Michael Schumacher has spoken out about his relationship and rivalry with the late Ayrton Senna stating that the Brazilian belonged to a different generation of racing driver to him.
Even though there was close battles throughout before the curtain fell down on Senna, the two had clashed on several occasions in the German s first three years in the sport.
On one occasion, Schumacher had crashed into Senna at the hairpin in the 1992 French GP, the seven-time-champion revealed what was said to him by the fuming Brazilian.
“He said: Look, what happened happened. OK. But unlike you I ll talk to you directly and tell you that you ve messed up. But I don t go to the media and make it public,’ Schumacher said. He often did [things like] that. We didn t get on very well in those days.”
“That wasn t really a lesson for me but typical Formula 1 theatre like it was the norm in Senna s days. What was far more important for our relationship was that we got on much better in 1994. Someday we started to talk to each other like racing drivers should: frank and like colleagues,” he recalled. “Senna belonged to a different generation. There was this invisible pecking order and each new driver had to find his place. You had to earn the respect of the elders on the track.â€
Schumacher has also come out that the one time he thought about quitting F1 early in his career, was after the deaths of Senna and Roland Ratzenberger at the San Marino GP.
One of the reasons that he didn’t travel to Brazil to attend Senna’s funeral because he had doubts about his future in the sport.
“I thought about their deaths very intensely and I asked myself what Formula 1 and motor sport still meant for me,†he said. “That s one of the reasons why I didn t go to Ayrton s funeral but I went testing instead. I had to find out whether I could continue to race, whether it would still be fun for me. And I didn t want to mourn in public, everybody would have just waited for me to cry. I visited Ayrton s grave later with Corinna.â€
