Prost Grand Prix: What Went Wrong?
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- Опубликовано: 7 сен 2024
- Renault are rebranding as Alpine next year in F1 and the French national colours will be widely used in their branding, so I thought I'd take a a look back at another French F1 team of the past, Prost Grand Prix. They were owned by 4-time F1 world champion Alain Prost and weren't very successful, so in this video I'm going to explain what went wrong, hope you enjoy!
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creativecommon...
Prost had the rug pulled out from under him at every opportunity. He was pretty candid about the various problems in his Behind the Grid.
At one point he had an honest conversation with Ron Dennis and discovered that his payroll was the same as McLaren despite having a 1/3 the staff. French labor laws being what they are meant that it was much more expensive to operate the team in France. Prost briefly considered relocating the team to England but decided that this would defeat the whole point of running a French Team.
Briatore bought Ligier in 94 to turn them into a Benetton B team, but while he was able to turn them around to a degree he also forced Renault to switch their engine supply to Benetton so they would have the same engines as Williams. This left Prost with Peugeot as his only available French engine supplier. Then Peugeot decided to change the deal at the last minute and charge him for engines instead of supplying for free. That was a sizeable chunk of his budget gone right there.
The French President was a personal friend, but then he lost the election just as Prost took over the team so all the promised government support went up in smoke with it. Otherwise the French government would have applied pressure on French brands to support Prost GP extensively.
In his Beyond The Grid,
Prost said that he was only convinced by the French President at the time. 2 days before he was supposed to sign the paperwork he said "I don't want to do it anymore," but the French president bounced back saying "Please do it for France, we will help you at a later date." Of Course that never happened.
Peugeot screwed Alain over the engine deal, but their engines were still so unreliable it's not funny even at Jordan Grand Prix where 14 times in 1997 those cars failed to finish from engine failure.
in this sense of patriotism, Fittipaldi Automotive had the same catastrophic results, with the bonus of burying the career of a two-time champion
You forgot a particular: in September of 2001 Diniz tried to buy the whole team in order to restore the economical situation, but Alain Prost refused so Diniz and his family decide to abandon him.
If he had sold PROST GP to Diniz, the team probably have continued to exist
The AP01 was gorgeous, still remember it from 1998, that Metalic blue looked amazing
6:24 Stewart Grand Prix in 1997 (as a brand new team) only finished the race 8 times between the two cars the team had run with drivers Rubens Barrichello who finished 2nd in Monaco and Jan Magnussen.
So there you go…..even Red Bull started at the back of the grid.
in my opinion, Prost's biggest mistake was the obsession with having Peugeot engines, just for the sake of building a full french team. had they stayed with Mugen-Honda they maybe wouldve reached a level of success similar to that of Jordan's during the late 90s. for 2001 they had good Ferrari engines but their train had already gone by long ago, they had lost all their sponsors, money, good drivers (Trulli, Panis, Heidfeld and finally Alesi, mid 2001) and by that time everyone kinda knew the team was bound to disappear sooner than later. Panis' injury was also really unlucky as it completely cut off their momentum in 1997
They might have even been a contender for works Honda engines for the 2000 onwards instead of BAR
Great video! And you're right about Prost producing some amazing looking cars!
Thanks James! They definitely made some stunners, I think they're criminally underrated in the F1 RUclips community!
Very nicely put together. I think it sums up Prost GP's time in F1 very well. High hopes, big names, utterly underwhelming. Its like the cliche in football of a great player not always making a great manager.
Thanks! You've summarised it perfectly!
At least with Ligier, French F1 fans has something to cheer about 😂. Also, the next team story I want you to do is Jordan. One of the last of the "independents" F1 team
That Panis win in 1996 was special! You've obviously got mind reading capabilities as I definitely want to do them next 👀
@@AlexTalksRacing Oooooh that's going to be interesting. Maybe after Ligier you'll go with Jordan?
@@motorsportfanboy7769 I meant Jordan 😂
@@AlexTalksRacing Oh ffs I must have misread it or smth 😂. But anyway, yes! Can't wait for the Jordan one!
@@motorsportfanboy7769 don't worry! When it gets done I hope you'll like it 🙏🏻
Enjoyable video. Looking at it from the outside it was always a mystery as how a driver as successful as Alain could run a team into the ground like that, but in the late 90's and early 2000's we didn't have the flow and access to information available like there is now and there were so many other factors going on. Ultimately though, being successful on track doesn't mean you will be off it. Buying a midfield running outfit without experience on the other side of the pitwall, a driver is always likely to find the team going down rather than up unfortunately.
Thanks David! I don't think Alain has got what it takes to manage a team of people. Although being "the professeur" made him an incredible driver, he doesn't give me vibes of authority and presence in the high stakes of being an F1 team principal/owner.
That's part of it isn't it. As a top level driver, you manage yourself and tell other people what you need and they sort it. It's not your job to be the fixer. As team boss you have to deal with all the stuff you didn't look at as a driver. The role Alain has with Renault now, similar to what Niki was doing with Mercedes, seems to suit him though as he's seen all sides of it and has had many years to reflect on what he could have done differently and why things played out like they did.
That is not necessarily true if you all remember.
Jackie Stewart was another driver who formed a team from the ground up, and had decent success in the 3 years Stewart competed as an owner before the team got taken over by Jaguar. The team got a race win and 4 additional podiums between two of their four drivers who raced for Stewart, Rubens Barrichello and Johnny Herbert. Ford their manufacturer became a competitive force and could challenge for race wins and podiums between them, Mercedes, Ferrari, Renault, and Honda while Peugeot faced reliability issues and would hardly score any world points at all with Prost Grand Prix. Anyway after Jaguar failed, the team became Red Bull and is now a top tier team with Honda engines (rebranded as Red Bull's own as of 2022). Thanks to Jackie Stewart a team that goes back to 1997 (under different management) is very successful and have won so many races and podiums. They have won the constructor's championship four years in a row between 2010 and 2013 and five drivers championships between Sebastian Vettel and Max Verstappen [4 and 1 (as of the moment)] as of 2022.
@@zanemarte9877 yep. There are certainly exceptions. Jackie said in an interview that he considered the team a success because it made more money than it lost, which in F1 is definitely an achievement. I remember reading (can't remember if it was autosport or which magazine) that they weren't sure if Stewart would manage to make it to the grid as despite having works cosworth engines, they'd only got a budget of 27 million. Jackie was a very clever guy when it came to presenting himself, the team and making the most of what he had for sure. As a driver he had a very close relationship with Ken Tyrell and saw up close how a small team with good leadership could be successful. The sport has changed dramatically but the simple rule of doing the basic, fundamental things well still remains.
After watching those old races with Prost competing in the 1990's as an owner during this past offseason between 2021 and 2022. I could not believe that Prost failed because the team had so unreliable engines from a manufacturer not well known for racing. Prost should've sticked with Honda to begin with instead of unreliable Peugeot engines. And the fact that their best driver Olivier Panis never got back to his old-self after injury. I'm glad that the team was able to capitalize when they were able to but only at very few races.
On what you should do next I would suggest Jaguar, the team that took over Stewart in 2000.
Great vid! Enjoyed it a lot
Thank you Robin, glad you enjoyed it!
excellent video, tho 1 question.
did all the technical staff leave in '97? can't imagine same people were responsible for the '98 car.
Thank you! From my understanding the team was the same (mainly Logic Bigois, Bernard Dudot and Ben Wood). There were some regulation changes in 1998 that could've messed everything up. That's a really good question!
ah - reg change. that will do it.
I think the main problem was the car was being designed to take the Mugan Honda and then Prost got a engine with Peugeot and the car had to altered to take the new engine .
Alesi Qualified 7th in Monaco not 8th which was a minor miracle in this terrible car.
Awesome video! I think the last few years of Arrows would be a great video. Any excuse to see that 1998 all black car
Thank you! Arrows would be a great team to focus on, that 98 livery is one of my favourites of all time!
Brilliant video, very informative 👍
Thanks, I hope you learnt something new!
Great video....well made and very informative. Massive Prost fan.
Another great video well made 👍
Thank you Ben, glad you liked it! 😀
I think it was not bad to buy Ligier, but as someone who never really felt like a nationalist, Prost should have not cared about building an all French team. If he sticked to Mugen Honda, I'm sore it would have been much better, because these engines were helping Jordan win races in 1998 and 1999. He was not the first who fell down this "all being French" rabbithole. There was a man called Jean Daninos, who had a company named Facel that produced car bodys. He then decided to do his own cars branded as Facel-Vega. They were big luxury GT cars and to make it a reliable car, he chose the Chrysler V8 engines and gearboxes. And the cars were good and company was succesfull. But there were always people forcing him to do an all French car. So he eventually agreed and so the Facelia was a car with a French engine made by former Talbot-Lago people and built by Pont-à-Mousson, as well as the gearbox was made there. Because of it's strange design (only two camshaft bearings) and bad manufacture processing, the engines failed often and the company was flodded with warranty claims. This destroyed the financially, aswell as their reputation fell to zeru and eventually, after some struggles, they had to close down.
The funniest part about Peugeot claim at 6:40 about their engine made up for almost 800 HP their own driver Alesi even shot back at them by saying "If Peugeot could made up 800 HP then Ferrari and Mercedes engine should have made for almost 840-860 HP". In other words Alesi claim that Peugeot claim was a lie.
Loving your videos mate, top top quality stuff! And an awesome story 🏁
Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Your channel is very good, you deserve way more subscribers.
The only thing i used to like about the Prost cars was the livery. Nice color
Thank you, comments like this mean a lot! Their liveries were beautiful to look at, it's a shame the cars didn't go as fast as they looked.
Awesome video. Watching it agin, to make sure I didn’t miss anything. 😄
Thanks Jessica! Glad you enjoyed it! 🙏🏻
first things that come to my mind when someone meantions Prost : 4 times champion, McLaren & Renault. Also Ligier & Prost F1 Team.
From what I read, Ligier had some serious debt and the team which was funded by the French Goverement was cut back and with the labour laws being as strict as they are in France, the staff was paid alot. Prost said himself he wasn't suited to run the team and he was quite candid about that.
The whole "French pride" thing didn't work out with Peugeot coming onboard. Although having government support can be beneficial, Prost was so mismanaged it wasn't really a good thing.
That "PlayStation" livery though...
Alain prost is pure poison for team spirit
team suggestion: mastercard lola the shortest lived f1 team or maybe usf1 or any other proposed teams that never happened
It's a shame. The cars were beautiful, and sounded so good with the Peugeot engines!
Peugeot was so bad in reliability it's not funny. Once Peugeot changed the terms from free of charge to contributing a massive amount of Prost's budget for the engines, Prost wanted to call the deal off. In his Beyond The Grid podcast from 2018, Alain said "2 days before I signed the contract, I told the President of France I don't want to do it anymore because this is not what I thought but he then told me they will bring in help at a later date yet that never happened." Peugeot withdrew their name after 2000 but was still around for two more years as Asiatech providing engines to Arrows and Minardi, and of course Prost Grand Prix folded into bankruptcy at the end of 2001 therefore ending the dream Prost had for a decade. But Prost should've let Peugeot leave F1 and sticked with Honda to begin with instead of switching for the sake of building a pure French team.
How about a video on HRT and what went wrong.
That's definitely a team to add to my list, thank you! 🙏🏻
Nearly everything
I still miss Ligier even now, thanks for the video
it is a good one cheers.👍
They were an underrated team, glad you enjoyed the video!
@@AlexTalksRacing Thanks for the reply Alex good stuff mate.
As it happens I have just bought a vintage Ligier jacket ,it’s in the post right now!!
It’s awesome considering it’s age.
I have been after one for ages, it’s the real deal not a replica never seen one quite like it.
Just going to sub your channel 👍
@@TS-bn7zt that sounds so cool, I love retro F1 merchandise! Thanks for the sub, hope you enjoy my future content 🙏🏻
The only aspect of the car was the livery was beautiful…. Was it, don’t see it somehow
Pretty sure the Renault turbos of the early eighties scored fewer finishes.
Prost was unfortunate in that they came very close to winning a few races in 1997, and lost Olivier Panis to injury after his massive crash in Canada. Had the team managed to win in their debut year, their transition to the 1998 regulations might have been aided by more investment, and kept them at least in the midfield. Long-term though, they would not have survived as a privateer without championship success. If the team was more successful initially, they could possibly have been a semi-works Peugeot team. Although, even then, they probably wouldn't have survived past the 2008 financial crash.
The team's engine manufacturer Peugeot compared to other manufacturers such as Mercedes, Honda, Ferrari, Renault, and Ford was not as reliable and always plagued by failures. Had Prost sticked with Honda engines instead Peugeot, the team might have made it and became a 2nd tier team to Jordan or even B.A.R. Because remember B.A.R. in 2000 started receiving engines from Honda after a disasterous year with Supertec (techincally Renault) engines and so many DNF's from engine failure between Villeneuve and Zonta.
Well told story, thank you.
To be honest, the only problem with the team was Porst himself... he fall out with Peugeot, Sponsors, Drivers, investours... basically everyone!! A mirror of his dirty "political" style as a driver in his career - he learnt nothing! Prost wil always be Prost - great driver but an awfull problem solver - the problem is ALWAYS the others.
You need to put politics aside when owning a team and you're right, Prost didn't do this.
@@AlexTalksRacing By the way, thanks for being ineteresting and direct to the point in your videos - i already watched 3 of them - consider yourself a new subscriber! Keep up the good work, mate
@@BallisticEVA01 thank you that's much appreciated! I hope you enjoy my future videos, I should have a new one out this weekend 🙏🏻
Ahh, finally someone mentions my uncle! Sadly not for good reasons 😅🤣🤣
How about a video for Pierluigi Martini?
I'll look into doing that!
…also, re John Barnard: same career path as his friend and contemporary, Patrick Head. A supremely gifted mechanical engineer who during the early days of modern F1 aero had been good enough at that side of things to build cars as good aerodynamically as anyone else.
However, once people like Newey turned up, who were qualified aeronautical engineers and downforce numbers formed an ever greater percentage of a car’s lap time as gizmo after gizmo was banned, their ability to influence the overall performance of their cars became diminished as the aero work had to be delegated to specialists within the team, probably lacking their own personal genius…
Please take a look at why Jaguar F1 failed!
I'll put that down on my list for the future!
You were nice with Prost. He F.. up 90% of his decisions. Wanted a patriotic car but with no any funds...
Briatore bought ligier to get the Renault engines for Benetton.
As you had hinted at the start of your video: please do a series on Pascal Wehrlein : which I perceive to be one of the greatest injustices and travesty of F1: a driver of such great potential left out of F1 for political reasons. Pascal scored points in a Manor and Sauber with a two year old engine: the mark of a great potential. But something went wrong at a Force India test and the test was cut short and Otmar chose to pick on matters unrelated to his driving. This put paid to Pascals future as other Team Principals went along with Otmars evaluation of Pascal. A great driver discarded by F1 for the wrong reasons.
the stuff with the everything
Can you make a video about what went wrong with Williams
I'm thinking of doing Williams in the future, specifically between 1997-today
@@AlexTalksRacing cool
What happened to the legionairres France team, home of jack lee-feet?
If you mean the Ligier team, they turned into this team (Prost) 😀
Alain thought the French had good engineering skills and organisation skills. Alain was wrong
BAR's first car, the 01, only finished 9 races in 1999. More of a dog than the Prost AP03 (just). They also finished behind Minardi in the Constructors!
The 1999 BAR had awful reliability, but I think on pure pace it was pretty quick especially in the hands of Villeneuve. His start in Barcelona was immense!
The 1997 Stewart-Ford SF-01 finished 1 less race than that B.A.R. This is between the two cars driven by Rubens Barrichello who finished 2nd in Monaco and Jan Magnussen
Could you to a video of Stewart gp
I was thinking of doing a video on them but they didn't really get anything wrong, it was when they were bought out by Ford and rebranded as Jaguar where they were awful 😅
Jan Magnussen pls😉
When did prost break his nose?
monaco when he crashed his renault
@@steviegbcool What year?
peugeot went wrong... prost before launch wanted to quit
In his Beyond The Grid episode, Prost revealed that he told the French President two days before he signed the contract "I don't want to do it anymore this deal is not what I thought and we are going nowhere." Then the French President replied telling Prost "Please do it for France we will help you at a later date." But of course that never happened as the Peugeot name left Formula 1 at the end of 2000 but was still an engine manufacturer to Arrows and Minardi as Asiatech before leaving completely at the end of 2002. Then of course Prost Grand Prix folded completely into bankruptcy just before the start of 2002 because not even the 9th place finish in the 2001 standings was not enough to keep the team moving forward.
Another thing this guy did not talk about here was that the team was bought by the Phoenix Finance Group but the FIA reviewed it as a brand new team and subject to new entry fees because the buyers despite arguments and evidence presented to the FIA that they have the right to compete in Formula 1 they actually don't because the team doesn't have any legitimy to compete despite buying the ailing Prost Grand Prix team out of bankruptcy.
@@zanemarte9877 it is wrong for tax payer money to go into f1 just as alpine does benefit from it dirextly or indirectly with questionalble guests at its launch and lame results
The problem with Prost was they inherited all the same cultural problems that had held Ligier back and did nothing to address them. As much as I like Prost as a driver, he was F1’s ultimate bad loser and as a result the worst person possible to take over Ligier and run an all French outfit.
Was a shame what happened to Panis in 1997 though. I remember him well being one of the stars of the early season and he very definitely was never the same driver after that accident. Didn’t seem like a particularly big shunt either to the naked eye, so he was very unlucky to get two busted legs out of it and so long on the side lines…
Blame Peugeot ; classic Prost!
I don't blame Prost. Peugeot was so bad in reliability it's not funny. He should've sticked with Honda to begin with instead of switching for the sake of building a pure French team. Peugeot changed the terms on him from free of charge to contributing a massive amount of his budget for the engines. In his Beyond The Grid podcast from 2018, he said "2 days before I signed the contract, I told the President of France I don't want to do it anymore, but he then told me we will bring in help at a later date but that never happened." Peugeot may have left after 2000, but they were still around as Asiatech for two more years providing engines to Arrows and Minardi.
Panis was better than Alesi
Cheater winner when head of F1 put thumb on the scales
S/o to Panis.
If only he didn't have that accident...
coopersucar
in this sense of patriotism, Fittipaldi Automotive had the same catastrophic results, with the bonus of burying the career of a two-time champion
Great video....well made and very informative. Massive Prost fan.
Thanks, glad you enjoyed it! Prost fans are a rare occurrence on here so I'm happy you thought I produced it well 🙌🏻
@@AlexTalksRacing New subscriber to your channel. ..really pleased I found it! Hope to see more Prost related videos :)
@@grahammc3189 thanks for subscribing! I'm thinking of doing a Jarno Trulli video in the future so his Prost stint will definitely come up in there!