Autoweek has a brilliant and touching article written by Alain Prost about his old rival Ayrton Senna 20 years after his death.
In the article Prost describes their first meeting when he picked a young Senna up from the airport:
I met him first in 1984 at the opening of the new Nürburgring GP circuit, where there was a race for F1 drivers in Mercedes road cars. I took Ayrton from the airport, and we got along well. Then, in the race, I took the lead – and after half a lap he pushed me off! So that was a good start …
And their final race together, where Senna’s attitude towards his nemesis changed entirely:
I always said, Ayrton didn’t want to beat me, he wanted to destroy me. That was his motivation from the first day; on my last day, in Adelaide, everything changed completely. On the podium in Japan two weeks earlier, he wouldn’t even look at me, but now I was retiring, and he put his arm around me!
Read the entire article here: Senna’s bitter rival remembers his former teammate, fiercest competitor and, yes, his friend
