Prost defends Hamilton: 'He is not a dirty driver, but he is under pressure'

Many ex-drivers have given their opinion about the incident between Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton. Alain Prost, who has the necessary experience with clashes with his big rival Ayrton Senna, also joins the queue.

The incident will go down in the history books, where it will join the ranks of other historic crashes between title rivals. Understandably, the comparison was immediately made with the rivalry between Senna and Prost, who in two consecutive years drove each other off the track in an incident that had direct consequences for the championship.

"Lewis is not a dirty driver. I don't want to choose sides, but the way Hamilton and Verstappen fought in the first few laps meant both drivers were full of adrenaline. But I don't think it was a voluntary incident. They had too much to lose," the Frenchman said in a conversation with Equipe.

However, he does see tensions rising, particularly with statements from the teams. "They are under tremendous pressure because the discussion is public, and the teams are standing beside their driver," says Prost. However, he feels the incident cannot be compared to those between him and Senna, for which he still blames the Brazilian. "The 1989 telemetry showed that Ayrton kept driving at full speed the whole time, in 2021 he would get a heavy penalty for that. In 1990 psychology played a big role, Ayrton was angry because of a change to the grid, and in the warm-up I was faster than him," Prost concludes.