harboured deep fears for his own safety following the tragic death of rival Ayrton Senna 31 years ago today. The German, now 56, faced sleepless nights in the wake of Senna's fatal accident at the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix - a tragedy that had a lasting impact on the sport.

Following closely behind Senna during the race, Schumacher was haunted with doubts about his ability to continue racing without succumbing to the same fate. In a Netflix documentary, 'Schumacher', an old interview is featured where the racing titan shares his immediate reactions after the crash. The seven-time F1 world champion recounted: "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'". 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. The impact of the tragedy altered Schumacher's entire outlook on his sport.

"Silverstone, I went there (afterwards) and suddenly you see things with different eyes," he reflected. "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'.

"I thought 'crazy, you always raced here but there are so many points you can crash and you can be immediately dead' - that was the only thing I was thinking of.

"I didn't know what was going to be the situation if I was going to be in the race car. I wasn't sure can I drive without thinking that or I'm going to drive now always thinking 'now you can be dead here, if you go off here it's going to be bad' and that was something very strange.

"I wake up during the night and I'd sleep maybe three hours a night, things like this."

Despite grappling with the aftermath of Senna's tragic accident, Schumacher overcame these challenges to carve out an extraordinary career, cementing his status as one of the all-time greats in racing history.