“ To start, a big hello to our friend Alain, we all miss you! » Before the Formula 1 San Marino Grand Prix, on May 1, 1994, Ayrton Senna completed the reconnaissance lap of the Imola circuit for the broadcaster TF1.
Usually without incident, this obligatory passage suddenly takes on another dimension when the Brazilian addresses his historic competitor; a few months earlier, outside the paddocks, the two men simply did not speak to each other. Live, Alain Prost hides neither his surprise nor his emotion: “ It’s nice and unexpected, but from the moment we’re no longer rivals on the track, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be friends, and why not friends in the future, you know. -we never. »
Since his retirement from the seat the previous fall, after a fourth world champion title, the Frenchman has become a TV consultant while waiting to realize other projects, including a team for which he dreams out loud of recruiting… Ayrton Senna . Between them, everything changed on November 7, 1993, the day of the “Professor’s” last Grand Prix after a decade of not always fair blows. The photo of the duo, united on the first step of the podium in Australia, went around the world. “ We gave a very good image of sport », Alain Prost told us during an exceptional interview for the 75th anniversary of the JDD.
“It’s a human relationship that people cannot understand, since I myself did not understand it at the beginning”
Obsessed since the beginning by the rivalry with his elder, the native of São Paulo suddenly felt alone at the start of the 1994 season. He called Prost once a week, at least. They talk about cars, of course, but about a thousand other things as well. So much time to catch up on. The Frenchman will not lift the veil on these intimate conversations any further, but concedes: “ It is a human relationship that people cannot understand, since I myself did not understand it at the beginning. I didn’t understand his behavior or his way of being. It was afterwards that I understood… “.
A face-to-face discussion the morning of the accident
At the start of the weekend in Imola, the atmosphere is gloomy. Compatriot and disciple of Senna, Rubens Barrichello emerges almost unscathed from a frightening exit from the track in free practice. The next day, Roland Ratzenberger would not be so lucky; the Austrian pilot hits a wall at full speed and dies instantly. Ayrton Senna hesitates to start. On Sunday, he did what he had never done on the morning of a Grand Prix: chat for fifteen minutes, one-on-one. With Alain Prost, just before the famous reconnaissance tour. Circuit safety will be at the center of their final conversation. “ I found him disturbed, different, not necessarily very fit », remembers the Frenchman.
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At 2:15 p.m., on the seventh lap, while in the lead, Ayrton Senna approached the Tamburello curve at 330 km/h. The Williams-Renault does not turn and drives straight into the wall. The Brazilian pilot died two hours later in Bologna hospital. We don’t know it yet, but it was the steering column of the Williams-Renault that gave way and caused the fatal accident. “ I learned of his death at the airport, Alain Prost rewinds. It’s a terrible memory. I didn’t know if I should go to Brazil for the funeral, given the intensity of our rivalry. I called my friend Jean-Luc Lagardère and asked his Brazilian wife, Betty, for advice, who cleared up my doubts. »
On Thursday May 5, 1994, the Frenchman, like many other pilots and thousands of Brazilians, will attend the ceremonies in São Paulo. Ayrton Senna is no more, but the exceptional sporting and human duel in which the two men engaged for ten years has entered the legend of sport. Alain Prost is still involved in the Ayrton Senna Foundation today and regularly meets the family of his former rival who became a confidant in the unpredictable twilight of his life.
