“A great great friendship”

Team mates at McLaren from 1990 to 1992, Gerhard Berger speaks about his friendship with Ayrton Senna: “We had a really good relationship because, I mean first, we were the same age, we knew each other from the Formula 3. We spent time together, we spent holidays together in his place in Brazil. We played around. We went out.”

The Austrian continues: “Before joining him at McLaren, until this stage all my team-mates had been very good, but no problem to beat them” Berger adds. “So when I came into the team (McLaren), I said, Okay I know he’s very good. But I’m going to beat him. But quickly I realised then how outstanding he was.”

Berger concludes: “But I was not jealous, I was just thinking: It’s up to me to get better, to improve myself to beat him. And I think he understood immediately that we would be playing a fair game when we were competing with each other. And so, we had room for friendship. And I mean, a great great friendship over the years.”