OCTOBER 4, 1999

Dudot leaving Prost

PROST GRAND PRIX's former technical director Bernard Dudot is expected to leave the French team at the end of the year.

PROST GRAND PRIX's former technical director Bernard Dudot is expected to leave the French team at the end of the year. The 60-year-old Frenchman has been involved in racing since he joined Automobiles Alpine in 1967. He spent 30 years with Renault and his engines won the company a string of Constructors' World Championship titles before he joined Prost at the end of 1997. In June this year Prost named Alan Jenkins as the new technical director of Prost and Dudot was given a nominal role focussing on "future projects" and reporting directly to Alain Prost.

It remains to be seen whether Dudot, who has a contract which runs out at the end of the year, will find another job in F1 but at 60 this is unlikely, although his experience may be useful to a company coming into F1, unaware of the pitfalls. The only obvious candidate for that would be Toyota and they already have a technical director in the form of Andre de Cortanze, who worked with Dudot back in the Alpine days in the 1960s.