Alain Prost believes it is “absolutely impossible” for F1′s newest teams to ever break the dominance of the sport’s top five.
He is referring to small privateers Caterham (formerly Lotus), Marussia (formerly Virgin) and HRT (formerly Hispania), who were enticed into formula one in 2010 following the departures of manufacturers Honda, BMW and Toyota.

As well as winning four championships as a driver, Frenchman Prost also ran his own team between 1997 and 2001, when it succumbed to financial problems.

The Russian website F1News asked Prost what advice he would give to F1′s current tailenders.

“I will say quite frankly that they cannot become competitive in today’s formula one,” he answered. “It’s impossible.

“They can make some progress, but – of course – you must immediately put the question ‘What goals do they pursue?’

“To break into the top five with a new team like this in formula one — it is absolutely impossible,” said Prost.

Alain Prost has revealed he has no desire to see the highly-lauded feature film about his former nemesis Ayrton Senna.
The award-winning ‘Senna’ movie focuses strongly on legendary Senna’s on and off-track rivalry with Frenchman Prost, who was portrayed as the politicking villain.

“I haven’t seen it and I don’t want to see it,” the 57-year-old told the Russian website F1News.

“I definitely don’t agree with how they went about it,” Prost explained. “I spent a lot of time trying to explain to the makers that they are wrong.”

The Frenchman was also asked about the late Ayrton’s nephew Bruno, who in 2012 will race for Williams-Renault, a combination that in 1993 powered Prost to the last of his four titles.

“Bruno is a great guy and I mean that sincerely,” he said.

“I cannot judge his ability as a driver, because it’s premature to talk about that, but he is a good person.”

Alain Prost has conceded it will be difficult for the once-great Williams to return to the top in formula one.
The legendary Frenchman won the last of his four world championships with the famous British team, which in 1993 was utterly dominant.

But Williams has not won a single race since 2004, and last year finished the constructors’ standings a woeful ninth, having scored only a handful of points.

“I talk often with Frank Williams,” Prost told the Russian website F1News, “and this winter I even tried to help find him some sponsors, but failed.

“It’s difficult for them,” he continued, “as when you get yourself into financial problems, it’s so hard to get out of them.”

Prost’s own team collapsed in 2001.

 Alain Prost has backed France’s touted return in 2013 to the formula one calendar.
Recently, the four time world champion was involved in a project to bring the sport to Paris.

“That’s a closed chapter,” he rued, according to the Russian website F1News.

“I really regret that, because – believe me – it was the best project I had seen in a long time.”

The latest proposal is for France’s Paul Ricard to share an annually alternating grand prix date with Spa-Francorchamps, Belgium’s fabled and much loved circuit.

Prost said: “Obviously the best thing would be for France and Belgium to have their own grands prix each year.

“But unfortunately you have to admit that Europe is facing great difficulties, so if this is the only way for the race to happen, then why not?

“It’s better than nothing,” he said.

 Jenson Button’s push to prominence at McLaren has been a deliberate attempt to build the famous team around him.
Many commentators viewed the 2009 world champion’s arrival last year to be the highly rated Lewis Hamilton’s new teammate as akin to walking into “the lion’s den”.

But less than two seasons later, Button is poised to beat the beleaguered Hamilton in the drivers’ standings and has signed a new multiple year contract.

The 31-year-old has also driven for Williams, Renault and Honda/Brawn, but it is his tenure at McLaren that is arguably attracting the highest plaudits.

Asked what the secret is, Button revealed: “It’s a lesson I learned many years ago.

“If you look back at F1 there are certain drivers that would always try and build a team around them and it helped them,” he is quoted by The Sun.

“Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost did that, but I suppose Michael Schumacher was the first one of our generation to really do that.

“It was not something I thought about myself when I was younger. But it’s one thing I remember about David Richards when he was team principal at BAR.

“He said ‘Jenson, you have very good speed, but other drivers out there do a much better job of surrounding themselves with the right people and really working at it with the team’. That definitely did stick with me,” he explained.

Some F1 teams work to manipulate the performance of their two drivers, according to Fritz d’Orey.
Now 73, Brazilian d’Orey contested grands prix at the end of the 50s and remains an eager spectator.

He said on the SporTV programme ‘Linha de Chegada’ this week that Ferrari manipulated the situation some years ago to ensure Rubens Barrichello was not as fast as his number 1 teammate Michael Schumacher.

“Alain Prost told me at a dinner in Paris that they did it to Barrichello when he was going too strongly in relation to Schumacher,” he said.

Another legendary Brazilian driver, 73-year-old Bird Clemente, agrees: “That’s right. I’m sure it still exists.

“The team as well as the sponsors are making a big investment. To some extent, it is theatre.”

Sebastian Vettel’s rise to the top of formula one has been meteoric, but three other grand prix drivers achieved even more in their first 73 races.
That is the finding of the veteran Swiss correspondent for Blick newspaper, Roger Benoit.

Vettel, 23, is the youngest ever race and title winner in F1 history and very likely to add a second consecutive championship to his impressive tally in 2011.

But in terms of how much he has achieved in his first 73 grands prix, Sir Jackie Stewart ranks slightly higher with his 18 race wins and two titles in the same period.

Vettel, by comparison, has only one title and 16 wins.

Achieving even more than Stewart in the 73-race period was Michael Schumacher, who had 19 wins and two titles.

And Damon Hill tops that list, amassing a single championship but no fewer than 21 wins within 73 races — an almost 30 per cent strike record.

However, Vettel has achieved more in his career so far than had Alain Prost, Lewis Hamilton, Niki Lauda, Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen in the same period, while the great Ayrton Senna in his first 73 races won just 13 times and had failed to secure a title.

Nigel Mansell, meanwhile, only won his first grand prix at the 72nd attempt, while Mika Hakkinen was approaching his 100th race before he finally broke through at Jerez in 1997.

Just days ago, Force India deputy team boss Bob Fernley said formula one should be targeting a race in Africa.
“It’s the only major continent that we’re not working on and I’d like to see us go back there,” he said.

According to reports from South Africa on Wednesday, Bernie Ecclestone is indeed close to finalising a contract for organisers of an event in Cape Town to sign.

Iol.co.za quotes him as saying the street race could be held within two years, with a deal “weeks away from signing”.

“I’m hoping we can make a decision as soon as our lawyers have a good look at them … within the next couple of weeks,” said the F1 chief executive.

“It’ll be good to be back in South Africa. We were very happy when it was here in the past.”

The last South African grand prix, at the Kyalami circuit, was won by Alain Prost in 1993.

Pitting Lewis Hamilton against Sebastian Vettel at Red Bull would risk the harmony of the team.
That was the message of Christian Horner on Tuesday as the team principal finally dealt a knock-out blow to speculation linking McLaren’s Hamilton with a 2012 switch.

It emerged this week that Hamilton, 26, handed over to Horner a business card of his new manager Simon Fuller in Montreal and will be free to sign a Red Bull contract if he is not crowned 2011 champion.

But Horner, indicating Mark Webber is very likely to be offered a new contract, has told British reporters ahead of Silverstone this weekend that he has “severe reservations” about signing Hamilton.

“A Hamilton-Vettel combination, on paper, would look very attractive. But what we have to look at is the dynamics of a partnership and it’s difficult to see how two sportsmen at the absolute top of their game could work in harmony under one roof,” he said.

“History demonstrates, whether you look at Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna or Nigel Mansell and Nelson Piquet, that it doesn’t tend to work. Lewis is one of the top three in the world but we are very happy with the combination we have.

“Lewis must be very frustrated this year. But it be would be difficult to envisage a driver of Sebastian’s calibre and one of Lewis’s under the same roof,” added Horner.

The comments might be regarded as insulting to both Hamilton’s current teammate Jenson Button and also Australian Webber, with the implication that Horner does not regard them as truly top drivers.

There also might be a deeper relevance ahead of the 2012 talks with Webber about his role at Red Bull.

“We are not looking for anybody else. I don’t believe Mark is looking to go anywhere else,” said Horner. “When the time is right we will sit down and have what is hopefully a very straightforward conversation.

“We are very happy with the job Mark is doing.”

Webber, who is 35 in August, told the Telegraph: “We are talking but there is no real urgency from either side.”

Jenson Button intends to celebrate his 200th grand prix next month in Hungary, the scene of his first formula one race win in 2006.
F1′s official website lists the 2009 world champion as having “entered” 198 grands prix, meaning his double centenary could technically be marked at his home event at Silverstone.

But the typical practice is for the sport to only count grands prix that drivers actually start.

Button, 31, did not start in Monaco in 2003 after a practice crash, while in 2005 at Indianapolis all the Michelin runners pulled into the pits after the formation lap.

“I only count my race starts,” the Briton confirmed to Roger Benoit, the veteran correspondent for the Swiss newspaper Blick.

“So my 200th will be on the 31st of July in Hungary,” confirmed Button.

On August 6, 2006, then contesting his 113th grand prix at the wheel of a Honda, Button recorded his first formula one win at the Hungaroring.

Only Jarno Trulli (118) and Rubens Barrichello (123) took longer than Button to become grand prix winners, while with 179 races under his belt Nick Heidfeld is still trying to join them.

Only 11 F1 drivers have contested more grands prix than Button, with current rivals Rubens Barrichello (310) and Michael Schumacher (274) topping the list.

The Briton will climb to eighth on the all-time list by the end of the 2011 season, by surpassing the records of Alain Prost (198), Jean Alesi (201) and Nelson Piquet (203), and equalling Andrea de Cesaris’ 208.

Fellow ten-time grand prix winner Gerhard Berger retired after his 210th grand prix.

The French prime minister has confirmed high-level efforts to revive the country’s formula one race.

FIA president and Frenchman Jean Todt revealed recently that “many people … at the highest levels of government” are pushing to end France’s three-year hiatus since Magny Cours stopped hosting its annual event.

We reported on June 7 that the most likely venue for a reinstated French grand prix is Paul Ricard at Le Castellet, a circuit with close links to F1 chief executive Bernie Ecclestone.

At the same time, the Journal du Dimanche said French PM Francois Fillon has appointed countryman and Renault team boss Eric Boullier to help with the efforts to organise the event.

“It’s true that I have put together a team,” the L’Equipe sports daily quoted Fillon as having told the Var Matin newspaper on Tuesday.

“It (the team) is led in particular by one of my former colleagues Gilles Dufeigneux, working with the French motor sport federation, the FIA and also Eric Boullier and the director of Le Castellet, Gerard Neveu,” confirmed the prime minister.

The last grand prix at Le Castellet, which has since been redeveloped as the Paul Ricard High Tech Test Track, was won by Alain Prost in 1990 before the French event moved to Magny Cours.

Alain Prost will be the ex-driver representative on the stewards’ panel in Monaco this weekend.
It is the four time world champion and former team owner’s second appearance in the role, after kicking off the FIA’s driver representative era in Bahrain last year.

Prost, now 55, is one of the most successul drivers in F1 history; his 51 wins bettered only by Michael Schumacher’s 91.

He dominated in Monaco between 1984 and 1986, and also won in 1998 when his arch-nemisis Ayrton Senna crashed at Portier whilst easily leading.

It also emerged in Monte Carlo on Wednesday that the FIA has installed “higher kerbs and speed bumps” to stop drivers from short-cutting the chicanes at the tunnel exit and the Swimming Pool.

At the same time, teams were struggling to get their motorhomes up and running after being delayed by the Ste-Devote fire.

Michael Schumacher’s predicament in 2011 reminds Niki Lauda of the end of his own formula one comeback.
The great Austrian retired as a double world champion in 1979, only to return three years later to face the young Alain Prost at McLaren.

Schumacher, the ultra-successful seven time world champion, also took a three-year retirement after 2006 and has struggled on his return with Mercedes.

“Now is the time when Michael must go as fast as Nico (Rosberg) in the same car, no doubt about it,” insisted Lauda.

“If he can’t do it, he needs to think about it. Just as I had to think about it in those days when the little Alain Prost came, I was able to win the title by just half a point because of my experience.

“The next year he drove me into the ground in the same car. Then I had the question: Am I still, as one from the generation before, still able to have the right performance?” he told the German broadcaster RTL.

“I realised that I could not. At some point Michael will have to realise the same,” added Lauda.

With Michael Schumacher’s difficult comeback season behind him, Alain Prost does not expect the seven time world champion to be back to full speed in 2011.
Frenchman Prost, who is one of F1′s most successful-ever drivers behind 42-year-old Schumacher, said last year that the German targeting the title in his second career was “unrealistic”.

Prost, 55, said Schumacher used Bridgestone’s tyres as an “excuse” for his lack of pace, with “age” being the main factor.

Now, in a new interview with the Swiss newspaper Le Matin Dimanche, Prost said: “His decision to come back was personal and I respect it.

“I think it’s impossible, at his age, to return to where he was in the past, but I hope he proves me wrong.”

Prost said he does not miss racing in F1 because returning is out of the question, but admitted he would “like to do some laps in a modern car”.

“But only to assess the developments in technology, which has always fascinated me,” he explained.

Ron Dennis has admitted that McLaren’s current boss is better than he was at managing “world champions” driving for the Woking based team.

Dennis, still executive chairman and a significant shareholder of the British company but no longer the F1 team principal, was asked by F1i magazine about McLaren’s current driver lineup of Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button.

“Managing the co-habitation of two world champions is often a challenge,” he said. “I have tried it a few times. Martin is perhaps showing himself to be better than me at that role.”

Martin Whitmarsh, Dennis’ long-time deputy, took over the role of team principal at the beginning of 2009, and he is now tipped to also retain the FOTA chairmanship in 2011.

Under Dennis’ stewardship in 2007, Hamilton clashed memorably with Fernando Alonso, whose fractious relationship with his boss lasted only one difficult season.

20 years before that, the pairing of Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost is remembered as one of the bitterest in F1 history.