Prost : The Formula One DataBase

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Founded by:	Alain Prost (Guy Ligier 1969)

History:

When Alain Prost announced in late 1996 that he had bought the Ligier Formula 1 team, many thought that there would be a new competitor to challenge the mighty Ferrari and Williams. After all, with a four times Formula 1 champion running the team, they knew what they were doing. Olivier Panis moved to the team from Ligier, and Shinji Nakano debuted.

1996 Monaco winner Panis started the season brilliantly. Podiums at Interlagos and Barcelona moved him into third in the championship. However it all went wrong at Montreal. Panis crashed heavily causing him to break his leg. He would be out until the Luxembourg Grand Prix. In his place stood Italian Jarno Trulli, who had been signed from Minardi. The rookie outperformed Nakano, he even led in Austria, just his thirteenth grand prix. Sadly Jacques Villeneuve was handed victory when Trulli's Prost-Peugeot retired. Panis' points scoring return at the Nurburgring gave Alain an obvious choice for his 1998 driver line-up.

However, there were question marks as to whether Panis and Trulli would even make the grid at Melbourne. The team suffered gearbox problems in testing meaning that they hadn't even passed a crash test. Despite this, the team made the grid, but they needn't have bothered. 1998 would be a bad season for Prost, with Trulli scoring their only points at Spa.

1999 would be an improvement, but only because of a influx of problems for the frontrunners. At the Nurburgring, Trulli took second, Prost's best ever result, splitting the two Stewarts of Herbert and Barrichello. At the end of the season Trulli left to join Jordan while Panis signed up to be McLarens test driver.

For 2000 Prost paired old timer Jean Alesi with newcomer Nick Heidfield. For the first time in the teams history the scored no points, while in Austria their two drivers collided. Definetely a season to forget.

Heidfield had left for Sauber, so the team took on Gaston Mazzacane for 2001. With Acer badged Ferrari's the team promised an improvement. The team looked quick in testing, but by Australia it became clear that the team had been running with less fuel than their rivals, making them look quicker than they were. Prost went through five drivers that season. After just four races Mazzacane was sacked and replaced by Jaguars Luciano Burti. Frentzen then replaced Alesi for the Hungarian Grand Prix onwards. Two heavy crashes for Burti at Hockenheim and Spa meant he was forced to miss two races. He was replaced by Czech Tomas Enge.

2001 would be the teams last season in Formula 1. In it they had managed to go through more drivers than they had in their previous four seasons put together. At the start of 2002 the team went bankrupt, and no-one could save them.

Statistics

Statistic	#	Percentage	First	Last
Number of Grand Prix	83	100%	1997	2001
Number of starts	165	99.40%	1997	2001
Number of finishes	86	51.81%	1997	2001
Number of finishes on podium	3	1.81%	1997	1999
Number of finishes in points	16	9.64%	1997	2001
Number of retirements	79	47.59%	1997	2001