Montezemolo: "Senna and Schumacher wouldn't have worked together"

Senna had made the switch to Williams in 1994 after Alain Prost retired as reigning champion, but it turned out to be a bad move. Where Williams dominated in 1993 with their infamous 'active suspension', the FIA had banned the system for 1994. Because of this, the balance of the car was extremely unbalanced, a problem that was only solved until much later in the season.

Senna's fatal accident at Imola came early in the season, but Montezemolo had already talked to the three-time champion, who was unhappy with his new British team after switching from McLaren.

"He came to me in Bologna on Wednesday before the tragedy at Imola," the Italian revealed to Sky Italia. “He told me that he wanted to come and race at Ferrari at all costs, and that he wanted to get rid of Williams.”

“We stayed with the idea of talking after Imola. Then what happened happened. It was going to be the icing on the cake of that team, like Michael was later on [from 1996 onwards].”

The idea of Senna and Schumacher, two of the very best drivers of all time, as teammates is an incredible hypothetical, but Montezemolo thinks it wouldn't have worked given the nature of both legends.

“A nice dream, but we would have been shooting ourselves in the foot,” he explained. “It would have been a big hit, but not good for Ferrari.”

“With two stars of that level together, you don’t win."

Senna, of course already, had a huge rivalry with Alain Prost when the duo shared the garage at McLaren. Schumacher, who was a very tough cookie himself as an F1 driver, might not have been able to get along with the Brazilian. We'll never know.