Nominal vs present value
Local display: $21.6m · Rebased to 2024 USD via US CPI-U
How the total breaks down
Ferrari salary. A retainer reported between $9–12m a year, among the largest in world sport that season.
Personal endorsements. Modest by the standards of Senna's rival deals, reflecting Prost's more low-key public image.
Impact 80
- Ranked among Forbes' top ten highest-paid athletes on the planet
- Proved Ferrari would outbid rivals to secure a proven title winner
- Kept driver salaries rising even as the Senna rivalry turned toxic on-track
Prost's Ferrari salary, confirmed independently by Forbes rather than paddock rumor, gave F1 some of its earliest credible third-party pay data. It also set a price floor: any team hoping to lure a reigning or recent champion away from a rival now had to clear a number the business press, not just motorsport journalists, was actively tracking.
Prost's move to Ferrari in 1990 came with a reported retainer between $9 and $12 million — enough to place him fourth on Forbes' 1990 athlete-earnings list, just behind his own rival Senna. He nearly won the title in his debut season before the team's competitiveness collapsed the following year. The Ferrari number mattered less for what it bought on-track than for confirming, independently of the paddock rumor mill, how much a proven champion was genuinely worth.