Prost doubly determined

Press, 19 May 1984, Page 72

Prost doubly determined

NZPA-Reuter Paris Alain Prost chases his third Formula One victory of the season in Dijon tomorrow, determined to break the stranglehold which his former team, Renault, has had on the French Grand Prix.

The diminutive Frenchman, who left Renault in bitterness last year, leads the world drivers’ championship standings with McLaren, the pace-setting constructors this season. Prost achieved his first Formula One triumph with Renault in the French Grand Prix in Dijon in 1981. He repeated the feat at Le Castellet last year, following a tradition set by JeanPierre Jabouille in 1979 and continued by another French driver, Rene Arnoux, in 1982. But Renault has yet to win the world title, and when the crown slipped

away from Prost to Brazil’s Nelson Piquet in the final race of last season, the Frenchman blamed the car and the team. He said the engine was unreliable and he had been made to feel responsible for conceding the title.

While Prost and the Austrian former world champion, Nikki Lauda, have romped away with three of this season’s four races for McLaren, Renault has been frustrated by fuel problems. The Renault director-gen-eral, Gerard Larrousse, was quoted as saying he was thinking of withdrawing his cars from the Grand Prix circuit in the second half of the season to overcome the problems of new fuel limits which have created a race against the gauge. Renault looks to Britain’s Derek Warwick, who lies second behind Prost in the drivers’ standings, to con-

tinue its French Grand Prix winning streak at dijon. Warwick came desperately close to winning the Brazilian Grand Prix two months ago on his debut with Renault, but had to abandon the race near the end and concede victory to

Prost. The 29-year-old Briton finished third behind the allconquering McLarens of Lauda and Prost in the South African Grand Prix at Kyalami and second behind the Ferrari of Italy’s Michaele Alboreto in Zolder, Belgium, last month. Fourth in San Marino, Warwick now seeks to become the first Englishman to win a Grand Prix since the former world champion, James Hunt. “Warwick has made best use of his material. I don’t see how Prost could have done better in his place," Larrousse said.