page_title: Prost Grand Prix
section_title: Struggle for survival
hierarchical_section_title: Prost Grand Prix / History / Struggle for survival
caption_attribution_description: Jean Alesi driving the Prost AP04
context_page_description: Prost Grand Prix was a Formula One racing team owned and managed by four-time Formula One world champion Alain Prost. The team participated in five seasons from 1997 to 2001.
context_section_description: In 2000 the team began its sharp decline. Veteran racer Jean Alesi, Prost's former teammate at Ferrari in 1991, was signed to the team. The team also signed up rookie F3000 champion Nick Heidfeld for 2000.
  Despite a promising driver lineup, Prost finished last in the Constructors Championship, failing to score a single point during the season. Heidfeld was disqualified from the European Grand Prix at the Nürburgring for his car being two kilos underweight. Prost fired Alan Jenkins, the car's designer after Monaco. At the Austrian Grand Prix their two drivers crashed into each other, putting them both out of the race. The relationship between Prost and Peugeot collapsed.
  In 2001 the cars now ran with Acer-badged Ferrari engines. The season began with Alesi and ex-Minardi driver Gastón Mazzacane, but after four races, the latter was dropped from the team and replaced by Jaguar's Luciano Burti, who himself was replaced at Jaguar by Pedro de la Rosa. Alesi was very consistent, finishing every race, occasionally in points scoring positions, most notably in Canada when he did a few donuts afterwards and after getting out of the car, threw his helmet into the crowd. It was his best finish with the team. A fallout after the British Grand Prix, however, saw Alesi walk out after the German Grand Prix. For his final race with Prost, Alesi scored another championship point in that race of attrition. The first start for the race was red-flagged when Burti was launched into the air after crashing at high speed into the back of Michael Schumacher's ailing Ferrari just seconds off the line. Alesi moved to Jordan Grand Prix for the rest of the year, and was replaced at Prost by Heinz-Harald Frentzen, who himself had been sacked from Jordan after Silverstone.
  In Belgium, Frentzen qualified a surprising fourth on the grid after getting his first and only dry lap right in drying conditions, but threw it away when he stalled on the initial formation lap, the first of three red flags. The third one saw a long delay after a huge crash at the fastest part of the circuit involving Burti and Eddie Irvine's Jaguar. Burti was transported away from the circuit by helicopter and taken away for medical observation. At Monza, F3000 driver Tomáš Enge became the fifth driver to drive for the team in 2001. There would be no more points that year.
  At the end of the season, speculation began surrounding the fate of the team in the light of its increasing debts. Finally, in early 2002 the team went bankrupt, just before the start of the season. Prost had been unable to raise enough sponsorship to keep the team afloat. Deeply hurt by the episode, Prost described it as a disaster for France. Frentzen had hoped to stay, but ended up at Arrows. The team never managed to replace the money that Gauloises stopped supplying when they withdrew their title sponsorship at the end of 2000.
  Reflecting back on the experience, Alain Prost stated that Prost Grand Prix was his biggest mistake.
caption: Jean Alesi driving for Prost during 2001.
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "350", "Image YResolution": "350", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS2 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2007:07:20 22:39:38", "Image ExifOffset": "164", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "302", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6316", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "800", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "496"}