Alain Prost Quotes

• "A German team could be quite good. But maybe they are a little bit too convinced that they are the best."
• "Also, I think the English have the right mentality. The organisation is very strict."
• "At one stage the car in front was 400m away and I couldn't see anything. People will mumble and say "Prost is not brave". I'm brave."
• "Everybody was going for high-downforce, because there was a problem with the tire-wear."
• "From the beginning of the Friday, I worked with John Barnard and, without caring about qualifying, we worked on the best race set-up we could possibly find."
• "I always thought it was better to be safe and finish third or fourth than to risk a lot and win or come second."
• "I always wanted to feel that I had enough knowledge and experience of the car that I could change its set-up on the grid and still win the race."
• "I always work the same way, starting from the beginning of the weekend, so I know at the beginning of the race, from all that I have analysed during the practice, whether I will win the race or not."
• "I can see a lot of people doing this job just for their image, for their ego. I think that's a big advantage I've had."
• "I don't analyse only during the race."
• "I don't care too much. I had a big problem this year after Brazil and Donington Park. I could have gone right down, but I was better in Imola and then Barcelona. I don't have any sympathy for a lot of the people in F1."
• "I don't like to go over curbs, because I don't want to be hard on the car."
• "I have always had this mentality because I hated to break anything on the car."
• "I have forced myself to be smooth."
• "I have had some problems because the French don't like people to have success, they don't like the number one."
• "I have no problem with the people who work hard to get success. But I think people are very jealous about success. I work very hard and they don't appreciate that."
• "I like the mentality of the Americans. It's like when you talk about money."
• "I love sports and I have done some dangerous ones, like hang-gliding. But I would never, ever go bunjee-jumping. Why? Because I have no control. That is what I hate."
• "I pushed like mad, yet everyone was gathered around the winner and they were thinking that I was just trundling around. But that's motor racing."
• "I remember at the beginning of my time in Italy I was saying all the wrong things, but I didn't care, because at least I tried."
• "I remember in the first part of the race I was sixth and I could have gone quicker, but I had to go slow. It was one of the most difficult things I have ever done."
• "I remember when John Barnard went to Ferrari he banned the mechanics from having wine at lunchtime. I think it was right. It's very difficult to say, "Ferrari should have done this or that", because it is always a compromise."
• "I stopped only once and I won the race by 30 seconds, but I'd been two seconds behind in qualifying!"
• "I think it's the English in general. All the English people I know don't want to make the effort to speak another language. Maybe they are shy too."
• "I think maybe the English don't want to try something and look stupid, because they are a bit reserved."
• "I was looking at the history of the sport and I couldn't understand why there have been so many good South American drivers, especially Brazilians."
• "I was something like seventh on the grid, about two seconds behind Mansell's Williams-Honda."
• "I was taught all the bad English words to start with, by Paddy McNally of Marlboro."
• "I was very interested in that. It is very important to have confidence as well as to build up experience."
• "I worked very hard and I played around a lot with the weight. We would prepare the cars maybe 10 or 15 kg lighter than the limit, because then I could have the rest of the weight as ballast and put it where I wanted."
• "I would look at Michael Schumacher on the podium next to me and he'd be very happy and I understood how he felt. But very often my mind would already be on the next race."
• "I would prefer to finish sixth rather than lead and then crash or retire. I have always wanted to finish to get the experience."
• "I would say that F1 started and grew in England. Technically they are better organised, and I think that there is a more healthy level of competition between the teams."
• "I'm brave to say that I won't take this sort of risk."
• "If I see some guy and maybe he's invented something for example, to put on your bread and made millions of dollars from it, I admire him."
• "In 1980 I finished three or four times in seventh place."
• "In conditions like we had in the warm up at Hockenheim this year, when there was a lot of water and no visibility, it was like Russian roulette."
• "In Formula Renault everyone had the same tyres, same chassis and same engine. I thought, "Where are you going to do it?""
• "In France you have two teams, but they are never competitive at the same time. In Italy you have only Ferrari and some small teams."
• "It may sound exaggerated, but there is a time for everything and that again is where the British teams find the best compromise. Perhaps they're a bit too strict sometimes, but when you want to win it's much better."
• "It was difficult at the time at McLaren, because we had a lot of Kiwis and Australians, so I always found it really hard to understand."
• "It's always better to speak the language of the team. Not only for the direct contact with everyone - sometimes it also helps you to understand the mentality of the people in the team a bit better."
• "It's like when people talk about driving F1 cars in the rain. I have absolutely no problem with it."
• "It's not too good to have this attitude in F1. It could be a disadvantage."
• "Maybe I am not French, maybe I am from nowhere."
• "Maybe you could say that I had those cars because I was good and people knew me, and knew that within the team I can get the very best from everyone."
• "No driver, except Niki Lauda in 1984, has got more points than me in the same car."
• "One of my biggest problems this season was with the clutch at the start of the race. I hate to risk the car."
• "People don't understand that it was maybe my biggest pleasure to drive an F1 car when it's wet."
• "So in fact the only thing you can judge in this sport its the longterm. You can judge a career or a season, but not one race."
• "Some Italians are geniuses, but you have to find a balance."
• "Sometimes I think I could have got some better results if I had a different mentality; if I could have pushed hard and attacked. But then I would have had a good chance of making a mistake."
• "Sometimes the food was much better at Ferrari."
• "That is an important part of my success. Another big part of my success is that I hated not to finish a race."
• "The best one was Brazil in 1987, with a McLaren-Porsche."
• "The best risk is the one you control yourself. The one I hate and would never take is the risk you can't control."
• "The French are a bit like the Italians. A guy might work very hard to become a F1 driver, but once he gets there he's happy."
• "The French like tobuild a guy up, then when he's at the top they cut him down. Almost everywhere is like this, except America."
• "The people who criticise you will not be the ones taking care of your legs when you are in your wheelchair. People who never drove a car in these conditions, they just don't know."
• "There have been times when I have been flat-out to finish sixth, but you can't see that from the outside."
• "To be honest, it hurts, but not deep inside. It also helps me to motivate myself. I have really enjoyed doing this job for me."
• "We went in the opposite direction and ran very little downforce. So I would have to force myself to go slowly through the corners, and we planned to stop only once. Everybody else was going to stop at least twice, if not more."
• "What I did from the first year was to test very often, if the budget allowed, and I would change everything on the car all the time - anti-roll bar, springs, everything; just to understand what was happening on the car."
• "What I have is a guy who wins the lottery and gets 10 million dollars and then doesn't pay tax on it. That I hate."
• "When I test I never go right to the limit. Only because when you are below the limit you can go at the same speed all day, and that's the only way you can be absolutely sure about what you are testing."
• "When I was not part of it, and it really reminded me of that time at Zandvoort 15 years ago. Except that being part of the whole Grand Prix thing was more of a dream then."
• "When you win a race like this the feeling is very, very good."
• "Without going to what I think is my limit. I always say that my ideal is to get pole with the minimum effort, and to win the race at the slowest speed possible."
• "You can't always have the best team. It's always a compromise."
• "You can't think you are going to win all the races by being quicker, because it's not possible. So you need to find another way."
• "You know, you are always very shy when you are on the outside. When you're on the inside you're part of it all."
• "You want to have fun but you also want to work well. Sometimes I was quite happy at Ferrari, because we would have fun, but then they could not stop having fun and go back to the real work."
• "You were not in control You had no visibility: maybe there was a car in front of you, maybe not."
• "I rely on Prost to negotiate the first corner and the rest of it."
• "When I drove for British teams... they called me The Tadpole because I was too small to be a frog."
• "Ayrton has this problem - he thinks that he can't kill himself."