“I did not return to the barracks”
Arrived late in driving, seeing his brother excel at karting when he was 16, Alain Prost had a revelation that day: “My brother drove in La Ciotat. I understood that day that it was my thing, while I was playing football and gymnastics. I didn’t even want to go there initially, I even hated it. Besides, I was close to signing a trainee contract at AS Saint-Étienne. When I left for the army, it was not easy to free myself for the weekends of racing, but the luck is that I was in charge of filling out the leave vouchers, I did not allow myself a lot of free weekends. I was in flight school at the time. One weekend, I had the Karting World Championships and, the next, the Volant Elf final. Between the two, I didn’t return to the barracks and I changed hotels every night so that I wouldn’t be spotted. It was fabulous. »
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