MOTOR SPORT, 01.10.1998

"Honestly, it's very difficult for me to talk about Ayrton, and not only because he's not here any more. He was so different, you know, so completely different from any other racing driver - any other person - I've ever known..."

Speaking now, more than four years after the death of Ayrton Senna, Alain Prost is in an invidious position, for while the two are linked for ever, indisputably the best drivers of their generation, so also each was very much the other's nemesis. That being the case, in discussing Senna, Prost cannot win, and Prost knows it. Come out with only kind words, and some will say that he sang a very different tune when Ayrton was alive; go the other way, and they will vilify him for daring to criticise a defenceless icon.

"That's why I have always refused to speak about him," says Prost. "When he died, I said, that I felt a part of me had died also, because our careers had been so bound together. And I really meant it, but I know some people thought it was not sincere. Well, all I can do is try to be as honest as possible."

From the very beginning of Ayrton Senna's Formula One career, back in 1984, his sights were set squarely on Prost. In a way it was inevitable, for Ayrton was a man of extraordinary intensity, one who needed to prove himself the best in all things, and at that time Alain was very much the king of the hill. It was their very first meeting that was to set the tone of their relationships down the years.

"I remember it very well. In the spring of 1984, the new Nürburgring was opened, and there was a celebrity race for Grand Prix drivers of the past and present, in Mercedes road cars. I was coming from Geneva to Frankfurt on a scheduled flight, and Ayrton was due to land half an hour before, so Gerd Kremer of Mercedes asked me if I would bring him to the track. On the way we chatted, and he was very pleasant. Then we got to the track, and practised the cars. I was on pole, with Ayrton second - after that he didn't talk to me any more! It seemed funny at the time. Then in the race, I took the lead - and he pushed me off the track after half a lap. So that was a good start..."

That year, 1984, was Senna's first in F1, and his Toleman-Hart was not on par with the front runners. At Monaco, though, there was rain, and when the race was abandoned, shortly before half-distance, the rookie was right on the point of passing Prost's McLaren for the lead.

"From the beginning, he looked good, although you can't always tell for sure when a guy is with a small team. He drove a great race at Monaco, but in those days - when monocoques were far less stiff than now - it was quite possible to have a poor car in the dry turn out to be very good in the wet. Of course we all rated him, but with the reservation that sometimes a young driver looks quite good, but then joins a top team, and looks ordinary. There's always some doubt until the guy gets into a quick car. With Ayrton, though, it was pretty clear he had a special talent."

"Something else people should remember is that, 15 years ago, there were a lot more very good drivers in F1 than there are now. For sure Ayrton did well from the beginning, but he showed nothing that was truly exceptional before Monaco. Monaco was the thing: after that everyone discovered him, and talked about him. Without that, it might have taken a little longer, but the impressive thing, as I say, was that he looked so good at a time when there were so many top drivers..."

Senna was also, from the start no respecter of reputations, and that upset many an established star. After a single season with Toleman, he joined Lotus-Renault for 1985, brilliantly won the Portuguese Grand Prix (again in the rain), and was a front runner everywhere. But at Hockenheim, for example, he made a mistake at the Ostkurve, and when Michele Alboreto went to pass, Ayrton swerved left and right to keep him back. Back then such tactics were not embraced by the F1 community.

"Hmmm, yes, Senna was very tough in that way, from the start. Actually, one thing I really believe now is that it wasn't so much a matter of being that tough as having his own rules. He had them, he believed in them, and that was it."

"He was extremely religious, and he used to go on about that, about speaking the truth, about his education, his upbringing, and everything else. At the time, I used to think that some of the things he did on the track didn't fit with all that, but now it seems to me he really didn't know he was sometimes in the wrong. As I said, he had these rules, he played by them, and he wasn't interested in anything else. Looking back, I really think he believed he was always in the right, always telling the truth - and on the track he was exactly the same way."