The documentary, which was released on the 15th of September, has been making the rounds on social media, revealing many aspects of Michael’s life that fans never knew. The part of the documentary that shocked many fans was when it was revealed that Michael was scared for his life driving and that he was passing through insomnia weeks after Ayrton Senna’s death in Imola 1994.
View this post on Instagram
Senna died at the age of 34 whilst going around the Tamburello corner at 130 mph. Michael was exactly behind his title challenger and didn’t think much of the incident until 2 hours after the race when his engineering director Tom Walkinshaw told him that its looking bad. In an interview captured after the crash Michael had this to say ‘It was two hours after the race where (engineering director) Mr (Tom) Walkinshaw came up to me after the race and said it’s looking very bad. I said “no he’s in a coma but a coma doesn’t mean anything bad”. He said “no it doesn’t look too good”. And then someone came to me later and said “he’s dead”. and ‘I still didn’t believe he’d be dead, I couldn’t think of that. That point I was like “no, he’s going to be the champion”. He maybe misses one or two races and then comes back again. The worst was really the two weeks after this as I had to accept he was dead.’
When Michael was asked whether after the death of Senna, it was easy for him to drive he said ‘Silverstone, I went there (afterwards) and suddenly you see things with different eyes.’ ‘I went through Silverstone in a road car and just thought “this is a point you could be dead, this is another point you could be dead”. Michael also admitted that after the death, he was suffering from insomnia ‘I wake up during the night and I’d sleep maybe three hours a night things like this.’ . Schumacher did continue on and won the his first ever championship that year after a dramatic final race where he crashed into Senna’s teammate Damon Hill.
His feelings about Senna’s death were made clear when in a press conference in 2000, he was asked how he felt after catching Senna’s 41 wins. Schumacher didn’t respond with words but instead started crying, which caused the press conference to halt after Mika Hakkinen’s request.
#MaltaDaily