Monday 30th December 2002

A remarkable outburst by former world champion Alain Prost who labelled his successors little better than “trained monkeys”. He continued: “[The drivers] simply follow the instructions of the engineers and let the computers do all the work. To me it’s not a real racing competition any more. And what’s worse, these drivers are so much a part of the whole system that they have to keep quiet so as not to harm the image of the team or the sponsors. I don’t want to sound old-fashioned, but in the past 10 years drivers have become increasingly like robots.”