10 Most Successful Formula One Drivers Of All Time

3. Alain Prost

Lewis Hamilton
By Stuart Seeger from College Station, Texas, USA (Prost Champion) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Championships: 4

Wins: 51

Poles: 33

Simply known as the Professor, Alain Prost is possibly the most tactically gifted F1 driver of all time. Prost always did just enough to ensure victory. Four World Championships and 51 race wins are testament to the success of his tenacity.

Best-known for his bitter rivalry with Ayrton Senna, Prost can and should be remembered for much more. Constantly getting close to the title, culminating in losing out to his teammate Niki Lauda by half a point in 1984, Prost won his first title in 1985. In 1986 the luck that had abandoned him in his early career returned as he beat the faster Williams of Nelson Piquet and Nigel Mansell in the famous three-way duel in Adelaide.

His lack of a flamboyant driving style, especially compared to Senna, is sometimes held against him, yet he did not need to hang the back-end out to win a race, so why should he?

Prost has regularly championed the idea that he would be the most successful driver in history if it were not for Senna, and he has a point, but it was that rivalry that defined him as a driver, both good and bad, and pushed him on to be the third most successful driver in the 77 year history of the sport.

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