1,000 Greatest Drivers: Alain Prost

My seasonal evaluations of him will not be popular.

I again intended to write this for his birthday and I again as with his ex-teammate Lauda was a couple days late. This will not be popular because I generally have a contrarian view on Prost. I have only rated him in the top five for three seasons (1984, 1985, and 1988) and gave him no #1 seasons, which will probably shock a lot of you, but his advanced statistics weren’t very good. In looking at anything beyond just wins and the actual points standings, Ayrton Senna pummeled him and it wasn’t even close. I realize it seemed like McLaren was favoring him in 1989 and he still won the title, but the gaps between their statistical records were simply massive. I did rate him as the best F1 driver of 1984 and 1985 but I simply took other drivers over him in those years, as I have Prost behind Stig Blomqvist for 1984 and 3rd behind Jim Richards who swept all three Australian titles) and Bill Elliott for 1985. Prost had great season after great season after great season but it never feels like he had an otherworldly one where he was clearly so far above the rest of the field that you could argue no one in another series was better. His last three titles really don’t impress me a lot, as in 1986, he had only 2 natural races led when Nelson Piquet and Nigel Mansell combined for 15 and even his teammate Keke Rosberg had 3 in his final season. 1989 Senna was clearly better except for the fact that Prost finished more races. While F1metrics argued that Prost is perhaps the only driver who actually had impact on avoiding mechanical retirements, I’m increasingly coming to the conclusion that no driver does and he was primarily lucky, which marks a large part of the discrepancy between my opinions and the conventional wisdom. And then finally, his 1993 was clearly a step down from Nigel Mansell’s 1992 and he only ranked 9th in my teammate model and not only Senna but even Damon Hill beat him (because Prost did not beat Hill by as much as he was “supposed to”.) Really, his career looks vastly less impressive going deeper than it did on the surface, so there’s a reason I did what I did here. You might argue that maybe he was better since he was punching above his weight given the cars he had (obviously he had an equipment deficit in 1986, etc…) Not really. He’s only the 12th-highest champion in my teammate model and he’s only barely above Mansell, Nico Rosberg, and Jochen Rindt who wouldn’t make anyone’s top tens. He’s legitimately overrated.