The Frenchman is often lauded as one of the best of all time, so when he speaks, the world listens. However, his latest statements regarding Max Verstappen 's success are illogical, particularly coming from the Frenchman.

1989: Suzuka controversy

It is no secret that Alain Prost was a great driver in his day. It is also well known that the Frenchman always tried to ensure his superiority off the track. In 1989, Prost's nemesis Ayrton Senna was in incredible form. Every race he finished, he won, and on only one occasion did he finish second. He was leading the pack or in podium position.

However, at Suzuka it all went wrong. Senna had to win the race to keep his championship chances alive. Prost was leading, the Brazilian star had moved up to second place and going into the Casio triangle, Senna beat Prost to the inside line and a controversial accident ensued. In fact, Prost was accused by various sections of the media of deliberately spinning against Senna, which the Frenchman dismissed in defence of his three titles.

Following the incident, the then outgoing McLaren driver was famously caught on television cameras running towards the stewards' room, where, under pressure from FISA president Jean Marie Balestre, later to become the FIA, race officials invented a pretext - failure to complete the full race distance by taking the escape road - to disqualify Senna, thus handing his third title to Prost.

Ron Dennis, McLaren's team boss at the time, later in a press conference to the media gathered and exposed evidence of drivers who had done the same action as Senna did in the Cassio triangle, without receiving any penalty, thus exhibiting a dangerous double standard from the governing body. Furthermore, at the following year's drivers' briefing, another of the Brazilian's arch-rivals, his compatriot Nelson Piquet, claimed that Senna's action had been the correct one, because the alternative was to go against the flow of traffic, which was obviously terribly dangerous.

1992: Prost vetoes Senna and Mansell from Williams

Before Honda announced its exit from the sport, the Japanese engine manufacturer had made a commitment to Senna in 1991 that it would stay in F1, which is why the Brazilian opted to stay at McLaren rather than go to Williams. The relationship between Honda and Senna was one of great loyalty. However, the Japanese would declare their exit from the category only the following year, in 1992. That same year Nigel Mansell would go on to win the championship in a landslide for Williams Renault. However, inexplicably, the Briton was in danger of losing his seat in the category.

Senna, too, was relentlessly seeking a place at the Grove-based team. His friend, former world champion and then Murray Walker's partner in the commentary booth, James Hunt, announced on the Hungarian Grand Prix broadcast that the Brazilian star was offering to race for Williams on an unpaid basis. This opportunity, far from being welcomed with open arms by the team, was also turned down.

The reason behind Williams' refusal to renew Mansell or sign Senna? After being sacked by Ferrari in 1991 and forced to spend the following year on the sidelines for lack of a seat, Prost had appealed to Renault, Williams' engine supplier in those years, for a seat there. But, on top of that, using his leverage with the engine manufacturer, he imposed vetoes on the British team: they could not sign Mansell, nor Senna as their teammates.

In post-race interviews at the 1992 Estoril Grand Prix, Senna called Prost a coward, citing the veto as evidence: "The way he is doing it [returning to F1], he is behaving like a coward. If he wants to behave sportingly, he should be prepared to race with anyone, in any conditions, on equal terms. And now in the way he wants to win the championship, everything has been laid out for him before the start. It's like if you run a 100m flat race and you want to have running shoes, and everybody else has lead shoes. That's the way he wants to go running. That's not running. That's bad for everybody. And that's it. Mansell, winner of that race, and Berger, third, both supported Senna's statements.

The following year, Prost became champion for the fourth and final time, in Williams Renault "racing shoes". For that matter, of the four titles held by the Frenchman, only one of them was won in the midst of a sporting struggle. After dominating in 1985, Prost was locked in a championship fight until the last race with Mansell and Piquet, when the Briton and the Brazilian were driving for Williams, then powered by Honda. In Adelaide, the final round of the F1 World Championship that year, the Frenchman won the title after Mansell's left rear tyre suddenly exploded on lap 63, and Williams consequently called Piquet into the pits for a precautionary tyre change.

Verstappen's titles are worth more than Prost's?

Max Verstappen is a superlative talent. He beat Lewis Hamilton over the course of one of the most hard-fought, and longest, seasons in Formula 1 history, with consistency, coolness and an impressive level of talent. In 2022, the Dutchman took his RB18 to higher ground, winning 15 races and sealing his second title in the same car in which his team-mate, Sergio Pérez, could only manage third. The following year, in 2023, Verstappen broke the stratosphere of the possible limit envisioned by analysts and fans alike by winning 19 Grands Prix, beating his team-mate by almost 300 points and claiming his third title in the most dominant manner in history, recording record-breaking figures from as far back as seven decades ago that no one thought could be broken.

Anyone who thinks the Dutchman only has Sunday drives is seriously mistaken. He races against the best, and if rival teams can't come close to Red Bull Racing, then he races against himself. Constantly striving to be faster, more forceful, bordering on perfection at times. Without the need for any veto, or interference from the governing body - 2021 was a regulatory debacle from start to finish that in some cases benefited and disadvantaged both Hamilton and Verstappen - the Dutchman has beaten everyone to the punch, including himself and what he has been able to achieve year on year.

While Prost won a couple of championships on desks and using politics to avoid competition, Verstappen has won all his titles where it counts, on the track. Are the Dutchman's championships really worth less, or is it some of the Frenchman's that lack the ultimate sporting value? Who can judge Jacky Stewart's in '69, or Emerson Fittipaldi's in '72, or Niki Lauda 's in '85, or even Senna's in '88 as more personally valuable, but in the historical record there is no one title more precious than another. They are all worth the same.