Schumacher.
"He was my idol.
I was ten years old and I saw him racing karts,
and I thought 'Who’s that guy?
Being so fast,
driving in the way that he did,
overtaking in the way he did.'
I felt when I was ten, he’s something special."
Andretti jr.
"Having Senna as a team-mate was maybe
the toughest of all time to have as a team-mate."
"I was glad to be compared to the best...
He was really good to me. He was a great team-mate.
He was probably the only ally on the team,
the only guy who I felt was seeing what was going on and didn't like it.
He was on his outs with the team anyway
and I think he saw how unfair the whole deal was.
After I was let go he had a Press Conference just to tell everybody,
and that's the kind of guy he was.
We hit it off really well.
We became friends out of it and when I won my race
he was the first one to call me
-- that was Australia, my first race back in IndyCars.
He said he'd been up in the middle of the night
watching the race and how happy he was for me.
That was the very next day."
"The reason I probably liked him was that he was straightforward.
What you saw was what you got.
He told it like it was and that's pretty much the way I am.
A lot of times I get into trouble when I do that
and a lot of times he did as well,
but I like that in a person 'cos they're real.
He wouldn't tell people what they wanted to hear -
just tell them the way it was, good or bad.
A lot of times it really backfires on you, it brings trouble,
but you can always sleep at night
and look at yourself in the mirror.
He could look at himself in the mirror.
I can too - and go to sleep at night -
so that's what I really liked about Ayrton."
Hakkinen.
"I learned a lot from Ayrton.
I used to watch Ayrton so closely.
I would try to understand what he was doing.
I would try to look at him all the time.
Ayrton's dedication to racing was incredible,
and that was the thing that gave him the ability
to do what he did.
He was a real professional.
So working with him, or watching him,
gave me a great understanding of racing, of F1;
and of working with the McLaren team."
Barrichello.
“This win has been a long time coming.
I dedicate it to Ayrton Senna
who helped me so much in my life since 1984..."
Ducarouge.
"In qualifying he'd make a first run
and let's say he was 1.7 seconds behind the fastest.
We would sit down with a piece of paper
with the circuit on it,
we were talking about it
and he was thinking about it corner by corner.
He'd say "last time I missed three-tenths there" and
after that "I didn't position the car too well there,
too much understeer but next time
I will gain two-tenths there".
He completed the full lap like that
and we arrived at a potential total of him
going two seconds quicker -
- an immense amount to gain in qualifying.
So he'd jump into the car
and he did go two seconds faster.
It was just something which you cannot believe.
Once you got used to that,
when he said something like that,
of course you sent him out
and immediately you said "right, lads,
everybody around the monitor
because this is going to be mind-blowing."
And sure enough, it was.
So, as I said,
to start off with we were a little bit nervy
but later on the whole team
was pretty damn relaxed
knowing that we were going to have a fantastic show.
The opposition weren't privy to what we knew
-- we knew what he was going to do.
I was in trouble.
We were making pole position after pole position
and I had a good friend at Williams, Patrick Head.
Patrick came to me and he said
"Gerard, you're cheating!" And he was telling everybody.
I was fed up with that because we were not.
I went to the FISA and said to their people
"you stop the car just before it comes back to our pit
and you check it for one hour
and you make all the measurements you bloody want.
Patrick and anybody else
who thinks I'm cheating can be there,
even though I'm not happy
with them seeing all the details of the car."
I was going on and on because I was so upset.
I said "don't lose any time anymore
checking the bloody car
just after we've been making a pole position.
If you want to disqualify something,
disqualify the bloody driver because he's just too fast."
Nobody understood that it was not out of the car
that we got those performances, it was out of a driver.
Yes, it was a good car, a quick car,
but he was the talent to find the tenth of a second
he needed to be quicker than everybody else.
It looked so simple
but you knew the man was putting in everything he had.
Some drivers would find a tenth
then Ayrton would find something else.
I don't know where -- but I do know he had extra somewhere.
It was inside him, for sure. Very special."
Schumacher.
"... if ayrton had been alive and driving the williams,
ayrton would have been driving circles round me..."
Weber.
"....the dead of senna touched him ( ms ) very profoundly.
i never saw him like that in all those 6 six years together.
he cried like a little boy and was deeply in shock..."
Schumacher.
"....i feel very much attached to Ayrton...."
Prost.
"he was extremely religious,
and he used to go on about that,
about speaking the truth,
about his education, his upbringing,
and everything else.
At the time,
I used to think that some of the things he did
on the track didn't fit with all that,
but now it seems to me he really didn't know
he was sometimes in the wrong.
He had these rules,
he played by them,
and he wasn't interested in anything else.
Looking back,
I really think he believed he was always in the right,
always telling the truth
-- and on the track it was exactly the same way."
Schumacher.
"I went through the school of Mansell, Prost and Senna.
That's where I drew my guidelines from
and that guideline is very different form
what we have today.
In the past it was okay to do certain things
that you can't get away with now"
Hill.
"Senna was humilating Alain.
It was very embarrassing.
I was sitting there like a lemon in the middle
of the whole thing.
You wanted the ground to open up
and Alain to disappear."
Morris.
"I was on pole position,
considerably quickest in practice.
At Oulton, you go up the hill into a right-hander
with a double apex.
It's not one of be accepted passing places,
and going into it on the first lap
I though I had a good lead
when suddenly he came up
and banged me out of the way.
I got back on the track in tenth place.
He won the race."
Brundle.
"He took no prisoners.
he had that brightly-coloured helmet,
and you could clearly see him coming up behind you.
He left you to decide
whether you were going to have
an accident with him.
What you did depended on how badly
you wanted to finish the motor race."
Schumacher.
"I saw this guy.
He was so crazy,
yet the way he drove
was so impressive.
I didn’t know who he was
and the next day
I looked in the paper
to find out.
It was Ayrton.
After that
he became my one idol."
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