Monaco Sets Prost's Heart Racing

Date

May 26, 2013

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Oliver Brown

Renault chief operating officer Carlos Tavares poses with former French Formula one world champion Alain Prost. Photo: Reuters

Alain Prost's eyes drift into the middle distance, somewhere between the Grand Casino and Hotel Hermitage, as he contemplates a dark past seldom glimpsed at the Monaco Grand Prix.

The Cote d'Azur might be radiant in its turquoise splendour but the 'Professor', studying a gun-barrel view of the principality from his balcony, recalls how his four triumphs around these streets all came when the danger of death lurked around the next corner. ''We are survivors,'' he says, quietly.

At 58 and still the embodiment of Gallic spruceness, Prost resists wallowing in nostalgia but speaks out of certainty that Sunday's race, the most evocative on the calendar, cannot replicate the terrors that Monaco once held.

''I was in Cannes this week to watch the new film about Sir Jackie Stewart,'' he explains. ''Every time we see drivers of our generation, we look into each other's eyes and say, 'on est survivants' [we are survivors]. Today there is not the same attitude, the same mind. You cannot reproach it, but if you ask young drivers now about the danger and the risks, they do not think the same way. From their karting careers to formula one, they have not known a bad accident.''

Prost, one of only three drivers to have won four world championships, is resolute in his theory since the death of former nemesis Ayrton Senna at Imola's Tamborello curve in 1994, F1 circuits have become less lethal but also less challenging.

In his eyes Monaco, where crash barriers at the swimming pool rush into the field of vision at 255km/h, is a blessed dash of colour in an increasingly monochrome landscape.

Employing a subtle, calculating style to which Jenson Button has often been identified as a direct heir, Prost found the greater the complexity he encountered at Monaco, the more he relished it.

''When you have many more parameters you need to fix, that's what I like,'' he agrees, grinning. ''You also feel the danger in Monaco. The start always used to be a very tense moment.

''Going up towards the casino, it was a worry if you were in the middle of the pack. I remember the tunnel, too, when it didn't even have the lights inside. Nowadays you have nothing to compare to the old Monza or Silverstone, where you knew if you made a mistake you could have a major problem.

''I love the atmosphere of Monaco most of all, but it is also a much more difficult race to approach. The driving is far more complicated.''

That perfectly suited a man renowned for his consummate slickness behind the wheel, whose Monte Carlo duels with Senna all but defined the sport in the late 1980s.

Prost claims not to think first of his Brazilian bete noire when in Monaco - ''I save that for Suzuka,'' he mutters, reliving their infamous first-corner shunt there in 1990 - but he remains profoundly dismayed by the way he is depicted in Asif Kapadia's 2010 film, Senna.

Having given 10 hours of material to the director, all about his little-known reconciliation with Senna after his retirement in 1993, Prost was incredulous to see this theme all but excised from the final cut. ''I am still very disappointed,'' he admits. ''I said what I wanted, I think with dignity, but there are many things missing from the film. They changed a major part of our relationship after I retired. They could have had a fantastic human story, but they chose to go commercial instead.''

As one half of motorsport's most engrossing human drama of modern times, Prost casts his eye across this year's grid and laments the paucity of personality on display.

Remembering the ferocity of his rivalry not only with Senna but Nigel Mansell and Nelson Piquet, too, and how sharply it contrasts with today's sanitised PR cocoon, he says: ''These drivers start very young, and their personalities were maybe not as mature as ours were. There was more solidarity, more respect between us then. Even if it is sometimes tougher now, it's not the same. The human side is different.''

Who, then, does he consider to be the finest driver of the 2013 vintage? Prost is drawn, understandably, towards Sebastian Vettel, who stands to emulate him as a quadruple champion at the tender of age of 26, but cites Lewis Hamilton as a case for not inflating expectations. ''Sebastian has won three in a row already, which is exceptional. If you remember when Lewis won his first championship, everybody said he would win seven or eight. We are still waiting [for his second].''

As for this season's tyre debate, Prost is wonderfully dismissive. ''We had to think much more about saving the fuel, the tyres, the gearbox, the brakes,'' he stresses. ''When I test-drove a Red Bull recently I was very surprised because, while it didn't look that different to what I knew, everything was working closer to the point of perfection.''

Prost recognises greatness is not gauged purely on titles. Indeed, the tally of Monaco victories can serve as an equally reliable barometer, when one considers the Frenchman's four versus Senna; indeed, in the 10 years from 1984 to 1993, only their two names were inscribed upon the most coveted Monegasque trophy.

The Telegraph, London