Four world titles, 51 wins, 33 pole positions and 106 podiums in 199 Grands Prix. And yet the nickname that stuck to Alain Prost is not about speed: it is about method. They called him the Professor, and in my view it is the most precise label Formula 1 has ever given a champion.

The received wisdom is that in Formula 1 the fastest driver wins. Prost spent thirteen seasons proving something else: the winner is whoever reaches the last lap with tyres, brakes and engine still able to fight. He treated a race like a budget. You spend when you need to, not when you can. Anyone who works with sponsorship budgets every day, as I do, recognises that way of thinking at once.

Who is Alain Prost: the short version

Alain Prost was born on 24 February 1955 in Lorette, in the Loire department. He was Formula 1 world champion in 1985, 1986 and 1989 with McLaren and in 1993 with Williams, the first Frenchman to win the title. His 51 wins stood as the all-time record until the 2001 Belgian Grand Prix, when Michael Schumacher took his fifty-second. After retiring he owned a Formula 1 team, advised Renault, co-owned a Formula E team and won the Trophée Andros ice racing series three times.

From karts to Formula 1: a climb with no shortcuts

Prost discovered karting at 14, on a family holiday. In 1973 he was European junior champion, in 1974 French senior champion. In 1976 he moved to single-seaters and won the French Formula Renault championship, taking every race but one, then added the European title in 1977. In 1978 he was French Formula 3 champion, and in 1979 he retained that title and won the European one too.

His Formula 1 debut came in 1980 with McLaren, and Prost scored points in his very first race, in Argentina. The car was not competitive, though, and for 1981 he accepted an offer from Renault. His first win came at the French Grand Prix in Dijon, and by the end of the season he had three. In 1983 he arrived at the final round, at Kyalami, leading the championship on 57 points to Nelson Piquet’s 55: his engine let him down and the title went to the Brazilian.

Half a point: 1984 with Lauda and the first two titles

In 1984 Prost returned to McLaren and found Niki Lauda as his team-mate. He won seven races to the Austrian’s five, yet lost the championship by half a point, the smallest margin in the sport’s history. The arithmetic goes back to Monaco: the race was stopped for rain with Prost in the lead, and he received half the points for the win.

The response came straight away. In 1985 Prost became France’s first world champion, and in 1986 he did it again by winning the final race in Adelaide, where Nigel Mansell lost the title to a tyre blowout. Two consecutive titles built on consistency, not on the single quick lap.

There is a detail from those years that I often tell clients about. McLaren’s engine was called the TAG Porsche: Porsche built it, but Mansour Ojjeh paid for it. Through his TAG group he put up the $5 million needed for development and became a co-owner of the team. A sponsor that does not buy a sticker, but the part that wins races. Put in commercial terms: the strongest presence in Formula 1 is the one that becomes part of the technical project.

Senna, Suzuka and the rivalry that defined an era

In 1988 Ayrton Senna joined McLaren. That season McLaren-Honda won 15 races out of 16: eight for Senna, seven for Prost. The title went to the Brazilian, even though Prost had scored more points overall; under the rules of the time only the best 11 results counted.

Two drivers at opposite ends. Senna instinctive, ready to risk everything on a qualifying lap; Prost rational, convinced that a race is decided by how you manage it. The breaking point was the 1989 Japanese Grand Prix: at the Suzuka chicane the two collided, Senna rejoined and won, but was disqualified and Prost took his third title. A year later, again at Suzuka, the roles were reversed: Senna took him out at the first corner and the 1990 championship was his.

Ferrari: the “truck” and the sacking

In 1990 Prost moved to Ferrari, alongside Mansell. He won five races and finished second in the championship, within touching distance of the title. 1991 went the other way: no wins and a relationship with Maranello that deteriorated all season. After the Japanese Grand Prix Prost said that driving his Ferrari had been like driving “a horrible truck”. Ferrari sacked him on the eve of the final race, in Australia.

The remark went down in history as the reason, but it was the last act of a rift that had lasted more than a year: Prost himself spoke of political reasons, linked to his wish to have a say in how the team was run. 1992 was a sabbatical, spent testing for Ligier and working as a television commentator.

1993: a fourth title with Williams, then retirement

In 1993 Prost came back to racing with Williams-Renault, the best car in the field. He won seven races and clinched his fourth title with two rounds to spare. At Estoril he announced his retirement: his seat would go to Senna. At the final race, in Adelaide, the two rivals stood on the podium together.

Everyone remembers what followed. On the morning of 1 May 1994, at Imola, Senna greeted him during an onboard lap filmed for TF1: “A special hello to our dear friend Alain. We all miss you, Alain”. A few hours later, on lap seven of the race, came the crash that would cost him his life. Prost was one of the pallbearers at his funeral.

Why they called him the Professor

Prost never liked the nickname, but he admitted it described the way he raced. The reason is plain to see. He drove cleanly, with no wasted movement, and saved his tyres and brakes in the first part of the race so he had them at the end. He spent hours with his engineers on the set-up. He openly modelled himself on Jackie Stewart and Jim Clark, two drivers who won without ever seeming to push.

My reading is that Prost is the driver closest to the way a company should think about Formula 1 sponsorship. You do not buy Sunday’s fastest lap. You buy a run of seasons, measured on the results that last. The Professor understood that on track forty years ago.

Prost the entrepreneur: the Prost Grand Prix gamble

In February 1997 Prost took over Ligier and turned it into Prost Grand Prix, a French team with a French title sponsor, Gauloises Blondes, and from 1998 a French Peugeot engine. The first year promised a lot: Olivier Panis was third in Brazil and second in Spain, before breaking both legs in Canada. In 1999 Jarno Trulli finished second at the Nürburgring. The wins, however, never came.

In November 2001 the team went into receivership with debts estimated at around $28 million, and on 28 January 2002 the Versailles court ordered its liquidation. In my view the lesson still holds: a project built on a few big partners and a national identity is strong as long as those partners stay, and fragile the day one of them walks away.

Ice, Formula E and Renault: a second career

Away from Formula 1 Prost kept racing. In the Trophée Andros, the French ice racing championship, he won three titles: in 2007 and 2008 with the Toyota Auris, in 2012 with the Dacia Lodgy. On circuits with next to no grip his smooth style was an advantage, not an affectation.

Then came electric racing. As co-owner of e.dams, later Renault e.dams, he was part of the first three Formula E teams’ titles, from 2014-15 to 2016-17, and of Sébastien Buemi’s drivers’ title in 2015-16; his son Nicolas raced for the same team. He sold his stake in 2018. Meanwhile he had returned to Formula 1 with Renault, as an adviser from 2017 and a non-executive director from 2019, a role he kept when the team became Alpine. In January 2022 the team did not renew his contract, and Prost made no secret of his disappointment at how the news was handled.

Alain Prost today

Today Alain Prost is 71 and divides his time between Switzerland, on the shores of Lake Geneva, and Dubai, where he has another home. On 19 May 2026 his villa in Nyon was raided by a gang of hooded robbers: the family was threatened, his son was forced to open the safe and Prost suffered a slight head injury. The authorities later arrested five suspects in France. It is not the story anyone would want to tell about a champion, but it is the latest news on his health.

What remains, beyond the headlines, is a way of winning. Prost never needed to be the most spectacular to be the best. Peaks are forgotten. Method remains.