Alain Prost tells his story in an event series

At the time when Netflix subscribers discover the biopic on Ayrton Senna, Alain Prost reveals himself in another format, that of the documentary, on Canal+. With a name anagram of “sport” and a track record crowned with four F1 world championship titles, the Ligerien has established himself naturally among the big names that the group wanted to bring together in its Hall of Fame of legends of all disciplines.

After three years of work by producer Saga Blanchard and directors Audrey Estrougo and Stéphane Colineau, all of Paris' motorsport community and those very close to Alain Prost gathered around him, Monday near the Champs-Élysées, to discover a portrait that the champion wanted different.

“I’ve wanted to talk about something other than sport for a long time,” he explains, also quick to point out that he wants to shine a different light on his career. “I have been living for 30 years with a sort of reduction in my life which is the Prost-Senna episode”, recalls the almost septuagenarian, who never dared to redirect the story of a career that ended just a few months before the death of the idolized Brazilian.

Without in any way denying the extraordinary value of this duel, he wanted to focus on his beginnings, the period of his life of which he says he is most proud, and also tell something else, what “out of modesty, out of professional conscience and also out of difficulty because it was not always obvious with the media” he almost always kept quiet.

Pour Motorsport.comhe explains: “With age, with time, I wanted to leave a mark, I wanted to share. When I say that this is the period of which I am most proud, that is not a challenge. It is really the beginning. It's a bit simplistic to tell it like that, it was of course much more complicated, much more magical at the same time because you have to see in the details how it happens. Afterwards, the rest. it almost becomes banal: the race, the competition, even if it was magical.”

“I would have been frustrated that we didn't know [ma carrière]with all these stories, and it only remains about a fight with Senna. Honestly, everyone only remembers that. It's very good. The proof, I will live until the end of my days with this story and this legend, but there are still important things and, of course, some more important to me.”

Alain Prost wants to leave a different mark, and this six-episode series will certainly achieve that. Meticulously, she goes into the details of a life much richer than the few years of duel with Ayrton Senna. Thomas Sénécal, Canal+ sports boss, sees “an epic, an adventure” when the Frenchman recounts his vocation, born alongside a brother whose illness will profoundly upset him, then his irresistible rise to the pantheon of Formula 1.

Himself a historical and technical consultant for the series, he sets the scene to retrace his journey and the major dates of his career. Through numerous archive images, a real treasure in themselves, and a long interview with the protagonist, interspersed with some precious testimonies, notably those of Jackie Stewart and Ron Dennis, we find the “professor”: thrifty and hardworking from his youth, carrying out painstaking work with the greatest discipline to achieve his ambitions, which were immediately very high.

He was very moved when the lights came back on in the room after the screening of the first three episodes, which covered his childhood and his life as a young champion, extending up to his second title which, in 1986, coincided with the death of this beloved brother. Alain Prost puts aside his modesty for a moment to express, undoubtedly more than ever, the upheaval caused by this death. With a clear desire to write a family will, he offers a piece of the light shined on him for more than 40 years to his brother, but also his parents, examples of self-sacrifice, and a grandmother who alone embodies the resilience.

In a non-linear timeline, the series parallels family grief and the terrifying scenes the driver faces on track, particularly being involved in Didier Pironi's accident at the 1982 German Grand Prix, which he says that it almost made him stop running.

Before tackling the Senna years in the second half and discussing their unique relationship, this first part of the series also dwells on an episode which remains for him “an injury”that of the 1982 French GP and the hiccup of instructions not applied by René Arnoux. The room trembles and exclaims its astonishment when, on the screen, the former pilot firmly states: “Renault, they always betrayed me”. A strong moment of the series, but undoubtedly the only one he regrets while this sentence only depicts “an era”he tells us, that “from competition, until 1993”and that “relations are very good” Today.

PROSTthe series, these are two evenings rich in anecdotes, to share with one of the greatest French champions and one of the most illustrious Formula 1 drivers. A rare and precious opportunity to delve behind the scenes of the discipline at through one of the great epics which made it legendary.

“PROST”
Documentary series in six 26-minute episodes
Sunday December 8 and Sunday December 15, 2024 at 9 p.m. on Canal+, then available on myCanal
Original creation Canal+
Written and directed by Stéphane Colineau and Audrey Estrougo
Produced by Saga Blanchard
Production Colette Productions