|
The Paddock
2 0 0 0 t e a m s
14 + 15  |
  Gauloises Prost Peugeot |
| Formula One record (including Ligier): [1-1-2000] |
| Starts |
375 |
| Poles |
9 (as Ligier) |
| Wins |
9 (as Ligier) |
| Constructors' titles |
none |
| Drivers' titles |
none |
| 1999 season: |
| Seventh, nine points (Jarno Trulli/Olivier Panis) |
second x1, sixth x3, seventh x3, eighth x2, ninth x3, 10th x2, 11th x1, 12th x1, 13th x2, retired x14 |
| History: |
| 1977 |
Ligier's first grand prix win, with Jacques Laffite in Sweden. |
| 1996 |
Frenchman Olivier Panis wins at Monaco for Ligier's last win. |
| 1997 |
New team make debut after takeover of French Ligier team led by former world champion Alain Prost. Ligier founded in 1976 by French rugby star and F1 amateur Guy Ligier. |
| 1998 |
Technical director John Barnard, who worked with Prost at McLaren, signed from Arrows. |
| 1999 |
Former Stewart designer Alan Jenkins joins. |
| Season by season: (year, standing, points, wins) |
| 1997 |
sixth, 21 points (Olivier Panis/Shinji Nakano/Jarno Trulli) |
| 1998 |
ninth, one point (Panis/Trulli) |
| Prospects for the 2000 season: |
 Prost APO3, powered by Peugeot V10 engine |
| New line-up of veteran Frenchman Jean Alesi and Germany's Nick Heidfeld. Prost say car has improved aerodynamics and is shorter, smaller and lighter. But pre-season testing has been nightmarish, with the car beset by gearbox and electronic problems. A lack of rear grip, making the back end unstable, has also been reported. Neither driver has managed much track time and Heidfeld has voiced his concern. Last season was an improvement on 1998 but the team still have a long way to go. |
| Drivers: |
Jean Alesi  |
| Aged 35, France |
| Races 167, wins 1, pole positions 2. career points: 236. |
| 1999 record |
Sauber, 15th equal. two points - sixth x2, seventh x1, eighth x1, ninth x2, 14th x1, 16th x1, retired x8. |
Jean spent only a brief time in karts before advancing to the French Formula Renault series in 1987, where he finished fifth overall. He moved up to Formula Three in 1986, and finished the season runner up to Yannick Dalmas, taking the title in 87 before moving up to Formula 3000.
Jean made his Formula One debut in 1989, when a seat became vacant at Tyrrell for the French Grand Prix
Jean excelled, taking fourth place and earning himself a full time ride with the team for the 1990 season.
The first race of the season in Phoenix saw him challenge Ayrton Sennas McLaren, actually swapping the lead with him, eventually finishing second.
Another second place was to follow in Monaco.
1991 saw him driving for Ferrari, but it took until the Italian Grand Prix in 1994 to attain his first pole position. Nothing eventuated from this as he retired with gearbox problems on the 14th lap. He didn't see his first and only victory to date until Canada in 1995 after qualifying in 5th.
Jean swapped places with Michael Schumacher for the 1996 season, signing with Benetton to partner Gerhard Berger, and although victories eluded him, he finished fourth for the season.
He continued with Benetton in 1997 where he ranked an equal third place, but 1998 saw him switch to Sauber, where his best finish for the season was a third place in Belgium. He did become one of the few that out qualified the McLarens during that season, when he put his Sauber on the front row of the grid in Austria, alongside Giancarlo Fisichella, an event that he repeated in a wet qualifying session at Magny-Cours in France this year, this time alongside Rubens Barrichello. Unfortunately for him, he retired from this race after being caught out by the wet conditions. He had many strong performances throughout the season, but unfortunately, the Sauber was unreliable and therefore ruined many chances of podium finishes.
The year 2000 will see him switch to the Prost team alongside Formula One newcomer, Nick Heidfeld.
[More] |
Nick Heidfeld  |
| Aged 22, Germany |
| Races 0, wins 0, poles 0. |
| 1999 record |
Formula 3000 champion. |
Nick started his career at the tender age of nine in the club championship of karting, club Kerpen-Manheim. By the time he was thirteen he had come first in the DMV Karting Championship of Nordrhein-Westfalen as well as capturing a fifth place in the Nordrhein-Westfalen Cup.
The following year, 1991, he came third in the ADAC Junior Trophy and was a member of the ADAC Junior national team and the winner of the International CIK junior run.
In 1992 he took 5th place in the German junior karting championship before gaining entry in the World Championship in Laval, F. (Formula A)
In 1994 he took victory in the German Formula Ford 1600 Championship when he won eight out of a possible nine races. This was followed by yet another victory in 1995 this time winning the FF1800 International German Championship with 4 victories and five podium finishes as well as being the runner-up of the Formula Ford 1800 German Championship.
1996 saw him involved in the German Formula 3 championship, with the Opal Team BSR. He had three victories, and finished third place overall. He also took pole position in the Grand Prix Macau, was the winner of the first heat and finished in 6th place overall.
1997 saw him move to Mercedes as a junior driver and he was signed as a test driver for West McLaren Mercedes. He continued to drive for the Opal team in the German Formula 3 championship and took the title.
He was runner-up in the FIA F3000 International Championship in 1998 with victories at Monaco, Hockenheim and the Hungaroring. He had two pole positions and two fastest laps.
1999 saw him still test driving for the McLaren Formula One team as well as becoming the Formula Three Champion for the West team with 53 points for the season. He will make his debut in Formula One next season with the Prost team. This young mans racing history speaks for itself and a successful career in Formula One is sure to follow.
[More] |
| Prost in 2000: |
He was, by common consensus, one of the greatest Grand Prix drivers ever. He has had the support of one of France's biggest company's, the car maker Peugeot, as an engine supplier. And he has not been short of a franc or three, nor wanted for talented drivers, given that the likes of Jarno Trulli and Olivier Panis have been in the seat.
But for whatever reason, Team Prost (effectively the French national representative) has failed to deliver the goods since it came into Formula One. On only one occasion, in Monaco, has Alain Prost's equipe taken the chequered flag when Panis survived a high attrition race to lead home a small straggling band of survivors.
That won't happen again - at least with Panis in the driver's seat.
The Frenchman was replaced at the end of last season and has opted to take a role with McLaren as a test driver and bide his time for a little while, reasoning that a spell testing as part of a top team might be more productive than a year driving a back-of-the-grid runner for a team with little chance of victory.
And with Jarno Trulli moving on to the Jordan team, a confirmed front-runner with a realistic chance of winning more than one grand prix, Prost enters the 2000 season with a completely new driver line-up, a potentially rewarding mix of youth and experience.
One driver, Nick Heidfeld, has never even started in an F1 race before, while the other, Jean Alesi, is one of the best known names in the Grand Prix world, having garnered a total of 236 points in 167 career starts.
Alesi's efforts have yielded just a solitary GP victory, two pole positions and four fastest laps, and he is regarded with a mixture of admiration and frustration - admiration for his natural talent, frustration at his inability to make it all come together consistently for a whole race or series.
Alesi comes to Prost having spent the last couple of years at Sauber and before that, Benetton, neither of which brought this mercurial talent much satisfaction. This time around he is reunited with his friend and - back in 1991 at Ferrari - former team mate, now his boss. And he is driving for a French team for the first time. At 35, he must know that time is running out.
Heidfeld, a 22-year-old with contractual links to Ron Dennis' McLaren Mercedes empire, brings to four the number of Germans in the F1 field (the two Schumacher brothers and Heinz-Harald Frentzen are the others).
Heidfeld spent last season in the European Formula 3000 championship, where he won four of the first six rounds for the McLaren Mercedes junior team en route to the championship.
Heidfeld, despite his youth, has a history of winning, having picked up titles at all stages of his career from German Formula Ford to German F3 and F3000. While he was winning races in the junior formula last year he was also holding down a day job as a McLaren test driver.
The team will have a slightly different look this year. Although the cars are predominately blue, as usual, they will carry the bright yellow logo of Internet giant Yahoo! French tobacco giant Gauloises will remain primary sponsor.
This is a major new trend in F1, as tobacco companies are phased out and new, high technology backers look for the upscale brand associations being linked to this glamorous sport.
Yahoo! boasts 100 million daily users and, although no financial details were released when the deal was announced, it was suggested the sponsorship could be worth $25 million over three years.
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