Prost vs Senna: A friendship after bitter rivalry

The three years he (almost literally) went to war with Ayrton Senna between 1988-90 — the first two as McLaren team-mates, the last when Prost switched to Ferrari — largely shape how the four-time Champion is framed in the annals of F1 history.

And it’s why, of all the pairings that will be celebrated at this year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed presented by Mastercard, few will evoke such emotion or attention as Prost vs Senna under the 2026 theme of ‘The Rivals – Epic Racing Duels.’

Senna’s Prost obsession

The grain of their bitter feud was that even before Senna made it to F1 he’d zeroed in on Prost as the driver he had to beat. “It was obvious, and he told me so many times when we talked about it,” said Prost in an interview I conducted with him in late-2023. “Unbelievable. I hadn’t realised how much he had focused on me before he made it to F1. His motivation was to be World Champion, but his motivation was also to beat me.”

Prost discovered the depth of Senna’s obsession with him after he quit at the end of 1993 when, to his surprise, a deep and intense friendship grew between them. At times their rivalry had verged into the territory of bitter hatred, yet from the moment Prost stepped out of his Williams at the Australian Grand Prix on 7^th November 1993, he was no longer a threat to Senna.

Now friendship was suddenly possible.

What a tragedy then, that their new accord had so little time to blossom. Barely six months after Adelaide, Senna was killed at Imola on 1^st May 1994.

But would they really have become genuine friends, given how Senna had driven Prost off the road at 150mph at Suzuka’s first turn in 1990? Prost, now 70, insists it’s true. “It is possible because he was completely different after I retired, from that podium in Adelaide on.

“There were three Ayrtons for me: the one before F1 when he was looking at my races — the version he told me about when he was looking at everything I was doing, the way I was doing it, winning races and managing things.

“Obviously when we were together, inside or outside the same team. And then when I retired. If I did not know this person after I retired I would have said ‘no way’ [to us becoming friends].”

Senna’s struggles at Williams

Instead, Senna rang Prost often, especially once he’d made his switch from McLaren to Williams. The more you think about it, the more incredible it seems. After all, Prost had essentially been forced into retirement before he was truly ready to quit, because there had been no way he could countenance he and Senna racing together in the same team again. Yet here was the man who had effectively ended his F1 career, reaching out.

Having chased a drive at what was then F1’s top team for so many years, Senna now found himself struggling with Patrick Head and Adrian Newey’s FW16, as Williams found the return to passive suspension after its huge success with active ride much tougher than expected.

The so-called ‘gizmo’ era of drive aids had been cut short by a major rule change, and as we’ve seen so often it caused a shift in the competitive order, as Benetton and Michael Schumacher rose as a serious threat to Williams. In those early months of 1994, Senna felt all at sea at his new team.

“We were talking very often, every week, twice a week,” said Prost. “I knew everything about the Williams, everything about his position in the car, everything about what he was asking, everything about the fact he was not happy in the team, everything about his personal life. It was amazing.”

A new Senna

Prost saw a whole new side to his old nemesis. “If I did not know this last period [of Senna’s life] I would have a different vision of the human side, and even on the driver’s side because it’s all combined,” he said. “Now, I prefer to keep this period in mind. He told me, ‘I am not motivated because you are not there in F1 anymore.’ I could not believe that, it was very strange.”

In the early stages of their rivalry at McLaren, Prost had believed a friendship with the Brazilian was possible. He’d even recommended team chief Ron Dennis sign Senna, which was then confirmed when Honda switched its allegiance from Williams to McLaren in 1988. 

The Japanese giant also powered Lotus, where Senna had formed a tight bond with the engineers who were producing what was then the benchmark turbo F1 engine. Senna and Honda arrived at McLaren as a package.

Prost recalls an occasion when he tried to get to know his new team-mate better. “Once we were in Geneva for Honda at the motor show and I invited him to have lunch at my house about 20 minutes away. He came with me, we went into town, we had lunch. After lunch he wanted a nap and then coming back to the motor show he did not want to talk to me, at all.

“I said this to the Swiss Honda guy and he said ‘you don’t need to tell me the story, he did not want to talk to you. He did it on purpose because he did not want to be friends, he does not want to have a close relationship.’

“That’s what impressed me in a way about him. He had a way of trying to beat me, and he did not change until the podium in Adelaide.”

An enduring rivalry

Prost was at Imola on 1^st May 1994 and again spoke to Senna that weekend, witnessing firsthand how troubled he was about the handling of his Williams. Out of sorts after countryman Rubens Barrichello’s violent crash in his Jordan on the Friday, then upset by the terrible death of Roland Ratzenberger during qualifying on the Saturday, Senna appeared to be questioning everything about his future in F1.

Then tragedy struck during the race. Such was the friendship that had grown between the men, Prost was a pallbearer at Senna’s funeral.

Today, Prost still carries the mental scars of their feud. So often cast as the villain of the story, Senna’s shadow follows him everywhere. But that’s not always so bad.

“Even today, there is not one day when on my Instagram I do not have between five and ten messages of stories about Ayrton,” said Prost. “And my biggest community on Instagram is in Brazil, not France. It keeps going. People remember us more than 30 years on because of social media, and it is also good in a way.”

Tickets are now available for the 2026 Goodwood Festival of Speed. If you’re not already part of the GRRC, you can sign up to the Fellowship today and save ten per cent on your 2026 tickets and grandstand passes, as well as enjoying a whole host of other on-event perks.

Images courtesy of Getty Images.