Every year that goes by the silly season seems to begin earlier, and this year is no exception. What is strange about these particular suggestions is who and where. Speculation on the 27th of March suggested that Alain Prost, 4 times world champion, had applied to the FIA for an emergency renewal of his superlicense. Presumably the superlicense was going to be granted so that he could race for McLaren in the near future. It was suggested that Mika Hakkinen was still feeling the effects of his Adelaide crash, and would be replaced by Prost.
As usual most of the media of the world perpetuated the myth that Alain Prost had sworn never to race again in respect to his late ex-McLaren teammate, three times World Champion Ayrton Senna. Let me set the record straight here and now. What Alain actually said was "out of respect for him, I would never, never, never take the seat in his car". Clearly Alain meant that he would not race for Williams in 1994 out of his respect for his former partner.
The first flaw in Prost’s reason for a return that springs to mind is, if Mika Hakkinen is indeed still having problems, then David Coulthard has something to seriously worry about when Mika is 100% fit. A injured driver, who still manages to out qualify his team mate by an average of 7 places (and almost a full second) must be some driver after all.
The question remains, what just in happening behind the closed doors in Woking, Surrey.
The McLaren team has been under much fire recently. The noticeable lack of success over the last few seasons has brought suggestions that Phillip Morris is reconsidering its involvement with the famous team. Sounds serious? Well, more so than it would seem. After all, Marlboro and McLaren have the longest association of any motorsport sponsorship deal ever. Clearly any threat to such a long term deal would be a major blow to McLaren.
Last year, McLaren attempted to focus rather more interest in their team by contracting a rather popular ex-World Champion to lead McLaren. The motives for this are still not clear today. Ron Dennis has never wavered in his belief that Mika Hakkinen is one of the very fastest drivers today, and the relative performance of Mansell and Mika at McLaren was a testament to this. The ultimate result was tarnishing Mansell’s otherwise excellent career with a short, and rather unsuccessful, post script. Clearly no World Champion seems content to wander around the middle of the field, just making up the numbers.
McLaren is not exactly short of drivers either. In addition to Mika, David and Alain, there is also the British Formula 3 sensation and current ITC driver Jan Magnussen. Jan was the toast of British Motorsport after beating Ayrton Senna's long standing record number of wins in a season. Magnussen's very credible debut for McLaren at Aida suggests that -- if anyone is about to replace anyone -- Jan would be the logical choice.
So why would Prost return to the sport for McLaren?. The easiest thing to forget about Prost was that he chose to use his speed sparingly. Senna may have been faster, but Prost was smarter. Would Prost risk coming back to the team, only to be outclassed like Mansell, by Mika Hakkinen?.
The answer to that would appear to be no. Prost has absolutely nothing to prove. A driver who wins one in every four races he contested, and sets a total of 41 fastest race laps, must go down in the hall of all time greats. Prost will want to be remembered for his four World Championships and his record number of race wins, not for an abortive attempt of re-entering McLaren nee Mansell.
Even with all that off my chest, I still have a nagging doubt. History records the one statistic that Prost never achieved: the Grand Prix 200 club. And with his total of 199 Grand Prix starts, is one more at top of the collection out of the question?. Logic would dictate no; but, since when has Formula One ever been logical?