Senna and Prost From Monaco, 1984, to Morumby, 1994

A few seconds before ten to five on 3 June 1984, in the rain at Monaco, the race was stopped on the orders of Jacky Ickx, the clerk of the course. Alain Prost was leading, in a McLaren with brake trouble. Closing on him fast was the Toleman TG184-⁠Hart of a newcomer in his first season, who had started 13th and set the fastest lap; by Alan Henry’s account in Motor Sport, it was about to take the lead. The result stood at 31 laps, with half points: Prost the winner, Senna 2nd. Henry began his report with the time of day, and set beside it the race of 1972, run in the same kind of deluge and never stopped.

Afterwards Senna said he had had a great chance to win. Prost, looking back 14 years later, was cooler.

From the beginning, he looked good, although you can’t always tell for sure when a guy is with a small team. He drove a great race at Monaco, but in those days – when monocoques were far less stiff than now – it was quite possible to have a poor car in the dry turn out to be very good in the wet. Of course we all rated him, but with the reservation that sometimes a young driver looks quite good, but then joins a top team, and looks ordinary. There’s always some doubt until the guy gets into a quick car. With Ayrton, though, it was pretty dear [clear] he had a special talent.

As Prost tells it, they first met properly three weeks earlier, although they had already raced each other three times that spring, in Brazil, South Africa and Belgium. The occasion was a celebrity race in Mercedes saloons at the new Nürburgring. Gerd Kremer of Mercedes asked Prost, flying in from Geneva, to collect the young Toleman driver at Frankfurt airport, and on the road the newcomer was friendly and talkative. Prost took pole. Once the times were up, he says, Senna stopped speaking to him, and before half a lap of the race was done had pushed him off. Senna won. Prost came to see that weekend as their whole story in miniature: from the first day, he said, the man Senna wanted to beat was Prost, and no one else.

Different garages

For the next three seasons they drove for different teams, Senna for Lotus and Prost for McLaren. Prost was world champion in 1985 and again in 1986; Senna was 4th both years, with more poles than any other driver. In the races they both started in those three seasons Senna started ahead of Prost 32 times to 16, but Prost won 12 of those races, and Senna six.

In 1987, with Honda about to supply McLaren’s engines, the choice of Prost’s next team-mate lay between Senna and Nelson Piquet, and Prost, telling it in the same terms in 1998 and in 2023, says he backed Senna: the more talented driver, the future of Formula One, and for him the team came first. Nothing in his contract let him block it, he said, but it would have been easy to say no. He did not usually regret his decisions, he said in 1998; that one, he had come to think, was a mistake. Keke Rosberg, who had been Prost’s team-mate at McLaren in 1986, had his doubts, as 1987 records.

On film, Senna said: “It’s a great opportunity for me, professional. And as a personal point of view, I feel very happy to work together with Alain.”

The same car

At a tyre test in Rio early in 1988, Prost finished his run and then sat on in the car a little longer than he needed to, because he could see Senna pacing about, helmet on, waiting. Senna, furious, told everyone it was not fair. Prost climbed out laughing; Senna was not laughing. That year, on the way to a Honda appearance at the Geneva Motor Show, Prost asked him home for lunch. Senna arrived, slept for two hours and hardly spoke. Afterwards they walked and talked, and Prost found him fascinating, when he was not being boring.

It was only in 1988 when I saw him in the same car that I knew how good he was. Then at our first test together in Imola I saw it was going to be difficult.

… When he impressed me I must say it was in qualifying sometimes, I don’t remember when exactly. Never in race conditions. Never. In race conditions, in the warm-up, most of the time I was quicker.

The McLaren MP4/4-⁠Honda was beaten only once that year; Senna won eight races and Prost seven. Senna took 13 poles, a record, one of them at Monaco by 1.427 seconds from Prost. Under the rule that counted each man’s best 11 results, Senna finished 3 points ahead, though over the whole season Prost had scored 11 more. Senna settled the title at Suzuka, where he passed Prost on the 28th lap. In 1990 he explained how he had gone about it.

Eu tinha que aprender com ele, que é experiente e conhecia a McLaren há muitos anos. Só junto dos que sabem posso evoluir e superá-los. Foi minha estratégia. Deu certo.

I had to learn from him; he’s experienced and had known McLaren for many years. Only alongside those who know can I develop and overtake them. That was my strategy. It worked.

It was at Estoril, in September, that the harmony broke. Senna squeezed Prost towards the pit wall at close to 305 km/⁠h (190 mph), by David Tremayne’s later reckoning, and Prost, who kept his foot down and won, said he wanted no part of a title won that way. In private, he said later, Senna apologised; by Jerez, Motor Sport found them friends again, on the surface.

Before the 1989 season, over dinner at a golf club in Geneva, Nobuhiko Kawamoto, who then ran Honda’s engine and research side, told Prost that the younger engineers favoured Senna: Senna was more the samurai, Prost more the computer. Prost said he left relieved. At least he now knew he was not stupid.

An agreement at Imola

At Imola in April 1989 the McLarens qualified a second and a half clear of the field, and before the race Senna proposed a truce for the opening lap, with no attack into Tosa. Gerhard Berger’s fiery crash at Tamburello forced a restart, Prost made the better getaway, and Senna passed him into Tosa. Prost would not spray his champagne, spoke to no one, and left the circuit.

Senna’s defence has come down in more than one version. Prost remembered him arguing that the agreement covered the start, not a restart; in 1990 Senna told Playboy that he had completed the pass before the corner. Either way, Prost decided in the end that toughness mattered less than the code Senna had made for himself, and lived by.

The apology came a week later, at a test in Wales, with Ron Dennis insisting on it; by Dennis’s own account he left them both in tears in a minibus, having made himself the enemy they shared. Prost’s version, tears and all, was in L’Équipe on the Monaco weekend, with the charge that Senna had not been straight with him. Senna did not deny the tears: he had cried, he said in 1990, because the state Prost was in had shocked him.

In July Prost said he would leave McLaren. At Monza in September, as he remembered it, he had one car and four or five mechanics in a corner of the garage, while Senna had two cars and 20 people. Senna’s engine failed. The winner’s trophy went to Prost, and from him to the tifosi below the podium.

Suzuka, 22 October 1989

Prost reached Suzuka 16 points clear with two races to run, having warned that he would no longer open the door. He had led from the start when, on the 47th lap, Senna went for the inside at the chicane; Prost turned in, and the two McLarens were left tangled together. For Prost the race ended there. Senna had himself pushed back into it, took on a new nose in the pits, came through to win on the road, and was excluded for cutting the chicane. Jean-Marie Balestre, the president of FISA, sat with the stewards and afterwards played the press the video. The appeal failed in Paris on 31 October, and cost Senna a US$100,000 fine and a suspended six-month ban besides. Prost was champion.

Each man held to his own account. That evening Senna said that somebody had closed the door on him; in 1990 he said that Prost had turned in on purpose. Prost said in 1998 that he knew everyone thought so, and that he had simply made up his mind not to leave Senna even a metre: he came off the throttle, braked and turned in. That winter Senna accused FISA of manipulating the championship, and he kept his licence for 1990 only by withdrawing the charge.

Suzuka, 21 October 1990

In 1990 Prost drove for Ferrari. At Phoenix, the first race, he held out his hand to Senna at a sponsor’s meeting, and Senna refused it; six months later, at Monza, pressed by a journalist in the press conference, they shook hands. At Suzuka the positions were reversed, and Senna led by 9 points with two races to go. He took pole, but pole sat where the track was dirty, and a request to move it was turned down, a refusal he laid at Balestre’s door. Prost made the better start. At the first corner Senna did not lift, and the McLaren hit the Ferrari; both slid into the gravel, 9.2 seconds after the start by Denis Jenkinson’s watch, and Senna was champion.

I wanted to punch him in the face… but I was so disgusted, I could not do it. He revolts me.

That day Senna put the fault on Prost and on the officials; what Prost told the press is in 1990. FISA took no action, and Ferrari made no protest. His confession came 12 months later, in the press conference after he clinched his third title at the same circuit: he had gone to the grid in 1990 resolved that if Prost got away first, then “at the first corner I’ll go for it. And he had better not turn in, because he’s not gonna make it”. He admitted his part in it, but the responsibility, he said, was not his.

After Prost retired, Senna told him the same in private, and why: he had been furious with Balestre over the grid. Motor Sport reported that Honda’s telemetry showed his throttle never closed. The new president of FISA, Max Mosley, later had him sign a statement that he had not collided with Prost deliberately, and called it weasel words. Prost said that after that race he had almost retired.

The clause

In 1991 they fell out again at Hockenheim. FISA summoned them both at the next race, at the Hungaroring; that evening they talked alone for about an hour, then came out and shook hands. Prost did not race in 1992. Early that year he met Frank Williams to talk about a contract, at Le Bourget airport, and told him, as he recalled in 2023, that he did not mind about the money or about being number one; his one condition was that he would never again be Senna’s team-mate. Williams agreed, and it went into the contract.

In August, at Spa, Senna announced that he would not be going to Williams, and gave the reason: Prost could veto the team’s choice of partner, and had shut him out. At Estoril a month later, on the morning Prost was announced as the Williams lead driver for 1993, Senna accused him of cowardice, and said it was like giving Prost running shoes and the rest of them lead boots.

The Independent and Motor Sport did not miss the irony: in 1986 Senna himself had kept Derek Warwick out of Lotus. In 1993 Prost’s Williams was the car to have. He started ahead of Senna at 15 of their 16 races and took 13 poles to Senna’s one; he won seven races and the championship, and Senna, in the McLaren MP4/8-⁠Ford, won five. At Interlagos in March, arriving with a bodyguard at his side, Prost said that they were very different men and had had their problems, but respected each other, and could still have a good and fair fight.

On 24 September he announced that he would retire. Williams signed Senna for 1994, and the next day Prost set out his side: it would have been easy to stay, use his contract against Senna again and go for a fifth title; he had chosen instead as a human being. Frank Williams denied that Prost was leaving because Senna was coming. In 2023 Prost said that Williams had told him Renault was pressing to take Senna.

Adelaide, 7 November 1993

A fortnight earlier, after the race at Suzuka, Prost had suggested to him on the way to the press conference that, since it might be the last they shared, they should show people something nice, a handshake perhaps. Senna neither answered nor said no, and in the press conference would not look at him. Prost would not start another Grand Prix after Adelaide, and Senna was leaving McLaren for Williams. Senna won, Prost was 2nd, 9.259 seconds behind, and on the way to the podium Senna began to talk: what was Prost going to do now? Prost did not know. He was going to get fat, Senna told him, and smiled. At the ceremony Prost was hauled up to share the top step, Senna’s arm across his shoulders, and they sprayed each other with champagne.

Ron Dennis had already spoken quietly to each of them. In the press conference Senna told what Dennis had said:

It’s never too late to change your mind. But anyway, he said he was happy for me, and... I said, you know, we must keep the good times, the good moments, and let’s finish that way, finish with the good things.

Prost read the podium his own way: now it was Senna’s idea, and on Senna’s terms, and that was how Senna was. But the moment stayed with him. In 2020 he told La Repubblica that it had changed their relationship, and that today he could say their story had been wonderful.

The last six months

After Prost stopped racing, Senna took to telephoning him, Prost says, usually about safety, and asked him more than once to lead a revived drivers’ association. Prost said no. At Imola in 1994, where Prost was commentating for the French channel TF1, they met on the Saturday and twice on the Sunday morning, as he remembers it, and Senna told him he believed the Benetton was illegal. That Sunday, he says, Senna came looking for him in the Renault motorhome, pushing through a crowd he would usually have avoided, and tried hard to be friendly. Prost was surprised, and thought he needed somebody. They agreed to talk again the following week. That morning TF1 also put on air a lap Senna had filmed for the channel at the time of the warm-up; on it Senna said hello to his friend Alain, and that he was missed.

On 1 May, before Senna’s death was announced, Prost told TF1’s viewers that it had been a very kind message, and that Senna gave motor racing 100 per cent of his life, perhaps 110, where he himself had given perhaps 85 or 90. The next day he said that Senna’s death was the death of part of his own life, and that they had needed each other; but also that they had never been very close, and had drifted further apart after he retired. The warmer memories came later.

There were three Ayrtons for me: the one before F1 when he was looking at my races, at everything I was doing, the way I was doing it; obviously the one when we were together, inside or outside the same team; and then the one when I retired.

… We were talking very often, every week, twice a week. … His motivation was to be world champion, but his biggest motivation was to beat me.

Morumby

In Paris, the day after Imola, Prost had his ticket to São Paulo but did not know how Brazil would receive him. He asked the advice of a friend of Jean-Luc Lagardère’s, whose wife was Brazilian, and was told to go. He met no hostility. On 5 May, at the Cemitério do Morumby, he walked with the other drivers beside the coffin, and he said that he would never get into a Formula One car again. Of Senna he said: “He was the only opponent I truly respected.” The next day Milton da Silva invited him to the family farm, and they talked for a long time.

He stayed in touch with the family. In 1998 he said that he saw Senna’s sister very often and did what he could to help the foundation, and he has long supported the Instituto Ayrton Senna. At the São Paulo premiere of Asif Kapadia’s film Senna, in 2010, Viviane Senna made a point of saying that Prost had not been the villain: the politics behind Formula One had. The film gave their reconciliation only a few brief moments, and in 2012 Prost called the film the only regret of his career. Their story, he said, had been more than sport; it had been human too. Today, he said, if you say Prost, you say Senna.