Ferrari’s latest game plan has racing legend Alain Prost raising his eyebrows. With the team deciding to forego the historical ‘number 1’ driver approach for 2025, when they bring Lewis Hamilton on board to team up with Charles Leclerc, questions are swirling.
Prost, who’s no stranger to the intense dynamics of F1 teams, shared his insights on Servus TV, hinting that when teams eye the championship, typically, they lean on a leading driver.
“I have never been officially the first driver at a team – never,” Prost candidly revealed. “I never asked for that, but maybe it was a mistake.”
“If I had been the first driver, perhaps one of the years at McLaren, or in 1990 at Ferrari, I could have won the world title, because things would have gone differently.”
Diving into the annals of F1 history, Prost pointed out a pattern. “If you look at history, Ayrton (Senna) was always the first driver, and the same goes for Michael Schumacher, Lewis Hamilton, and Max Verstappen,” he noted.
“And that actually applies to all championships in the last 20 years.”
Prost believes Ferrari’s storied legacy and the pressures it faces make the role of a clear leading driver even more crucial. “Especially at Ferrari, you really need a first driver, because you have to deal with more pressure,” he explained. “There’s a lot of politics going on, which you sometimes don’t know about and which you sometimes don’t understand.”
“When you’re fighting another team, it makes it much easier for a team if you have a clear number 1,” Prost added, sharing his own triumph in 1986 as a case in point. “I won the title in 1986,” he recalled, “after a battle with Nigel (Mansell) and Nelson (Piquet). They were teammates (at Williams) and they never received team orders. I really used that to my advantage.”
Prost mused on the implications of Ferrari’s strategy. “When you don’t have the chance to win the title, maybe you don’t need a first driver,” he suggested. “But if you do have that chance and you want to win that title … maybe we’ll find out next year with Lewis and Charles.”
“That will be very interesting,” Prost anticipated. “It will be very difficult for management, but on paper there will be no first driver, which is good for the sport anyway.”
