Malcolm Folley - Senna Versus Prost: The Story of the Most Deadly Rivalry in Formula One

Paris, summer 2008

Almost noon and the streets in the prosperous 16th arrondissement will soon be bustling with people seeking out a restaurant for lunch. But for now there is hardly a person in sight and no one within fifty yards of the address I have been given in a quiet road not far from the Place des Etats-Unis. The gigantic thick wooden double doors, guarding the building, look capable of delaying the progress of an invading army, but, fortunately, on closer inspection one is slightly ajar.

Once inside, there is a cobbled courtyard leading to a set of garages in the distance. On the left is an apartment belonging to the concierge of the building and beyond this there are double doors opened by an intercom situated on the facing wall. There is no obvious indication which apartment I am looking for and so the wife of the concierge, deaf to my knocking, is startled to find a stranger in her home as she prepareslunch. I explain in halting French that I am expected. Brusquely, she accepts my apology and walks to the intercom and pushes the button for the top floor apartment.

Silence.

An unwanted thought occurs: is this the right address...

Or, worse, have I come a day after our scheduled appointment?

Reluctantly, the woman tries the buzzer again. And this time a voice answers: another woman. Gratefully, I hear a click as the main doors open to grant access to the lift. On the fourth floor, a housekeeper waves me into the only apartment. In the high-ceilinged entrance hall there is a table displaying a golden miniature racing car with an inscription. It turns out to be the only piece of motor racing memorabilia on display in the home of Alain Prost, four times world champion.

'I was never close to the trophies anyway,' says Prost, after showing me into his drawing room. 'I have my four cups I received from the FIA for winning the world championship. I have four helmets I wore in those championship years and that's it. The rest I gave away.'

Prost looks to have stepped from a time machine. Older looking, yes; but his dominant features from photographs of twenty or more years ago remain the same. His hair is still a shock of curls, if cut shorter and greying at the temples. His crooked nose still creates a prominent and easily caricatured profile, while his smile is warm and accommodating. His fingernails are bitten to the quick, just as they were when he was driving, and he is small enough not to look out of place in the weighing room at Longchamps, the Parisian racetrack to which thousands of English flock each year for the running of the Pny de l'Arc de Triomphe. 'It is true, I have not put on any weight,' he says, laughing.'I am fifty-seven and a half kilos, and if anything Malcolm FolleyI might be a little lighter than when I was in Formula One.' At fifty-three, it is an enviable trick.

Tony Jardine, who was team manager at McLaren when Prost first drove for the team in 1980, the year before Ron Dennis and John Barnard arrived to reshape the team's history, had called him 'Little Napper'. Teams were small and intimate then, and Prost was bright eyed and new to the game and watched in bemusement as Jardine, an art school graduate, caricatured him as Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte perched on a front wheel of his McLaren. Perhaps no one ever really improved on the imagery of that epithet, for Prost possessed an imperious superiority in a racing car that enabled him to conquer the world unchecked; at least until Ayrton Senna materialised. But it was not as 'Little Napper' that Prost was to be known, but rather by another nickname given to him by Pierre Dupasquier, from Michelin, which struck a universal chord and accurately described the elan and intelligence of his undramatic driving style. Prost became simply: Le Professeur.

As one of a small number of sportswriters who travelled the world with the Formula One circus writing for English newspapers, I had been acquainted with him throughout most of his career as a grand prix driver. He was media-savvy from the beginning, but he will tell you that he was an innocent abroad in comparison to Senna. Indeed, it was Senna who had a fulltime travelling press officer, Betise Assumpcao, a multi-lingual, effervescent Brazilian with a swift mind and a faster tongue, who later married Williams director Patrick Head, with whom she has two children. From 1990 Betise ensured that all of Brazil's media, print and broadcast had a daily bulletin on Senna's activities because he was coherent with the law of economics that prevented all but a handful of journalists from his South America Senna Versus Prostheartland from following him in person. She was an invaluable ally to Senna, who also kept a large office and a substantial staff in So Paulo.

Prost was for the most part a lone agent, dependent on his team's publicity machine and a coterie of trusted journalists from France to spread his message. He had a pleasant and open relationship with those of us from the British media. He has always felt undervalued in France, and winning his four titles in British teams, three for McLaren and his last for Williams, did not elevate his status. 'Because the relations between the French and the English people are always a little tricky, it is perhaps difficult to be a French driver in an English team,' he suggests, drawing on centuries of turbulent Anglo-French history. 'But because I never had the French mentality, I always had a good relationship with the English people and English teams I drove for. I always said I don't like some French attitudes. Sometimes, to be honest, I never felt one hundred per cent French!' Prost was the first Frenchman to be Formula One world champion and still the only one but there is no residual sense of patriotism in his achievement. 'Being world champion for France was never my target,' he says.

His willingness to invite me to his home in Paris to discuss and answer questions on his relationship with Ayrton Senna for this book is an example of the man's generosity of spirit. But his collaboration is possibly motivated by another unspoken force. His invitation for me to be here with him is a reflection, perhaps, of his desire to ensure his voice is heard amid the clamour of testimony that he suspects, rightly, will be heard through these pages as a ringing endorsement of Senna's passion for driving on the limit; and sometimes beyond. No matter.