tyrrellista

1982 Montreal 🏁⚽️

Daniele Audetto, Chico Serra, Elio de Angelis, Riccardo Paletti, Gianfranco Palazzoli, ?, Raul Boesel;?

It's February 24th, and you know what it means: it's time for me to post something about Alain Prost again, since it's his 71st birthday today!

I happened to stumble upon the perfect thing for the occasion by batch-scanning magazines again, and it's this article from Sport-Auto issue 239 (December 1981), named "Alain Prost: An Astonishing Prodigy", which was apparently written by Keith Botsford from the Sunday Times, but which was translated for a French audience. As you can tell by the length of the post, it's mucho texto, but I'm not posting here for that - well, it's interesting, I'm sure someone here will be glad to read it, but since an English version must exist out there already, it's less rare than what I usually post per say.

I'm of course posting it for the pictures, like have you seen these photos? Some of them are just for this community!

Alain Prost stands tall, that's a bit of a contradiction in terms really...

Well he stands taller now after winning the race!

classic f1 as text posts: 5/?

Okay I'm finally back from getting milk I swear pinkie promise.

This is "Patrick Depailler: A New Health at Alfa Romeo", from Sport-Auto issue 220, dated June 1980. Johnny Rives once more graced us with an update on a well-like French driver, who at the time was recently recovered from a terrible handglider accident in mid-1979 (an accident that has unfortunately amused me because of how his teammate at the time, Jacques "c'était vraiment con" Laffite, described it).

This goes in depth about what it felt like to recover from said handglider accident, from awfully long bedrest to getting into Alfa Romeo - with a lot of optimism, I must say. It also mentions a little known anecdote about him I didn't know about: in 1973, right before joining Tyrrell alongside Jackie Stewart and François Cevert, Patrick broke his leg while riding a bike, and people made fun of him for it. Bis repetita in 1979 at Ligier, and courtesy of the article, they also give you this detail.

Of course, we know this comeback was unfortunately to be short-lived. But, in May 1980, in the shadow of another Frenchman's victory in Zolder, Patrick was looking ahead to the future after months of ugly thoughts and stalling his time away.