An ode to Senna's genius

When Ayrton Senna died at the San Marino Grand Prix on May 1, 1994, the BBC racing commentator Murray Walker predicted that Senna would become ‘a legend which will grow and grow as coming generations appreciate his achievements.’

With Formula One preparing for Sunday’s Hungarian Grand Prix, 20 years after the second of Senna’s three victories at Hungaroring outside Budapest, Walker’s words are more pertinent than ever: A film about Senna’s life has become the third-most successful documentary at the box office in Britain.

The film, “Senna,” was directed by Asif Kapadia, a British art-house director who had never made a film about sports. Since the release of “Senna” in Britain in early June, it has grossed nearly 3 million pounds, or about $5 million, behind only the 2005 nature documentary “March of the Penguins” and Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” of 2004.

The success of the film has demonstrated Senna’s appeal beyond sports and racing fans.
Senna came from a wealthy family in Sao Paulo. His father wanted him to run the family business, but supported what he thought was his son’s whim to go race in Europe.

When Senna refused to return to the family business, his father backed his racing career. But as Richard Williams, a sports writer for The Guardian, says in the film, Senna did not buy his way into the sport. What little he lacked in talent, he made up for in hard work.

His legend began at the Monaco Grand Prix in 1984, his first season, when he drove an inferior Toleman car up the pack in the pouring rain to second position and what probably would have been victory had the race not been stopped for safety reasons. Alain Prost, a French driver who later became Senna’s rival and team-mate, won.

Senna went on to win the world title three times, and he held the record of 65 pole positions until Michael Schumacher broke it in 2006. Senna won 41 races, which is third on the career list, with Schumacher leading with 91, followed by Prost with 51. But the Senna legend was not made on statistics or achievements. It was about personality, character and his part in one of the greatest rivalries in sports. “He never wanted to beat me; he wanted to humiliate me,” Prost says in the film. “He wanted to show the people he was much better.”

The battle between Senna and Prost ran from 1988, when they were team-mates at McLaren and combined to win all but one of the season’s races, to 1993, Prost’s last year in racing. It was explosive and politically charged.

“All drivers go for their limits,” Senna says in the film. “My limits are different from Prost’s.”

Kapadia tells Senna’s life almost entirely through television footage from the time. Senna’s brother, Leonardo, provided home movies that had not previously been seen publicly.

“He’s so famous in Brazil, he’s so famous in Japan, he’s so famous in a particular sport that literally cameras are always there; whenever he goes to work, there is a camera there,” Kapadia said in an interview recently. “So you have his work and his career and his death all on camera.”

Kapadia added: “I wanted to do something where I didn’t have control over the look of the film. I wanted to do a film where in a way, I didn’t care what it looked like. Emotionally, if it’s right for the character, even if it is YouTube, we are going to put it in the film.”

Kapadia, 39, has directed several award-winning films, including “The Sheep Thief” in 1997 and “The Warrior” in 2001. “Senna” won the World Cinema Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival in January.

“He is not performing for the camera,” Kapadia said. “He is being honest because that cameraman is someone he has known all his life; he travels to every race. These guys ignore them; they are there the whole time.”

The film was written and produced by Manish Pandey, a British orthopedic surgeon who is a lifelong fan of Formula One.

The film received some poor reviews in France, where the public largely favoured Prost over Senna. The film presents the clash almost entirely from Senna’s point of view.

The Senna-Prost rivalry was also about two opposing philosophies of life, the spiritual and the cerebral. Prost was nicknamed the Professor. Senna was a spiritual man, and seemed to function intuitively, by gut reaction. That generally made him more appealing to the public.

Prost’s evaluation of this tendency proved tragically prophetic, not for other drivers, as he suggested, but for Senna.

“Ayrton has a problem,” Prost said, “He thinks he can’t kill himself because he believes in God. I think that is very dangerous for the other drivers.”