Formula 1's greatest drivers. Number 1: Ayrton Senna
The resulting rivalry has passed into legend. Prost's excellence drove Senna to new heights, and some of the things the Brazilian achieved as a result almost beggar belief.
His career coincided with the infancy of on-board cameras, and they bore witness to a commitment on his qualifying laps that was both awe-inspiring and chilling.
Most famous, perhaps, was a qualifying session at Monaco in 1988, when Senna took pole from Prost by a staggering 1.427 seconds. He later spoke of a kind of out-of-body experience, describing his driving in a metaphysical manner.
McLaren dominated the 1988 season like no-one has before or since - winning 15 of the 16 races, with Senna taking eight to Prost's seven, and clinching the title with a dazzling comeback drive in Japan.
But the relationship between the two drivers, always fragile and wary, broke down completely the following year after Senna reneged on an agreement not to pass into the first corner at the San Marino Grand Prix. Any trust there had been was gone.
The 1989 title was decided in a collision between the two at Suzuka in Japan, and by a controversial decision by Jean-Marie Balestre, the president of F1's governing body, to disqualify Senna from the subsequent victory that would have kept the championship alive.
The sense of injustice from that incident burned inside Senna for a year - until the following year's championship came to its climax, also in Japan.
This time, there was no debate about whose fault the resulting crash was. Senna, smarting from Balestre's decision not to move pole position to the advantageous side of the track and believing there was a conspiracy against him, simply drove into the back of Prost's Ferrari at the first corner at 160mph.
Senna painted himself as the wronged man, but in seeking to justify the crash he dissembled. "We are competing to win and if you no longer go for a gap, you are no longer a racing driver," he said, failing to mention that the move was never truly on. He finally admitted it was deliberate a year later.
The crash ensured Senna won his second title, and he added a third in 1991, founded on four straight wins in the opening races. One of them was among his greatest ever - holding on in the wet in Brazil with only sixth gear, pushing himself so far that he collapsed in agony afterwards.
Through 1992-3 he was generally helpless against the all-conquering Williams-Renaults of first Nigel Mansell and then Prost.
But he was never better than in the second of those years, his final season with McLaren. Raging against the odds, he took five superb victories, the zenith at Donington Park, when he was - yet again - on a separate level from anyone else.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7o67CZ5qopV%2BovbC%2B02idqKqdqrmifY5rZ2xqZGZ9eg%3D%3D