French GP Prost race notes

Jean Alesi: 12th

"Today's race is the result of a difficult week-end, during which we have never been able to set-up my car properly. I feel so disappointed for the team and for the public. We have been working hard towards progress and results in the past weeks and this Grand Prix must not change our objectives and motivation."

Luciano Burti: 10th

"I think this was a good race. We had a good start and managed to get our start control to work properly now. In the beginning, I could follow Panis and Irvine, even being faster than Olivier at one stage. But then the car started suffering from heavy oversteer. After my pit-stop, on my second set of tyres, the car became very difficult to drive and had no grip at all. It was pretty much like driving in the wet. The third set was much better but I lost my position to Fisichella during the pit-stop. I was able to catch him up and overtake him soon after which was good fun. I would have liked to finish higher than 10th for me and for the team, but our performance has been quite good, and overall I feel happy with the job we have done today."

Henri Durand - Technical Director:

"Obviously we were expecting much more from our home race, as we came here with a new aerodynamic package. Once we had demonstrated in practice that it was an improvement, we have not been able to use all its potential and we have struggled throughout the weekend with lack of grip and consistency between the different sessions. We must understand why it happened. Despite we are disappointed by the overall result, we will not be bittered and we know that the secret of success is hard work. Let's get on with it."

Alain Prost :

"Competition is made of good and bad results. Once more we have been very reliable and the work done this week-end has been very productive. But we did not expect to lack competitiveness on this kind of track. Magny-Cours is the type of circuit where it is always difficult to finish in the points as the overall reliability level is high. All we have to do is maintain our reliability and improve our performance to be able to score some points anytime it will be possible. We must improve in order to secure our future. Thanks to all the team for the hard work done before and during this Grand Prix, and to Luciano for his particularly good performance throughout the week-end. We hope that our fans are not too disappointed and thank them for their wonderful support. It gives us even more determination to know that they are behind us."

-Prost