Ayrton Senna: the legend died 20 years ago

Posted on 01-05-2014 at 10:21 by CasperH – 51 Comments”

Today it is exactly 20 years ago that one of the most legendary Formula 1 racing drivers ever lost his life. But how to remember someone and where everything is already said and written? We collected the best quotes from people close to him were.

My dad never had the tv off during the Formula 1, but this time, the Austrian rookie Roland Ratzenberger was hard crashed during the qualification for the Grand Prix of San Marino and the images of the cpr were not suitable for my then 11-year-old eyes probably. I don’t know what more the impact: the fact that I have those images or saw that my father liked that he was the tv expanded. Later that day, my father told me that Ratzenberger had died.

The following day (1 may 1994), we looked together for the race. When Senna of the track, clapping we were shocked but we had not, at first, the idea that it is very serious. We had even harder knocks given and then ran the drivers just leave. But Senna remained silent in his car. This time it was the tv not, perhaps with the slightly more subtle direction to make it has had but also the impact of the fact that Ayrton Senna, the champion and hero of the Formula 1, there seriously was, and later that evening -at 18:37, to be exact – was found to have died. In his cockpit, was an Austrian flag was found.

About Senna is, then enough said and written, the best quotes come from people who are close to the Formula 1 racing driver were. People who knew him because they are with him, worked against him and fought on the job, or because they are friends or family of the Senna were. We gathered a selection of quotes, in memory of his life.

“In a way for me he has always leg present. It’s not that I think about him every day, but being Brazilian and living the emotion of being a Brazilian, you live with Ayrton Senna every day.”
– Rubens Barrichello

“Ayrton Senna was an extraordinary racing driver. His skills, craft, subtlety and courage were of such magnitude that he dwarfed his generation of drivers.”
– Ron Dennis

“Ayrton has a small problem. He thinks he can’t kill himself because he believes in God and I think that is very dangerous for the other drivers.”
– Alain Prost, his greatest rival, in 1989.

“I was proud to compete against him. Professionally, he was the only driver I respected. In Senna’s honour, I will never sit in a Formula One car again.”
– Alain Prost

“The life of Ayrton Senna was an example in dedication and the love of the sports few athletes have had at international level. The world has lost the greatest athlete in the history of motor racing and I have lost a great friend. Grand Prix racing will never be the same without Ayrton.”
– Emerson Fittipaldi

“Last year, when I had my problems, he was one of the main people there supporting me. He was probably the greatest driver of all time. This was not a driver error. There was no weakness in his driving.”
– Michael Andretti

“Ayrton was the best friend I ever had in F1, closer to me than anybody else in the business. During my three years driving with him at McLaren, I came to realize that he was the best, one level higher than the rest of us.”
– Gerhard Berger, team-mate of Senna at McLaren,

“Yes, it does mean a lot to me.”
– Michael Schumacher, during the press conference after the race in Italy in 2000, in response to the question or much means to him that his victory is now the same number of victories (41) has achieved as Ayrton Senna. Schumacher breaks down then in tears.

“His loss is impossible to quantify. Everyone who has ever with him, in whatever capacity, feels they have lost something very special.”
– Frank Williams, team boss of Williams F1

“He was the best driver who ever lived”
– Niki Lauda

“The best driver in Grand Prix racing, the best driver in the world by a long way”
– James Hunt, former Formula 1 driver and commentator

“No-one has ever leg worshipped – ‘worshipped’ is the right word – as much as he was. And he was killed live, in vision, in front of millions of people world wide. Having to commentate on it was an extremely unpleasant experience.”
– Murray Walker, presenter for BBC F1