Alain Prost: The 1993 season was very strange

It is almost 30 years since Alain Prost won his fourth championship title, but his memories of the period of collaboration with the Williams team, the strongest in Formula 1 at the time, are far from the best.

“Actually, the 1993 season was, unbelievably, my worst,” admitted Prost, who took part in the Beyond the Grid podcast. – I’ll be honest: in general, he became a reflection of the attitude towards me that I felt at different points in my career.

The 1993 season was very strange. The contract with Frank Williams was signed in early 1992 – then I missed the season. And I only asked Frank for one thing: “Pay me as much as you want, I don’t need No. 1 pilot status, but Ayrton Senna can’t be my partner.”

Frank said: “Of course I understand everything and we can include such a clause in the contract.” That’s how it all started, but 1993 was very difficult. I won’t cover all the episodes from that season, but the bottom line is that when I won a race driving a Williams it was accepted as the norm, and when I lost it was assumed that it was due to my own stupidity. .

In general, the season was not the most pleasant. The problems started when Frank told me that Renault (Williams cars have had French engines since 1989) wants Ayrton to play for the team. “But I understand, we have a contract with you…” he added.

At the same time I felt the support of Patrick Head and Adrian Newey. but everything that happened had nothing to do with sports. I then said I was ready to compete with Senna on the track, but I don’t want him to be my partner. So in terms of human relations, that season was far from the best.

In terms of racing, the FW15C has not become my favorite car. It was full of electronics, required a new approach to settings – even working with engineers was organized differently. I used to do everything myself, but in that case the engineers did it, because the car had active suspension. All settings were made through the computer and for me it became a serious problem.

Otherwise, my approaches remained the same, I had a great partner – Damon Hill, who helped me a lot. He had more experience with such machines, having already worked with them in tests.

In general, many things were new to me, but the main difference with the situation was that we were competing with Ayrton, with a very efficient chassis. But driving that car was extremely difficult. On some tracks the FW15C worked perfectly, on others it started to get difficult, moreover the landing in the cockpit was not comfortable, not what I wanted. By the way, when Ayrton took my place next year, he also had the same difficulties.

Switching wasn’t easy either, and we didn’t find that out until half way through the season. Of course the car had a very powerful engine and there was no track where we were much inferior to our rivals, although I must admit that in the last two Grands Prix – in Japan and Australia – I did everything I could to finish it season with victories, but that proved impossible. McLaren cars were much faster there…”