo Paul-Henri Cahier

 

October 6, 1985 – European Grand Prix at Brands Hatch: Alain Prost becomes the first French driver to win the Formula 1 World Championship title. Photo Paul-Henri Cahier

 

This first title was followed by a second in 1986, won under painful circumstances as his older brother Daniel Prost lost his battle with cancer on September 18, just before the Portuguese Grand Prix
where Alain Prost finished in second place, which proved crucial for the championship. After his first two titles in 1985 and 1986, Alain Prost won a third world championship in 1989, ahead of Ayrton Senna, his teammate at McLaren, against whom his duels had a global impact. With this third world championship title, Alain Prost took sweet revenge for the 1988 season, when he had once again had to settle for second place at the end of the championship. That year, he had scored a total of 105 points against 94 for Ayrton Senna, but the regulations in force at the time only counted the 11 best results. As a result, Senna was crowned champion with a total of 90 points to Prost’s 87!

“BUT THE BRAZILIAN DRIVER CRASHED INTO HIM IN THE FIRST CORNER…”
To say that the two seasons spent alongside Senna at McLaren-Honda were complicated would be an understatement. The same was true of the following two years, which saw Alain Prost racing for Ferrari and finishing second again behind Senna’s McLaren-Honda in 1990. To retain any chance of winning the world title in 1990, Prost had to win in Japan, the penultimate race of the season. But the Brazilian driver crashed into him in the first corner. A year later, he admitted that he had done it on purpose to get revenge for the title he lost in 1989, when he was beaten by Prost, who he believed had been favored by Jean-Marie Balestre, the president of the FIA. While Prost’s first season at Ferrari had been promising with five victories, his second season in 1991 fell far short of his expectations, as for the first time since 1980, he did not finish on the top step of the podium.

A RECORD NUMBER OF WINS

Alain Prost then took a sabbatical in 1992 before returning in 1993 to WilliamsRenault, where he won his fourth and final world title. He did so with a record number of victories, 51, which stood until September 2, 2001, when Michael Schumacher won the Belgian Grand Prix, his 52nd of 91 victories in F1! As of October 15, 2025, the six most successful F1 drivers are Lewis Hamilton, with a total of 105 victories, Michael Schumacher (91), Max Verstappen (67), Sebastian Vettel (53), Alain Prost (51), and Ayrton Senna (41).

F1 WINS

1 105 HAMILTON 91 SCHUMACHER 67 VERSTAPPEN
53 VETTELd
51 PROST
41 SENNA

Brands Hatch 1985: Alain Prost races toward the first of his four F1 world championship titles. Photo Paul-Henri Cahier

But enough about numbers! Let’s talk about some lesser-known aspects of Alain Prost, including his Armenian origins on his maternal grandmother’s side. Like many of her compatriots after the 1915 genocide, she fled her country and sought refuge in France in the 1920s. Her horrific stories about the murder of her family members had a profound effect on Alain Prost. “Everything she told me taught me to hate war, to hate evil, to hate brutality, but without a spirit of revenge. More than 1.5 million Armenians were killed by the Turks. For the Armenian people, for my grandmother, for my mother, and for my uncle, I would like the memory of these exterminations to live on,” wrote Alain Prost in his book Vive ma vie, published in 1993.

Alain Prost and the two Swiss drivers Sébastien Buemi (top, photo Red Bull Content Pool) and Clay Regazzoni (bottom, photo Alamy)

Another little-known fact about Alain Prost is his passion for cycling. This passion led him to collaborate with Swiss luxury watchmaker Richard Mille to develop a unique timepiece, the RM 70-01 Tourbillon Alain Prost. The watch was created in response to the observation that traditional watch designs are uncomfortable when riding a bicycle. Working with Alain Prost, Richard Mille’s watchmakers created a new type of case, asymmetrical in three dimensions with a crown on the left. In addition to its tourbillon, this watch has a counter that records the kilometers traveled by bike. It is therefore a completely new watch, both in terms of its shape and its complications, as we mentioned at the beginning of this article!

Alain Prost cycling with the Richard Mille “RM 70-01 Tourbillon Alain Prost” watch, designed specifically for cyclists. Photo Richard Mille