Question of having the right brakes

Alain Prost (McLaren-TAG) won the rain-curtailed 1984 Monaco Prix from pole position. Ayrton Senna (Toleman-Hart) was second in his first podium in Formula One. The red flag to stop the race was shown at the end of the 32nd lap, after clerk of the course Jacky Ickx decided that conditions were too poor to continue.

Alain Prost remembers: “The weather is impossible to predict in Monaco, but this one in ’84 was for sure the worst. The reason why a lot of people were having problems is because this was the year when we introduced carbon brakes. Initially, these brakes were difficult to use and get into the right temperature (window), and Monaco was a good example of this.”

The French champion continues: “When it started to rain a lot in the race in Monaco, all of the cars with these brakes had problems because when we braked hard, the brakes dropped in temperature, so we couldn’t brake hard, which made it impossible. We (at McLaren) had put tape on the brakes to make them warmer, but we didn’t have much experience with them at that point – it was May, and we had only done a few races with them, and I don’t think any of them were in the wet.”

Alain Prost continues his explaination and it’s very interesting: “It was becoming very, very dangerous. A lot of people spun or crashed, and that was because of the brakes. I remember looking at the big screen as I was driving, and on every lap, you had a car crashing or spinning. Some drivers span three, four, or five times. It was awful. Ayrton (Senna) had steel brakes. I think that was one of his biggest advantages at that time. And if the race had not been stopped, it was impossible for me to fight.”