Prost’s regret over Senna F1 film

Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost were long-time rivals before they became teammates at McLaren.

(CNN) -- Formula One legend Alain Prost has just "one big regret" -- his portrayal in an award winning film about his arch rival -- the late, great Ayrton Senna.

Four-time world champion Prost battled the Brazilian for title supremacy while they both drove for McLaren with their rivalry reaching its peak in the finale to the 1989 and 1990 seasons

So much so that incidents on the first corner of races at Suzuka in Japan saw the pair force each other off the road.

Prost was the beneficiary in 1989 after Senna, who was able to carry on, was controversially disqualified to give the Frenchman the world championship.

Twelve months on, Senna's ruthless move on Prost, who had quit McLaren to drive for Ferrari, gave him the crown in a reversal of fortunes and left the men at odds.

Prost, who won his final world title in 1993, had retired by the time Senna was killed at Imola in the San Marino GP of 1994.

Fateful weekend

No one has died in F1 racing since that fateful weekend and it provided the producers of the movie with a chilling conclusion which left many film goers in tears as they left cinemas.

But Prost, who co-operated on the award winning film "Senna", is unhappy that his subsequent reconciliation with Senna is not featured.

"The only regret that I have in my career is to see this kind of film that we are having on Ayrton," he told CNN in an exclusive interview for The Circuit.

"You need to tell everything right, correct, and you need to accept that you can have some qualities, some faults and one cannot be white and the other black.

"I am very disappointed about that because it would have been good at my age to have shown to the people, to the world, that it was a little bit different.

"But for me, inside me, I know what happened, I know the story, I know how Ayrton was just before his accident after I retired, I keep that for me. "

Senna scriptwriter Manish Pandey defended Prost's portrayal in the film but admitted it was "very, very diffficult to compress those 10 years (of the F1 legend's career) into 100 minutes."

He told CNN: "Alain (Prost) was very kind in giving us time and we put seven examples of reconciliation between him and Ayrton at the end of the film."

Biggest regret

Pandey also revealed that they had tried their best to insert a video clip of a lap by Senna in which he drove the Imola track and did a commentary for French TV station TF1 (for whom Alain was broadcasting) saying '"To my friend, Alain. We miss you Alain."

But the clip was muffled and unusable in the context of the end of the film, he claimed.

In a doubly tragic weekend for F1 back in 1994 at that Imola race, Austrian driver Roland Ratzenberger had been killed in qualifying on the Saturday.

Read: Fangio vs. Senna: Who is the greatest Formula One driver of all time?

Senna drove in the race with a small Austrian flag in his race suit, which he was going to wave to honor Ratzenberger, at the finish to show the unity of F1.

"If we omitted something, it was this more than anything else. And we tried to get it in, but the footage wasn't there," Pandey said.

"Sporting rivalries, who did what to whom, who was disqualified, who won a trophy - all of that pales into utter insignificance in the context of the bigger story.

"Senna is not a film about a sporting rivalry, because we would have called it 'Senna vs Prost' and started it later and ended it earlier, if it was. The rivalry was an important element in our story - but it was just one of many."

Prost is still intensely proud of the era which saw the pair dominate F1 racing.

"Today if you say Prost you say Senna. It is part of the F1 history and in my opinion is maybe the best years."

Different characters

In a recent poll by CNN, Prost was mentioned in dispatches by viewers in our quest to find the greatest F1 driver of all time, with Senna and Argentine maestro Juan Manuel Fangio acknowledged as the best of their eras.

Prost believes that he and Senna were unwittingly the victims of their own success and did not receive the protection they deserved from the media and sponsors.

"We were very much exposed," said the Frenchman.

"We had a lot of people who were very interested, very motivated to have this kind of story.

"We did not realize that at the time. We just wanted to win but we had different characters and a different way of thinking and racing."

Read: Just how good is Sebastian Vettel?

Despite the obvious dangers, Prost would not swap his experiences with those who make up the modern day F1 grid.

"If you are racing like today with almost no risk and you can continue until you are 44 or 45 years old like Michael (Schumacher), for sure it is tempting.

"You need to remember that there was a very bad period when you went out on a Sunday morning and say what's going to happen today?

"Am I going to be able to come back because we had very bad accidents, very regularly.

"I would have loved to have driven in this period, working with the engineers on the technical side, but no, I prefer my period. "

But Prost remains deeply unhappy about the balance of the Senna film and in particular the closing moments.

Greatest drivers

"What I regret is that our story was more than sport, it was also human," he told CNN.

For all that, Pandey is convinced they did the story justice in a balanced and fair way

"Look at their body language after Ayrton's last win at Adelaide in '93 -- warm, all smiles, a tap on the knee. Then the coming together on the podium. Then Alain's disbelief after the accident.

"Then Alain, clearly in shock, drinking a cup of water. Alain is the last and, in a way, the most important person to cross himself at Ayrton's coffin - the sadness all over his face, the badge on his lapel clearly marked 'A' (A for 'Amigo', friend) - and Alain is the main pallbearer.

"Finally, we end by saying that Alain is a trustee of the foundation."

Prost and Senna (No.1) clash at the Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka in 1989. Prost clinched the title after the Brazilian was controversially disqualified after winning the race.

As they both battled for world titles at McLaren, Prost and Senna’s relationship came under great strain.

Stand off: Senna and Prost walk away after the early crash at Suzuka in the final race of the 1990 season which left the Brazilian as world champion.

Prost’s time with McLaren proved the most fruitful of his career as he captured three world titles.

Prost earned the nickname ‘The Professor’ for his thoughtful and studied approach to Formula One racing.

Prost competing in wet conditions at the Monaco Grand Prix which he won four times during his glittering career.

Prost and Senna formed a united team in 1988 as the latter won the championship for McLaren.

The medical team at Imola tend to the stricken Senna after his fateful crash in the San Marino Grand Prix in 1994.

Prost joined a pantheon of Formula One greats at Senna’s funeral in Sao Paulo in 1994.

In the latter part of career Prost had to battle with the youthful exuberance of future seven-time champion Michael Schumacher.

Prost is a keen cyclist and is pictured here at the end of the 2009 L’Etape du Tour. The race enables 8,500 amateur cyclists to attempt a mountain stage of the Tour de France each year. The 2009 event was staged between Montelimar and Mout Ventoux, with Prost finishing 258th.