Netflix’s SENNA Series, Reviewed

Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

• 00:22 Ayrton Senna: The Racing Legend
• 01:19 Exploring Netflix’s Senna Miniseries
• 01:46 The Anticipation and Production of the Series
• 02:20 Analyzing the Miniseries: Style and Substance
• 03:48 Senna’s Story: From Brazil to Formula One
• 04:05 The Miniseries’ Portrayal of Senna
• 05:38 Entertainment vs. Historical Accuracy
• 06:40 Senna’s Early Racing Career
• 07:53 The Fast-Paced Storytelling of the Miniseries
• 11:33 Senna’s Personal Life and Relationships
• 16:17 Senna’s Rivalries and Racing Tactics
• 20:17 The Role of Media and Public Perception
• 23:33 Senna’s Impact on Formula One
• 25:02 The Prost-Senna Rivalry
• 35:08 The Legacy of Ayrton Senna
• 41:37 Senna’s Infamous Lap of the Gods
• 42:02 Senna’s Out of Body Experience
• 43:30 The Real Senna: Authenticity and Reactions
• 45:22 Monaco 1990: Redemption
• 45:30 Action Sequences and Real Footage
• 48:35 Senna’s Relationship with Honda
• 54:14 Senna’s Personal Life and Relationships
• 57:17 The Tragic Weekend at Imola
• 01:06:39 Senna’s Legacy and Final Thoughts
• 01:14:52 Conclusion and Recommendations

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] Grand Touring Motorsports started as a social group of car enthusiasts, but we’ve expanded into all sorts of motorsports disciplines, and we want to share our stories with you. Years of racing, wrenching, and motorsports experience brings together a top notch collection of knowledge and information through our podcast, BrakeFix.

Crew Chief Eric: Tonight, we delve into the extraordinary life of a man who wasn’t just a racing legend, but an icon of human spirit and determination. Through the lens of Netflix’s highly anticipated miniseries, we’ll explore the meteoric rise, relentless drive, and untamed passion of Ayrton Senna, one of Formula One’s greatest champions.

Born in Brazil, a land of contrasts and dreams, Senna’s journey was nothing short of a cinematic masterpiece. From his humble beginnings on the karting tracks of Sao Paulo, to his three world championships, and the unforgettable rivalries that defined an era, Ayrton’s story is as exhilarating as the circuits he conquered.

But beyond the roar of the [00:01:00] engines, the glitz of the podiums, and the iconic yellow helmet, there was a man. A man who carried the weight of a nation, who raced with his heart as much as his skill, and whose life ended too soon, leaving a legacy that transcends sport. There is more than a story about speed and victory here.

It’s a tale of resilience, faith, and a relentless pursuit of perfection. And joining me tonight to help break down the miniseries, episode by episode, and dissect its most pivotal moments, is our most returningest guest host, William Big Money Ross from the Exotic Car Marketplace, along with Professor John Summers, the motoring historian.

So welcome back, gentlemen.

Prof. Jon Summers: Pleasure. Thanks for having us, Eric. This is gonna be fun.

Crew Chief Eric: I feel like we did the celebration of life earlier this year, and here we are again. Looking at another Senna film of some sort. What I came to realize is, we’ve been batting around this idea of a new Senna show for a while, and I wanted to pinpoint exactly when that all came about.

And I had to go back to September of 2020. Drive thru [00:02:00] news episode number three on BreakFix. is when they announced that this series was going to go into production. So it’s been four years that we’ve been waiting for this Senna miniseries, call it a mockumentary. That’s what I want to label it as. That I went into going, this is like Titanic.

I know the ending. What are you going to tell me that I don’t already know?

Prof. Jon Summers: But there are only nine stories in history, Eric. When you go to the cinema to see any story, you know the ending, what’s enjoyable. is how the story’s told, how the characters interact, whether or not themes resonate with society and the audience at the moment, whether or not the movie looks good and is stylish, that’s what your Hollywood guys lead on.

And what I look for is a ripping yarn, good story, great plot. And I look for compelling characters, and the older I get, I find I’m much more interested in, have the characters been well drawn? Are they charismatic? Do I like them? Do I give a shit what happens to them? And this is why my consumption of automotive media nowadays [00:03:00] exists outside of the realm of the fictional.

I can’t even do Game of Thrones anymore. It all feels like a 15 year old Dungeons and Dragons campaign that I wouldn’t want to be involved in anymore. You know, I’ve not watched the miniseries. I have read reviews, so I’m fascinated to understand what you guys think of it. And that informs the sort of little agenda that I wanted to work through.

And that agenda is simply the one that my English teachers gave me in high school, which is you talk about the plot, You talk about the characters, you talk about the themes. By the end of that, you should have an idea of whether or not this is just style over substance, or whether or not there’s really anything there.

So I am fascinated to get into it with you guys.

Crew Chief Eric: We’re not going to spend time talking about Senna’s life story. If you want to learn about that, go back into johnsommers. net and all the articles you’ve written about Senna. Go back and read Senna’s book. Go back and watch Senna the documentary from 2010.

Go back to [00:04:00] our 30 years after Temporello celebration of life episode. Like we don’t need to spend time talking about Senna. What we need to do is spend time understanding if they portrayed those stories correctly in this miniseries. So I don’t want to spend the next hour tearing apart Netflix’s interpretation of this.

So I’ll just blanket statement saying it’s good and it’s good in two ways. It’s good for the drive to survive crowd that knows nothing about Senna and is asking, who is Senna? When they hear people make references to Verstappen or to Hamilton, when they say he’s driving like Senna, or we haven’t seen antics like this since the days of Senna.

And people are going, who is this mythical Senna? Which for us is hard to fathom that anybody wouldn’t know who he was. So it’s important. That this story is told in a way that the younger generation can absorb it versus a documentary that they’re not going to want to suffer through, although the 2010 Senate documentary is awesome, and it’s all file footage with voiceovers and all that kind of stuff.

It’s also good for us, the [00:05:00] enthusiasts. The folks that were there in period as well as the historians from an accuracy perspective I give it high marks because what they did is a mockumentary like other ones I’ve seen like the man who would be bond where they used file footage and recreate it using the actors of today With cgi and all the wonderful things that we can do It makes for a great viewing experience for the people that are in the know, but then there’s some other threads and I have some specific ones that I want to pull on as we go through this that I think are important were not often showcased in other interpretations of Senna’s story.

And that’s where I want to focus and hone in on.

William Ross: As I tell a lot of people and you see it with all these movies and everything that’s come out in the past five, 10 years, what have you, because it’s a big influx of these people start nitpicking it and critiquing it. It’s like, look, this is entertainment.

This is not to be like historically accurate to nail everything down. This is for entertainment and for enjoyment. And that’s how I always go into these things. Look, I’m going to have some fun with this [00:06:00] and enjoy, you know, everything’s not going to be spot on. You know, they’re going to take liberties with things.

You know, they’re going to stretch it too. They’re going to leave certain things out. Well, especially this, you’re going to see within the first 15, 20 minutes. Okay. How are they going to portray this? They can make it. Look like was a nice guy, the bad guy. Are they going to be really truthful? I really enjoyed it.

And I knocked the thing out right off the bat that time. Cause I just got into it. I wanted to watch it and I actually rewatched some of it this morning just to kind of refresh myself. I thoroughly enjoyed it. And it’s just interesting. I watch it. Eric, watch it. We watch it. We know Senna’s history. We know everything, not everything, but we know the background, his story, where he came from and going up through and all this stuff and his teammates, all that stuff.

One question would be is, would you recommend someone watch this first, then go learn about them, or learn about them first, and then watch it? If you’re not familiar with the Senate story, because it could skew you a little bit, going, Well, wait a minute, I watched this, and that’s not matching up.

Crew Chief Eric: And that’s why I say it sort of works for both audiences.

If you don’t know, as an enthusiast, let’s say you’re from [00:07:00] NASCAR Nation, or you’re a rally guy, or IndyCar, or something like that, and you want to learn about something, You can learn enough to be dangerous from this series, but the real meat and potatoes is over on the 2010 SENA documentary, but you got to know what you’re getting into with that.

It’s more detailed, a lot more file footage, evidence, agency, all those things that are important to a historical documentary. But to William’s point, this is easily digestible. But also it isn’t because every episode is like a movie. It’s very cinematic. It’s very deep. It’s very detailed. There are about an hour a piece, some are more, some are less, but they average out to about an hour.

So you’re in this for six or seven hours by the time it’s done. The Senate documentary is only two. So you got to kind of balance that out and go, well, which one would I watch? If you want the express lane, watch the documentary and you’re going to get more historical fact. But something else you hit on, William, is the story moves very quickly.

But I made a note in my copious pages of notes. We get through birth to 1979 in the first Eight minutes of the first episode, [00:08:00] like boom, Formula Ford at minute nine. And we just rocket forward from there. So they skip over some of the pleasantries of his upbringing, how affluent his family was. Some of the other wives tales that we heard about how Senna had a go kart track in his backyard and he would go out and practice every day.

There’s some of that woven into the story as flashbacks and this and that, but there’s not a lot of context around it. So they fast track us to England in 1979. Eight minutes into the first episode.

Prof. Jon Summers: Yeah, they jump pretty quick. But this is what you need to do with storytelling. One of the professor at Stanford that I teach that class with, she always talks about you can start in the middle.

As long as you do the flashback, you need to start at a dramatic point where you draw your audience in. So I was interested to understand where they started.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, it doesn’t get any more dramatic than file footage of the crash at Tamburello. Boom, like immediately. And it’s sort of like that Jacob’s ladder thing where it’s like, well, let me tell you how I got here.

And then we work [00:09:00] backwards, but going forwards and come full circle, it starts and ends with the crash of Tamburello full stop.

Prof. Jon Summers: You have to start there. You absolutely have to start at that point, but where you choose to pick up and how you cover the childhood piece, I thought they might start with the rivalry.

William Ross: No, no. I anticipated. As Eric stated, you gotta start with, to your point, that initial hook. You start with the end, and to get people in and say, Alright, here’s the dramatic stuff, the accident, the death. Okay, now all of a sudden, let’s get back to, you know, where it starts. And, like he said, you know, they jump to the beginning part pretty quick in his youth.

And they kind of gloss over the fact of his wealth. They had a lot of money and it’s kind of humorous because once they jump into certain points and this is all in the first episode in regards to cost and paying for things. Oh, I got to sell the family Impala to pay for doing this and everything’s like, really?

Crew Chief Eric: You run the Brazilian equivalent of AC Delco or whatever, like a parts distributorship. [00:10:00] Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

William Ross: Yeah. And back then running Formula Ford, what do you have to maybe come up with? 7, 500 bucks. I mean, come on. I mean, yeah, back then he had some money, but it’s not like they were hurting for cash. It was the

Prof. Jon Summers: wraparound commitment though, wasn’t it?

It was the commitment to come from warm, familiar Catholic Brazil to cold, unfriendly England.

William Ross: They nailed the contrast between Brazil and the warmth. And then all of a sudden they’re showing England where it’s just dreary. They got the grayish back. They nailed it in regards to, wow, this is just

Prof. Jon Summers: I don’t know how they portrayed the Ron Dennis character, but if you think about the real Ron Dennis, he’s like an amalgam of all of my sales managers who ever worked together.

They

William Ross: had

Prof. Jon Summers: him wrong. From the sweariness, the hardness, to the seeing further and farther. And so it’s that feeling that I used to get from my sales managers. Maybe this is part of the reason why I was drawn to Zenith. It’s a feeling that I used to get from my sales managers that if they want you on the team, they believe in you.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah,

Prof. Jon Summers: don’t need to pat you on the [00:11:00] back and tell you what a nice guy you are and give you a trophy for finishing second. The fact that you’re still hired and they’re not railing on you is how you know that you’re doing a good job.

Crew Chief Eric: That is evident throughout the film with his interactions with Ron Dennis.

There’s also the thing they sort of glaze over. In 1980, I think it was where Dennis was like, I want you to come drive for me now. And he said, nah, I don’t think I’m going to do that. Then there’s this whole family drama about him going back to Brazil and he’s there for like a hot minute and then finds himself in formula three right after that.

And then, you know, obviously the story kind of fast forwards from there. So there’s also the drama with his first wife.

William Ross: Yeah, how

Crew Chief Eric: she didn’t want to be there and he was only supposed to be there for a year because that’s the promise that he Made to his mother and

Prof. Jon Summers: I find hard to believe of course she didn’t want to be there I mean, it’s england’s ron dennis.

Do you want like beaches and brazil or do you want bloody ron dennis? And this is his childhood sweetheart And when forced to choose between her and the racing, we know what he chose. Now I [00:12:00] not delved into his personal life. I’ve never really read to understand if it was that contrast, but for me as a teenager, you know, when my first girlfriend dumped me, my first thought was, well, you know, Rather like Senna, when it came to cars or women, you lean into the cars, don’t you?

Because they don’t go wrong and they don’t ditch you sometimes, but you can fix them.

Crew Chief Eric: They also sort of leaned into this weird sexually aggressive nature of Senna throughout the film. And he has a type, by the way.

William Ross: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: As we go through the series, we start to realize that as well. But when you first meet Lillian, they’re in the Impala.

They’re doing sort of like the Makeout Mountain kind of thing. And it was a little cringey and almost like, It’s like, I’m going off to war tomorrow. We got to get the deed done. I was like, we don’t need this. All that stuff could actually have been deleted because I think that took away from the imagery I have of Senna.

It kind of made him, I don’t want to say it made him creepy, but it was just cringy. I didn’t like that. I didn’t appreciate that part of his story.

William Ross: I think they included that scene for the fact when she [00:13:00] said that she’ll go with him because he’s basically presenting it to her that he was going to go with himself.

I’ll only be gone a year, dah, dah, dah. She’s, oh no. I I’m going with you. I think that’s the whole reason they put that in there was for that fact. There’s all I know. I’m going with you in this whole little adventure.

Crew Chief Eric: That could have been done over breakfast though. You know what I mean?

William Ross: Exactly. They didn’t need to do it in the car in the front seat of the Apollo.

Cause they’re only what? 19.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. They’re about, I mean,

William Ross: it’s not like they were in there mid twilight. I mean, he was young when he went over there. I read just recently

Prof. Jon Summers: that she was his childhood sweet. Yes.

William Ross: Yeah. Yeah. They’ve been good forever. Yeah.

Prof. Jon Summers: In traditional accounts of Santa that I received in period.

She almost didn’t appear at all. Not that they ever really did backstories or girlfriends or anything like that. Because one of the interesting things, PK started a rumor that he was gay. Yeah. I remember that part of the reason why he started that was because Senna had this guy that was with him, like carrying his helmet at a couple of races.

So P. K. being P. K. was like, oh, and I wondered if they would delve into that at all. Whilst we’re talking about the sexual stuff, did they delve into that [00:14:00] at all?

Crew Chief Eric: No, they very rarely mentioned P. K. They got a guy playing his part that looked like him.

William Ross: The actor playing Senna I mean, he’s a dead ringer for him for sure.

Now,

Crew Chief Eric: the Nicky Lauda one, not so much. We’ll just

Prof. Jon Summers: leave that where it

William Ross: is.

Prof. Jon Summers: Lauda’s like him though. But Lauda looks like a character from Star Wars, doesn’t he? If you’d have had the real Lauda, people would have been like, what the fuck’s that? Like, I’m not watching Stallion. I thought it was Ron Howard

William Ross: for a second playing him.

Crew Chief Eric: Even Emerson Fittipaldi, they sort of did this at a distance thing. Like, we have these other Brazilian guys and they’re over there. We’re not going to focus on them. Basically, they sort of pushed P. K. out so that it didn’t show any sort of rivalry between his fellow countrymen in any way. The whole theme of the thing is very pro Senna.

It was really focused on Senna being the hope for Brazil.

William Ross: That’s why P. K. hated him, period. And they made sure to know that he was a very, very heterosexual man.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, God.

William Ross: They made a point, to be sure, that, no, he liked women. We’ll

Crew Chief Eric: get to another good one later, as, like, episode four, or whatever. It’s like, oh, my God.

Yeah,

William Ross: [00:15:00] that princess or whatever she is.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh that too? I forgot about that.

William Ross: Yeah.

Prof. Jon Summers: Oh man. Then the

William Ross: TV started, yeah.

Prof. Jon Summers: This is really interesting that we’ve talked about this because on my vague little structure, one thing I had written down, and I don’t often feel the need to like mark a score, you know, make a chalk mark, but when some other motherfucker plagiarizes your work, you have to draw a line in the sand, don’t you?

And I read an article in AutoWeek by an individual with the second name of Vaughn, where he had used the word Vaughn. Beatification in the article, and he’d sort of muddied my concept that he had basically taken my word that I’ve been using for about a decade now, and put it in context of an article about cen

Crew Chief Eric: for those listening.

That’s a John Summers trademark phrase there. The beatification of

Prof. Jon Summers: Sena. Of Sena. Yeah. This notion that center is moving from being a. normal racing driver like Martin Brundle, for example, or Nelson Piquet, or even [00:16:00] Emerson Fittipaldi. He’s not an old racing driver now. He’s something more. He’s not like an actress from the 1950s.

He’s Marilyn Monroe. You know, he’s not Joey Lee Lewis. He’s Elvis. And this is a really interesting thing, and the miniseries interests me from that kind of perspective. So let’s talk more about the plot, more about the story here.

Crew Chief Eric: The road to Formula One. starts in episode two called belonging and it’s all about him basically being ostracized like who is this guy he’s an outsider does he really belong here he has to prove himself and it all centers around the tolman and that rain race at monaco and and all that stuff and so you’re like Okay, cool.

That’s true. All of that stuff happened. But there’s also this other side of Senna that they paint, which is the fastest driver wants the fastest car. And they basically show how he screwed over Tolman, and how he screwed over McLaren. That whole thing perpetuates. It becomes part of his persona, but they downplay, as you’ve referred to it, his [00:17:00] bully tactics.

And we’ll get into that more as we go along. We talk about the rivalry with Prost. The plot up to that point, there’s six episodes, right? So it’s the calling, the belonging, the ambition, the passion, the hero, and then time is the last episode. So belonging, ambition, and passion all sort of like go together, and it’s all about the greatness of Senna, how he became who he was, and all of the people that surrounded him.

So the major players that come out of the equation at this point, Are his carding rival in England

Prof. Jon Summers: is Terry Fullerton. Yeah. It’s a shout out. Yeah. It’s a party, a movie.

Crew Chief Eric: Correct.

Prof. Jon Summers: Who went on to be a builder just went on to be a normal bloke. Yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: but he gets carried through the entire film to the very end.

Like he comes back a bunch of times and whether that’s truthful or otherwise, whether they maintain their friendship. We don’t know, but they do spend a lot of time at the same track running go karts formula three formula 2000. I was like, can we just pick another track for crying out loud? Yeah.

Prof. Jon Summers: Is it Snetterton?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah.

Prof. Jon Summers: Portions of it. I did read that [00:18:00] it’s Snetterton, but with mountains in the background. Correct. Yeah. And if you’ve ever been to Snetterton, there’s not mountains, there’s cloud, there’s shooting rain, and they’re shitting yourself on that absurdly long straight that they have there. It’s also the classic British club circuit.

You need to understand about club circuits. If you’ve come from other parts of the world, there’s tons of them all over England. They were all airfields in the Second World War, so they were all flat, and they all have corners, which are not like the corkscrew, they’re not banked, you just find the right line and you have big balls, and you’re fast, and if you get the line wrong and you don’t have big balls, you’re slow.

It’s a really very exacting environment, and Snetterton, because of the rain and the crap surface, is Yeah, I’ve done one track day there and I didn’t go back because it’s an asshole to get to and because the surface was bad.

William Ross: Yeah, they just dress it up in a few different ways. But again, it kind of goes back, like I said in the beginning, is they’re using it for certain scenes, using Formula 4, then F3.

Then they go back to it for [00:19:00] one little scene with Terry Fullerton karting school that he does. Yeah, it gets a bit annoying, but again, you got to take it to Kansas. They’re just kind of going this for a reference situation. It’s not about his skill and showing his craft. It’s more about between someone else.

Cause like the one for the formula four was against, uh, was that Quinn in Monticelli,

Crew Chief Eric: the Argentinian guy.

William Ross: Yeah. So that battle and then going into F3, it was against Martin Brundle, which they didn’t really get into too much, which I was surprised because him and Brundle went at it pretty good in F3.

Prof. Jon Summers: went at it pretty good.

Yeah. And Brundle beat it. Yeah. And that whole ostracized in Formula One, it was because everyone had seen that when under pressure, Senna crashed you. Yes. Now later in his career, maybe he didn’t, but in Formula Three, that’s how it was. And you didn’t do things like that in the British idiom, but I’ve just got to say, Martin Brundle, if I met him in person, if I ever get to shake his hand to me, still the guy who beat Senna is the only one.

Only guy who beat Santa on [00:20:00] a level playing field in that Formula 3 seat.

Crew Chief Eric: The way they handle all that stuff, those little other stories and those notions and whatnot, is to use this character, Laura Harrison. She’s Portuguese by ethnicity. But English by marriage. So she’s multilingual and all this kind of stuff.

She’s the reporter that follows him around from the very beginning, when he goes there for formula Ford and some cart racing all the way through the end of his career, he

William Ross: totally made

Crew Chief Eric: up.

Prof. Jon Summers: Yeah, exactly. No, no, no. She’s an amalgam of three or four different British. I read an article about it this morning.

I think Dennis Jenkinson, the motor sport guy who saw him really early on the guy who he was close with and then had the falling out with. Was a guy called Mike Doodson. I also think there’s another character in there. Maybe Mike Greesley. I maybe should have read more. I skim read the article about the Laura Harrison character.

My first thought is, well, that’s bogus. My next thought is, no, um, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. [00:21:00] Hyde. The narrator is this wallflower character. The great Gatsby. The narrator is a wallflower character. Great storytelling demands sometimes that the narrator is this wallflower who takes no part.

Crew Chief Eric: So she’s an important part of the plot.

Prof. Jon Summers: Yeah. Do you buy her as a character?

Crew Chief Eric: Yes. He allows Us the viewer to pull those other threads and they come to a head in like episode five and we’ll talk about that as we go along because your point about the bullying and she makes these references and what I always say is you can take the boy out of the cart but you can’t take the cart racer out of the boy and so some of Santa’s tactics go back to those early days of cart racing if I can’t get around you.

I’ll punt you, but it gets more dangerous the bigger the cars are. So some of that gets involved, but she’s always there. She’s always lurking in the background. And

Prof. Jon Summers: everyone else was afraid of touching in open wheelers. Senna wasn’t. I’d never seen that before. That’s what reached out of the screen and got me.

It was how much do you want it? Are you afraid to crash? Are you afraid to crash? He asked [00:22:00] every one of his rivals that. Every time he went to pass, and often they were, and when he’d beaten them once, he’d beaten them forever, and I’d never seen anything like that before. And then this individual, out of the car, wasn’t an aggressive, mean bully, he was cerebral, he was laid back.

He was cool. That was why he became my hero.

William Ross: The one thing that also is, you know, I want to say it’s prevalent throughout it, and it’s very, you know, I can say understated. There’s definite racial undertones in regards to how outsiders are treated over there, especially if you’re in English, but, you know, even, you know, European of the sort.

But coming from South America, There was definitely that message. There was a racial bias. So 100 percent

Crew Chief Eric: yes.

William Ross: Our Mr. FIA, how do we pronounce his name? John

Crew Chief Eric: Marie Balestra, our favorite

William Ross: villain

Crew Chief Eric: in the FIA. He’s

William Ross: just the total prick. Anyways, there’s a lot of racial undertone in that also that goes on too, which is kind of interesting.

Prof. Jon Summers: So Balest was in the Nazi party in the second world war. [00:23:00] Yeah, here we go. I, he was a real deal. So I was shocked when I learned that. And I only learned that recently. Because the way the news stories were covered in period, Senna was really aggressive and crashy, so I could understand why, like, the authorities were like, check yourself before you wreck yourself kind of thing.

Crew Chief Eric: But as we foreshadow another episode that’s coming where we talk a little bit more about Balestra, he’s not in it for the drivers. He’s in it for himself. And it becomes very clear in the series that Senna is good for business. Despite his attitudes and the way he handles the other drivers and all of his tantrums and everything else Senna’s good for business.

Prof. Jon Summers: He’s such a talent. That’s what the copadia movie does so well Is that in the first couple of minutes there’s footage of him driving those 1200 horsepower turbo cars And he’s got them on the ragged edge when the senna thing first came out came around again in, in a shocking way, 20 years after he’d gone in the mid [00:24:00] like 2010.

I went back and I re watched the races being like, I know what I saw when I was a kid, do I still feel it? Because I was terrified that I would watch and he would just be another racing driver. He wouldn’t stand out. But when you go back and you watch those early Formula 1 races, the difference is apparent.

The speed, The increased commitment it leaps out of the tv screen. It’s really astonishing

Crew Chief Eric: to the plot his family We don’t look at them as individual characters They’re a group his mother his father milton his sister vivian. They’re a unit they appear a lot. They obviously show that he’s a big family guy.

His relationship with his mother is super important. His relationship with his dad, even more so in some ways, and they’re a part of his life and they’re supportive. And they paint that picture. That’s part of the plot that runs all the way through to the very end is that his relationship with his family is tied back to Brazil.

When he gets to Europe, after all the England stuff. stuff. And we get into Formula One by episode two, three, this is where we can go. And now we can talk about [00:25:00] Jean Marie Balestra in more detail, what he was all about. But more importantly, where we start to really just ramp up is the picture they paint of the relationship between fellow Frenchmen, Alain Prost That.

Is like Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader. That’s how they paint that picture. And Ayrton Senna is Luke Skywalker and he’s coming in here to rectify everything. Am I wrong, William? Like that’s how it comes across.

William Ross: Yeah, and the midget Yoda

Crew Chief Eric: has a very Star Wars feel to it when you get to the middle part.

William Ross: Well, you know, one thing I find interesting, too, is like, like you said, you know, also, we get to that form one day, but he honored his commitment or his promise that after the championship, he went back to Brazil. And how true it is. But Keith Sutton, the photographer, seems like he played a big role in getting him to come back as he was pushing him to come back.

But also he was talking with these teams.

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t know how true it is. They played him like Jimmy Olsen to [00:26:00] Superman is how they played. Exactly.

William Ross: A hundred percent.

Crew Chief Eric: Do you know

William Ross: Keith Sutton, John? Have you ever met him?

Prof. Jon Summers: Yes, I had a number of his book and when you mentioned the Keith Sutton name, I had forgotten that Santa had the close relationship with him.

It’s interesting that Keith Sutton’s a separate character and not amalgamated into the journalist character. Yeah, I feel like I need to go back and revisit because when I went to Imola in 2004, there was nothing there. It wasn’t closed. There was one other guy who recognized my helmet, which was a Senna replica crash helmet, because I’d ridden there on a bike.

So in 2004, no Razzmatazz there. In 2014, so 20 years after Senna’s passing, there was an event at Imola. And that event had used an awful lot of Keith Sutton’s photography. And I’ve used it in a lot of the work that I’ve done. So for example, they use Keith Sutton’s photography and then created a sort of Andy Warhol image of it.

And for me, seeing that exhibit first made me think about this whole transition from being a racing [00:27:00] driver to being some kind of immortal legend, somebody who deserves having a. miniseries made about them. For me it began at that exhibition and that photography was Keith Sutton’s works. The photography is of course a really interesting way to tell the story because racing cars particularly, the picture really does speak a thousand words when it comes to racing cars.

William Ross: He was in the early part and the way they were playing it in the beginning you thought he was going to play a little bit more role throughout the whole series but it was just in the early part. You know, getting him to come back to Brazil and taking some photos and whatnot, sharing some pictures. And that was about it.

I thought he’d be in there a little bit more because he was obviously played a huge role in that period, taking photographs and everything like that. And it seemed to be that they tried to play it off that Senna was very big into that, appreciated those types of photos. What

Prof. Jon Summers: you have to understand is England’s really small.

So if Ron Dennis doesn’t know that person personally, He knows somebody who went to the same high [00:28:00] school as him, or he knows somebody who was raced with him in a lower series or something. It’s rather like NASCAR, in that it’s a small community that you’re joining, and the media guys, they’re traveling on the planes, they’re staying in the same hotel.

The reason that Senna was so hurt by Mike Doodson that time, if it was him, Mike, if it wasn’t you, I’m sorry, but the reason he was so hurt by that was that, They talked on the plane to and from racist. And it was those conversations. It was that closeness that they felt like they were friends. And the journalists at the time separated what they really knew from what they were going to write for the particular British newspaper that they were writing for at the time.

And, and a number of the journalists would write for. a left wing rag one minute and then would write for a high end right wing newspaper. They’d go from one extreme to another in terms of the kind of stories that they’d write, but they would have the same relationships with the drivers. And Dennis Jenkinson, the motorsport guy, he was a Senna [00:29:00] believer.

After a plane flight where they talked together and it was then that DSJ realized that this wasn’t brain out speed This was deeply thought about and considered and listened to so in other words It is a club that you’re a part of and if you are an outsider if you’re a mediterranean Or from south america, you know There is a phrase, right, that an Englishman is worth 10 of Johnny Foreigner.

And I’m not saying Ron Dennis was a subscriber to that. That was something that people used to believe in the days of the redcoats and all of that. But there’s still a notion there that we’re doing it our way and you Frenchies and Mediterranean’s and anybody else can do it their fucking way. We’re doing it our way with our American buddies with these American Ford V8.

We’re doing it our way.

Crew Chief Eric: The way they portray that is actually a little bit earlier in the story where Peter wore from Lotus is like, we need to bring Senna to Lotus. We need to do it now. And one of his bosses, I forget who it was, is now it’s gotta be a British driver. We’re going to bring over [00:30:00] Mansell.

That’s the way they show it in the movie to again, do that racial bias that William was talking about. They use Lotus. As the way to explain that, but then later it’s like, Oh, look how triumphant Santa was. He ended up at Lotus. dah. And he overcome adversity. And it’s great. That’s only like a sliver of what goes on.

Because once you get to the meat of the sandwich, episodes two, three, and four, it becomes over. All about Senna and Prost.

William Ross: No, no, yeah, they really focus on that quite extensively in regards to that battle between those two. I find it hard to believe that Senna didn’t push back more in regards to, I would say, mental games.

The way they portrayed it was Prost was the one pretty much doing all the mental head games and Senna was just kind of like, yeah, whatever. I have to believe that Senna Gabe just as good as he was getting in those scenarios. It seems weird. I mean, yeah, I know he was a big thing. I’ll do it on the track.

I’ll show you on the track. We’ll race her, but I just can’t see him getting bullied by the midget like that.

Crew Chief Eric: I kept saying to myself and John, you and I [00:31:00] have had this discussion before about the Senate versus pros rivalry and how it supersedes everything hunt versus louder and going back to all of them.

It’s just. It’s like, but in this series, they portray Prost really, really badly. I am surprised if he hasn’t seen this, that he’s not suing Netflix because they really make him look like a complete piece of shit. I feel for him and I don’t, but I do because I think it was bad, but I don’t know that it was anything.

As bad as the hollywood turned it around on him.

William Ross: They tried to make it up though in the end And a lot was that in five six after he’s retired. It’s so

Crew Chief Eric: hollow

William Ross: Yeah, I mean they try to kiss his ass a little bit,

Prof. Jon Summers: but it’s like I

William Ross: don’t

Prof. Jon Summers: know in real life. They did make up Yeah, I believe in real life There was a closeness and and the other thing is is that in period the way the british media delivered the story to me, or the way I received the story, it was that Prost was part of the Formula One establishment.

He [00:32:00] was a fixture at McLaren, he was acknowledged as the most complete driver and the winningest driver at the time, and Senna was really fast. But Crashy, and that made him great to what, but you could understand why the Formula One authorities struggled with that a little bit. So for me, this portrayal of Ballest and Prost as villains is really, really peculiar.

Illusion. Now, I should say at this point, I got interested in Formula One in 1984, so the same time as Senna came to Formula One. I didn’t follow the PK period and the period of the FISA FOCA war. And this FISA FOCA war really, Bernie Ecclestone seizing control of Formula One as the FOCA representative from the teams, because at that time he was Brabham team principal.

In other words, If Boles has it in for the British teams, well it’s because Bernie [00:33:00] Ecclestone is a car trader from South London, Frank Williams is a car trader from South London, you know, Ron Dennis is a mechanic, he was Jack Brabham’s mechanic. They truly are Ferrari’s garage easters, and now one of them’s owning the sport and making lots of money out of it.

I mean, you can understand why people in France and people in Italy felt like they wanted to do something, you know, in the way that they did in the thirties when the Germans were winning all the time, they invented voiturette racing again with small engines so that they could have their own races that they could win again.

Crew Chief Eric: So it’s funny you bring up Ecclestone because the only time you see See him or someone portraying him in the series is actually during the driver signing in like 1989 into the 1990 season. He’s sitting to the left of Balestra as we’re facing him and you see the terrible comb over and they don’t use Eccleston in any way during the conversation.

But a little fact that people might not know because you brought up FISA is really interesting. If you look into Balestra’s past and [00:34:00] you want to talk about collusion and conflict of interest, he was at the head of the FIA. and the head of FISA at the same time. They overlap almost entirely from 1978 through 1993.

So he’s in control of two sanctioning bodies. How much power does Balestra really have? And again, at the end of the day, the way they paint the picture versus as we’ve come to understand in other ways, where Balestra is about Selling cars and what’s good for business and all those kinds of things. They really create this emperor Palpatine, Darth Vader collusion between Prost and Balestra.

And that’s how Prost got his championships. I mean, it’s like, tell me how Prost became a champion without telling me how Prost became a champion because Balestra wanted him to be champion. And that’s the story that they paint in this and how Senna was robbed. And then we come back and we pan to Brazil and all of Brazil is upset.

And you remember the paintings and the murals that people would have of the carpet being ripped out from underneath of Senna while Frost is there laughing and Balestra’s [00:35:00] holding the trophy and all these kinds of imagery. It’s a

Prof. Jon Summers: saint’s life.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, a hundred percent.

Prof. Jon Summers: This is the life of a saint. This is St.

Patrick walking on water. Yeah. This casting of Frost as the villain is really fascinating. But it’s almost a flip side of the movies that I used to watch when I was a lad, when the British Empire characters were the goodies, whereas now every movie that I watch, it’s like we’re the colonial baddies.

William Ross: Well, they create the whole narrative of that, basically just really drop it really hot, so to speak, when they take away the win at Monaco in 84, when he’s driving for Toleman.

All that rain’s going on and all of a sudden, you know, Pross is kind of like, oh, stop the race, and then stops before the finish line and Senna goes past and all that stuff. Yeah, because the rules were that it’s

Prof. Jon Summers: always from the lap before.

William Ross: Yeah.

Prof. Jon Summers: Nowadays, they just stop the race ages before. Yeah. Everyone would have been like, ooh, crash, ooh.

Right then they were like, Oh, leave it. And only when it got really bad where they like, Oh, we better stop it. Right. Yes. Senna felt that he’d been robbed. But the other thing that they show this [00:36:00] arguably Stefan Beloff’s performance in that race was even greater than Senate. Oh yeah. No, progress through the field was even more meteoric than Senate.

Crew Chief Eric: That would have taken away from the beatification.

William Ross: Yeah. Then later, obviously in. Four, they touched that and when he gets his first win with Lotus in the downpour, it’s in Portugal.

Prof. Jon Summers: Estoril. Yeah.

William Ross: And they’re trying to get him to stop the race and bow straight. He’s like, no, cause Prost is still kind of in there and whatnot.

Then all of a sudden, you know, what’s his name from Lotus is kind of saying, you should call it. You did it in Monaco. Da, da, da, da, No, it’s his entertainment. He kind of blows them off and then pros crash. And, but they finish it. That’s where they really kind of laid the groundwork and solidified that, look, Bouncers was really pro pros and pro French and manipulating things.

Just really being the puppet master.

Crew Chief Eric: And so the way they continue this for hours, because this is a large chunk of the series, And we get the classic altercations at Suzuka. We get Monaco, the lap of the gods, all that kind of stuff. And I [00:37:00] want to talk about the lap of the gods separately. He’s almost going to lap pros, but the way they bring it all together at the end, before Senna and pros make up and become friends suddenly, I mean, that literally happens, it’s like a 32nd thing.

And you’re like, wait, like you guys were trying to kill each other five minutes ago and now you’re friends. So, okay, fine. The way they do it, it’s beautiful. Actually. They use the Laura Harrison character as she’s writing about Senna’s story. And we’re getting closer to the 1993, 1994 season. She writes this article in episode five ish, and it’s on the headline of the motoring journal that she was writing for.

And it says Senna champion, a bad example. Question mark. And now he’s got a grudge against the fictitious journalist. He doesn’t want to talk to her anymore. All this kind of thing. Fine. But I thought that was really, really interesting and really telling because it makes you question who is the bad guy here?

Because if you watch the Senate documentary, if you do your own research, you read the books and the papers in and out of period, you start to realize Senate [00:38:00] was a bully. To your point, the mind games that he would play.

Prof. Jon Summers: Let’s be clear about what he would do, which others were just not ballsy enough. to do.

He would put the car in a place where the other driver had to make a decision. Do I turn in and we crash or do I let him pass? Right. And if you let him pass, you’ve let him pass forever, every time you race him. And I thought it was absolutely majestic that nobody else had the cojones to do it. I thought it was absolutely majestic.

Absolutely majestic. Nobody else was fast enough to be able to put themselves there.

Crew Chief Eric: Except for Schumacher, who did the same thing.

Prof. Jon Summers: Yeah. Nowadays, everyone does the same thing. And from the days of Schumacher, really, it fundamentally changed the sport. And what we need to do is we need to almost roll back to the way that it was in the 50s, where if you touched in an open wheeler, somebody was eating hospital food.

If not, you were going to their funeral or was your funeral, literally. In the old days, only Farina. Was actually gonna put the car somewhere where you let him past [00:39:00] or wrecked. Nobody else did that. Nobody else was that aggressive. And even if you read about George Fulmer, you know, that character from American motorsport, when he raced in Formula One, he was much more aggressive than the Europeans and the Europeans hated him for it because it was like fine.

Argy bargy on a dirt track in Nebraska, but you can’t argy bargy at spa in the rain, but Fulmer, Race the dirt track in Nebraska and spar in the rain in a Formula One car in exactly the same way. That hadn’t happened in Formula One, right? Formula One got safer throughout the 80s. You know, after that period in the early 70s when it was really bad, they took the most dangerous circuits away and it became a lot safer.

When I was first watching Formula One in the 1980s, it wasn’t death in the afternoon. The seat at Lotus was open because de Angelis was killed testing over the winter. I, I think, believe it or not,

Crew Chief Eric: I’m glad you went here because there’s something I think you would agree with. The way they did it was very subtle if you were paying attention.

It all goes back to again, the Laura Harrison [00:40:00] journalist character at one of the moments before she publishes. That is Sena a bad example article. She shoves the microphone and senna’s face and she asks them, what do you think about what? Stuart has to say about you, and he’s like, well, what do you mean?

And she says, and I think it’s a direct quote from Sir Jackie Stuart in that Senna ushered in the end of the era of gentlemen drivers

Prof. Jon Summers: fully a hundred percent. And at the time I didn’t want to be listening to what my parents were listening to. I wanted to be listening to Slayer and that’s what Senna brought.

William Ross: Yeah. Well, that’s where he came up with one of his. Famous quote or said, if there’s a gap, I’m going for the gap. If you don’t go for the gap, you’re not a racing driver. Right.

Prof. Jon Summers: Yeah. And that’s why not the half Portuguese attractive lady reporter. That’s why the little beardy dude who sat alongside Sterling Moss when he won the melee, Melia looked at that Brazilian and thought, Oh, you’re something different.

You’re really special because Dennis Jenkinson, who wrote for motorsport, which was the magazine that I read really believed in center right from the outset. And when the others were like, he’s too crashy, [00:41:00] DSJ would always be like, no, look deeper. Look at the reasons why. And that’s why in those seasons at Lotus, he ran out of gas in a lot of those races.

And the British press said, Oh, it was cause he turned the turbo up to have the glory of leading. But really he never had the speed in the first place. Whereas I believed he had the speed. He just didn’t strike me as the character who would do that. And years later, I realized that DSJ knew that. Sen himself was deeply hurt by the notion that he would have just wound the turbo up to have the glory of leading, right?

He just was not that kind of character at all. I felt that through the TV screen, DSJ knew that for a fact having spent that quality time with it. Jenks was great. Loved him.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, I’m glad you brought up the speed because that allows us to segue into another part of the plot, which is the infamous lap of the gods at Monaco in 1988 behind the wheel of the McLaren.

What’s interesting about this is I feel that there’s two laps of the god because he gets retribution a couple of years later at Monaco in the 90s. Where he executes, without mistake, what [00:42:00] he wanted to achieve in 88. Now, when you listen to even the documentary, in Senna’s own words, he talks about the surreal out of body experience, and how the laps just kept coming, and he was going faster, and blah blah blah, and it was Ron Dennis on the radio that distracted him, and suddenly broke his concentration.

Well, he wasn’t really concentrating, right? Because he was having an out of body experience, so he was driving by complete intuition. All of the sudden, And I listen to it now with much wiser ears, and I’m like, this sounds like alien abduction stories. And I’m not trying to be any sort of way towards that, but it’s like, okay, just admit that you were going too fast and you screwed up and you had a tantrum and went off to your hotel room.

Prof. Jon Summers: No, no, you qualify a second and a half faster than the fastest guy in the sport. Apart from you in the same car, you were not just a bad guy. bit faster you were on another plane and you went back to your hotel that night you lay in bed and you slept and you knew that god had [00:43:00] touched you in a special way second half is huge that’s massive and so when you’re in the car and driving and you’re concentrating you are in the zone as they say for senna that was fully god speaking through him that’s what i believe he believed his death Talent in the car was something that God had given him, and he was simply channeling.

And I feel that he got high on his own supply, and that’s why when Ron was like, Slow down! He was like, Oh, fuck, and put it in the barriers at Portier, right? And that whole thing of, Oh, he went back to his hotel room, he sulked. No, I didn’t have any problem understanding. I can’t understand these NASCAR drivers who get out of the car after a wreck and are like, My sponsor, love my wife, family, God, Jesus, better luck next time, right?

No, fuck on that. I’m pissed. I lost. It was my fault. I’m sulking in my flat and I’m not talking to anyone. I understood that. That’s how I would have reacted. That’s why I loved

William Ross: him. There was really no way to get back to the pits from where he crashed at anyway. That was the other thing too. It [00:44:00] was like, it would have been a night.

It was like, it was right there. And I agree. I wouldn’t say anything. Screw this. I’m going in. It’s right there. Back then, you didn’t have all the, what you got to do today. Like you’re saying with NASCAR, any series. Oh, thank this. God bless that. Blah, blah, blah. Hey, you know, and yada, yada. You know, inside you’re so pissed off.

It’s like, come on, you know, it’s not reality. That’s what I loved about Senate. It was so real. It was so authentic.

Crew Chief Eric: The problem is the film detracts from that because what we saw in period on television was Senna’s got that look. He looks like a kid that just, he just screwed up and he’s going to go pout in his room kind of thing.

And he’s going to be punished for it or whatever, right? The way the film does it is he goes back to his hotel room. We see him go up the stairs and the next scene, his sister Vivian, who is a, Psychologist is in there appeasing him and talking to him and consoling him. And that’s how we get the whole discussion about this surreal nature of his driving and how God touched his soul and all this stuff.

And you’re like, Oh my God. Like, yeah. Okay. And again, the Senate documentary, you [00:45:00] hear it in Senna’s voice where he explains it himself in his own words. And you’re like, okay, so there’s a little movie magic there. There’s a lot of footwork and pedal box, which was super annoying and CGI and all this blurring of the screen.

And it’s cool. for the non racing enthusiast. Like, Oh, that’s really cool. That’s dramatic. That’s a neat way that they did that to kind of exemplify it all. But I was like, okay, let’s move on. Because if I look at Monaco 90, he drives exactly the same way in exactly the same car and he doesn’t screw up and it’s a better lap at the end of the day.

Prof. Jon Summers: Willie, what did you make of the action sequences? I read they were a bit like Ron Howard’s Rush.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes.

Prof. Jon Summers: Yeah. I found Ron Howard’s Rush a little glossy and pornographic for my liking.

William Ross: Yeah. They used some actual real footage here and there. I wish they would have used more.

Crew Chief Eric: The machinery was exquisite though, much like the Ferrari movie.

William Ross: Yes, exactly. Having access to the actual cars, obviously helped out immensely.

Crew Chief Eric: There’s that one scene, especially like they have the Tolman and they have the McLaren and [00:46:00] P4 and all that stuff. It’s that one in the dark with the Lotus, the John player special, when they show the real car in that warehouse, that was so cool to see that

William Ross: as Eric said is we can tell looking at it and watch it.

Okay. That’s just not real. That’s fake. That’s CGI. We don’t really need to see that, but to the person that just kind of, Hey, this is entertainment value, the drive to survive crowd. I mean, is that. Which is what they’re going after because that’s a huge audience. Oh, this is so awesome. This is cool. I mean, how do you think they got all these people subscribe to Netflix because of Drive to Survive and got people on board with F1?

I

Prof. Jon Summers: want to watch with my kid. I want to see whether or not it captures his imagination. He’s 10 now. Oh, he’ll

Crew Chief Eric: like it. Yeah, I like it a lot.

Prof. Jon Summers: We’ll see. I’m really fascinated to see if his classmates are interested in watching it as well and how it resonates for them.

William Ross: You just can’t be back there going, that’s not true.

No, that didn’t happen. You can’t be critiquing it, but you got to keep your mouth shut. No, no. I’m, I’m

Prof. Jon Summers: literally gonna button my lip. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: But the thing I thought was funny is how many times they went back like they would do in a Fast and the Furious film. All the shifting and the [00:47:00] arm movements and all this, it was always the pedal box.

And he’s wrapping the throttle. Like he’s driving a rally car. Right. Which I think comes from the famous video of him driving the NSX at Suzuka for Honda, where he’s wrapping the throttle to try to get the car to be more pliable in the corners. So they just translated that to, this is how he drives his Ferrari.

formula car, which I don’t think you would be that erratic and that not smooth because you don’t want a formula car to step around a corner like it’s drifting or whatever. So I saw that as, for me as a detractor in terms of saying, well, this is how Senna drove. Like he was a rally driver and he’s not.

Prof. Jon Summers: Sam Posey did a piece that I’m not sure if it’s still on YouTube, but he did a piece analyzing Senna 20 years ago. I mean, Sam’s like. Alzheimer’s now, isn’t he? Yeah. In that piece, he broke down the genius by saying that he felt like in certain corners, not all of them, medium speed turns, Senna would bend his line around the turn.

He would enter on a more shallow [00:48:00] entry, turn in at the normal point, but have a more shallow entry, and then tighten his line around the apex. So for Posey, he sort of chopped at the steering wheel. On around that. So perhaps it was replicated. Now I’m not seeing that NSX footage. Interesting thought with the pedal box.

Crew Chief Eric: And by the way, the series is sponsored largely in part by Honda. They even have a special advertisement that they do at the beginning. You’ve probably seen it starts out. You won’t remember my name. It’s all about perseverance or whatever. So the series is backed by Honda. It’s very pro Honda. So that’s why I was sort of like, I wonder if they got the inspiration from that NSX video.

Prof. Jon Summers: How do we talk about the relationship with Honda? Then in the movie, because all the time he was at McLaren, the talk was that Prost was the one that was the outsider because Senna had this special relationship with Honda. And I felt like, yeah, Senna had this special relationship with Honda was because when you worked with Senna, Senna delivers, if most people deliver a hundred percent, Senna delivers at 110%.

And [00:49:00] that’s what Honda wanted. Honda aren’t. In the French boys club, Honda aren’t European, right? Honda are looking for somebody who is going to arrive early, not get drunk and stay late. That’s what they want. And Senna with the engineering feedback combined with the utter brain out commitment on the track.

He was exactly what they wanted. Of

William Ross: course they did enjoy karaoke. I was going to say. I would have been great if they would have had, uh, cell phones back then and see them guys singing karaoke. Because that’s the one interesting scene when they’re kind of negotiating that with Honda. It’s Ron Dennis and Senna.

Crew Chief Eric: And Ochiro Honda, old man Honda.

William Ross: Yeah, and they’re, and then like the one guy, like tell him, come up here on stage and let Ron talk, you know, kind of a whole interesting little scene. But yeah, it was kind of funny seeing them.

Crew Chief Eric: I was so bad.

Prof. Jon Summers: I don’t know if that really happened, but it’s really cool to imagine that that might have happened.

Old man Honda, Senna, and Ron Dennis drunk in a karaoke club.

William Ross: Pretty much. He’s drinking whiskey. I mean, he takes a, I mean, you can see it. It’s [00:50:00] a great picture because who’s really going to tell what actually happened. Ron Dennis would be the only one. You know, Ron’s not going to say anything. But hey, let’s paint a picture.

It’s entertaining.

Crew Chief Eric: The gentleman he goes up on stage with, and pardon me for forgetting his name, from Honda, Becomes a major secondary player from that point forward. You always see him with Senna. And then there’s the arguments with Prost about the favoritism that the engineer from Honda is giving to Senna.

And then even in the very last episode, right before the race at Imola, you see a glimpse of the guy from Honda sort of giving him the what’s up nod and that cast of people, so that’s how Honda kind of places themselves almost product placement. Outside of the car throughout the rest of the series,

Prof. Jon Summers: it’s clever of Honda to be involved because the legend of Santa would not be what it was.

Were it not for those Honda motors, they were just the class of the field in period.

William Ross: Oh yeah, definitely. In that scene, Mr. Honda proposes the question to Ron Dennis. Well, do you think Post is going to like having Santa as his teammate? And [00:51:00] Ryan kind of does a chuckle if he’s got a Honda engine, he doesn’t care who his teammate is.

So along those lines, and it’s basically making the fact is, you know, that’s the superior engine. That’s the engine you want to have. All they did was basically have it. It was Prost and Senna and the McLaren stuff. They really didn’t get into it when Prost left McLaren. All of a sudden, Prost is retired.

And it’s like, okay.

Crew Chief Eric: They followed the theme of the fastest driver wants the fastest car. So he left Holman to go to Lotus. Because Lotus was perceived as the fastest team. He left Lotus to go to McLaren because McLaren was beating Lotus hand over fist. And then he left McLaren to go to Williams because Williams had, quote unquote, the magic carpet.

All the electronic nannies that were helping Damon Hill and Nigel Mansell. And all those guys to win. So he goes to Williams in the end, and then he gets the rug pulled out from under him, pun intended, because Ballester decides, well, we’re going to take all the nannies away, but it leveled the playing field for all the drivers because nobody got the electronic nanny.

Prof. Jon Summers: It didn’t level the playing field because [00:52:00] Williams had not done any conventional development. for two years. Two years Williams had been Active Ride. Now the Active Ride was taken away. Some teams hadn’t ever developed Active Ride. Some of them had continued with a crappy form of Active Ride that was still like half active but half not.

The point is that it wasn’t a level in the playing field. At the beginning of 94, Williams had been the best car and immediately went to having no development. So Senna had struggled so hard. To get into what became an unbelievably twitchy, difficult car to drive. I just want to say, I’m not sure if they got into this at all, but I wrote a piece years ago and it’s since again, cropped up on Wikipedia.

And I’m like, Oh, you know, it begins with the pit lane fire in 1994, right? Josh Verstappen’s most memorable moment. The Verstappen name’s first entry in Formula One history. Flavio Briatore cheats the fuel rig. So it pumps more gas into the tank. That means the fuel spills everywhere and Verstappen’s car catches on fire.

And this is [00:53:00] Briatore cheating. And Briatore was cheating with traction control. He was cheating with the fuel rig. And that put Senna on the back foot throughout 1994. It was hard to watch because after 92 and 93, where the car just fell further and further, Off the pace for 94, finally got the, I mean, I’m not sure if they do this in the series, but it was well known during 1993 that he was racing from a power and on a race by race contract, he said

William Ross: he would drive for Williams for free.

One scene that how expensive it was. And I think we all know it was a million dollars a race. Remember it served me correct. It was something obscene number, but yeah, they touched on that, that it was a race by race basis.

Crew Chief Eric: And the other thing that we get later. That culminates from all this is the pro Senna thing abruptly stops and they don’t talk much about when pros went to Ferrari and all that.

They just sort of like, they like, he went over there and that’s the end of that. And then they mentioned Schumacher like twice, the German at Benetton that he’s fighting with, but they never show they don’t have anybody [00:54:00] play Schumacher or anything like that. And they don’t really talk about it anymore because.

At this point, we’re five episodes in out of six and we need to wrap things up. But there’s a bigger piece that we missed that carries over three episodes and take it or leave it. It goes back to what we mentioned in the beginning about the sexual aggressive nature and Senna has a type, you know, we go from Lillian to the princess of Monaco, which that was hilarious.

And then we usher in Xuxa, famed Brazilian TV host, actress, singer, you know, she was popular with children’s programming, even some here in the United States. They had this weird undertone, if you kind of paid attention, where every time he sort of did something with a woman, something went wrong, or he lost a race.

You could attribute the lap of the gods in 88, to the fact that he hooked up with the princess the night before. Be a king.

Prof. Jon Summers: But did he in real life?

Crew Chief Eric: I have no idea. I don’t either. Nobody knows, but the joke would be, you know, our friends. Steve and Izzy from everything I learned from movies, Steve would say that he had post nut clarity going into that Monaco race.

But the point is when we get to [00:55:00] Shusha, I remember that Christmas special where, you know, he leans in and the innuendos and they showed it in America on PBS or something like that or whatever. Like you never knew and you thought something was weird and was going on. But what I didn’t know in period was they were a couple.

The series made it sound like they were going to get married and they were going to have kids and he was going to retire from racing and Shusha was now his world. Then comes the breakup when they broke up at the end of 89 in Australia. Then he has this shit season the next season. But the worst part of it, William, tell me this, this was not a direct ripoff of days of thunder, that pillow talk scene where he’s like, Oh, it was so cringy.

You could have deleted it completely from the film. It was unnecessary. Yeah. Did all this stuff with Shusha actually happen again? They spent the better part of three episodes. Using her as part of the plot.

William Ross: That intertwined deeply. Is that the message they’re trying to put out there? That when he gets involved with a woman, all of a sudden shit happens and he [00:56:00] drives bad because his mind’s not clear?

Because again, you know, unless you’re in that room, you don’t know what’s going on. And even if they were talking to his family, they wouldn’t know exactly what was going on behind closed doors. So you don’t know. So it’s all kind of just say, well, he’s together, but we can, it was unnecessary. Yeah. You could touch on the fact that if you wanted to know his personal side, a little bit was the fact is, you know, they had the relationship and it seemed like they had, they were going to go through him, but then also, you know what, our careers are just too busy and we’re just too famous.

We can’t make this happen. We’re done.

Crew Chief Eric: And here’s some obligatory boobs because of the HBO crowd that wants to see them.

William Ross: Yeah. It shows some TNA a little bit on there too. You know, I was surprised over there going that route because they really didn’t touch on the fact his religious aspect of it, because he was a very religious guy, you know, they kind of mentioned it, but all his philanthropy that he did in Brazil and what he does and still going today, like very, very healthy billions and millions of dollars.

Did Sanina get a mention?

Crew Chief Eric: Sanina was shown on a t shirt. That’s how they did that. And he was wearing it during one of the recreation, I think it was the driver’s meeting that he got [00:57:00] up and left. He was wearing the Sanina t shirt.

William Ross: Yeah. And again, it was six episodes long. Then you think, well, maybe they’re just trying to squeeze stuff in.

You know what? I think they could have find some, put it in there. But again, it’s like the story they kind of wanted to tell. You know, all of a sudden they just kind of cut off from the McLaren stuff with Prost. Now all of a sudden he’s at Williams, you know, last episode, they’re delving into that tragic weekend.

They didn’t like get into anything about the buildup to it. They didn’t get anything like about the season, him going to Williams and doing any testing, anything. It’s just all of a sudden they’re there. They go into that pretty in depth in regards to all the tragedy that happened with, you know, Barrichello’s crash.

Kind of expand on that, talking with Barrichello after the crash and, Oh, I’m fine, I’m alright, this and that. But then, the thing happened with Ratzenberger, and then you really start seeing, set aside of it. Because that’s the other thing they really touch on is, you know, he was very driver safety oriented, even though he kind of was a bully on the track.

I don’t think we should be racing. It’s now, you know, hey, you know, we’ve had these tragic accidents. I think we should be making [00:58:00] more statement. And of course now, hey, the show must go on basically.

Prof. Jon Summers: He was a completely reasonable man off the track. Yes, completely psychotic on the track. That was what I remember.

Crew Chief Eric: Could you bring that up because that’s another thread that they continue to pull from the very first episode and Senna was just like Belligerent about I settle my problems on the racetrack. You could have turned it into a drinking game. How many times that phrase was used throughout the series, which gave me pause when we get to Tamburello, should we go here, William uncorked that baby.

All right, here we go. Buckle yourself up, John. Here you go. With that context in mind, my wife said something as she was watching the last episode with me and seeing the crash footage of Tamburello for the first time as someone who had never seen it before. She goes. Did he drive off intentionally? And I stopped for a second.

I said, wait, wait, wait, hold on back that up. And I looked at it and I looked, I looked at it again and I went back and I’ve rewatched the Tamburello crash a couple of times. And it made me think if I use the lens of the Netflix series [00:59:00] and that aggressive undertone of, I settle my problems on the track, going into that race at Imola, he was angry at the FIA, especially Max Mosley.

He wanted the race to be stopped. Ratzenberger is killed. Barrichello is in the hospital. There is crash after crash after crash. The track surface is terrible. It was a very like Jackie Stewart stopped the race. We shouldn’t be doing this, but he calls his mother from his hotel room, which by the way, the hotel room is nothing like what you depicted in any of your stories or photographs.

It’s very nice. It’s like the Ritz Carlton in comparison. He calls his mother, who I believe would have told him to not race that day. She goes, you do what you’re going to do. You’re going to race because you always race. You’re not going to not race tomorrow or whatever. And then you can feel the dramatic buildup and all this kind of thing.

And again. Listening to my wife’s very innocent words, thinking about what Netflix did, I speculate if he didn’t want to make the ultimate statement to stop the race by purposefully putting the [01:00:00] car in the wall, and he miscalculated how fast and how much he needed to slow down.

Prof. Jon Summers: Eric, Jesus died for our sins.

Crew Chief Eric: Thank you.

Prof. Jon Summers: Jesus died. Died so motor racing could live. I don’t believe it for a minute. You can get that impression. I don’t want to encourage people to sit there watching crash footage, but PK had a wreck that he thinks ended his career as the fastest guy, right? He thinks he was never as fast and his eyes certainly weren’t the same after his Imola wreck.

There’s footage of that. I remember in period, Berger’s rat there, where Berger hits, spins a little bit, then the car catches fire. On each occasion, the car spears off the track. At its route, I don’t subscribe to the broken steering column theory. I subscribe to a theory that has the car riding low because of reduced tire pressures, because of the time behind the pace car, and the fact that the inside of Tamburello was bumpy, and Senna warned Hill, his teammate, not to go there.

But Senna puts the car there [01:01:00] and you can see that from the onboard footage of Michael Schumacher’s car. In fact, from that onboard footage, you can see that Senna’s car sparks more than anybody else’s there. That’s right. I came here to win and I’m a go karter, so I’m going to set the car up real low. So his car was lower than anybody else’s.

So yeah, me, he tobogganed off. There’s unfinished business. People don’t commit suicide if they’ve got a full diary. He had a full diary beating the Germans.

William Ross: And to your point about tire pressure, he was bitching when they were behind the safety car, the safety car wasn’t going fast enough.

Prof. Jon Summers: It wasn’t the safety car.

So for me, when I went to Imola in 2004, one of the single most awesome things was you could go in the garages, the garages were open. There was also that Opel Vectra. Pace car. I was a sales rep in England. We had cars like that. They were called Vauxhalls, but that was the top of the range one. It was the double overhead cam, 16 valve, two liter.

Hold onto your hats. It made 190 horse. Oh, that much? [01:02:00] 190. Yeah. And it might just crack 140 miles an hour. Nowadays. The pace cars are much faster than that, aren’t they? In order to keep the tyre temperatures up. Let’s be clear, that car was the first year of safety cars. One of the first times. Yeah. That’s even the first time a safety car had ever been deployed.

And yes, at the time Senna did express. Concerns about the tire pressures and all that. Look, there’s no way you could have kept the tires up to temperature. No way. No. How? No,

William Ross: I will say it’s an interesting theory or proposition. If you could look at everything on it and his viewpoint and see, yeah. But again, I think if I was going to do it, I would have done it at a much slower corner, not doing 190 miles an hour.

I would have probably picked one when I was doing about 60 miles an hour. done something on those lines. I mean, cause what is his goal would have been to try and get the race stopped? He knew in his body he wouldn’t stop the race.

Crew Chief Eric: Why crash on a different corner than everybody else that already crashed on?

Cause that’s the corner everybody was crashing in.

William Ross: True, but again, he knew though, they wouldn’t stop the race then if he crashed because they don’t stop the race. What

Crew Chief Eric: doesn’t discount my new [01:03:00] theory. Sabotage theory is out of the question and I never believed the steering theory. I’m sort of eh on the cold tires.

The electronic nannies regulation thing is another thing you could consider. You know, these are not the era of ground effects cars. And to your point, John, if he lowers the car, he can artificially create ground effects that way. So maybe that was part of his plan, whatever. But what we don’t have, we don’t have substantial data from the car to disprove whether he was accelerating, constant throttle.

or braking going through that corner and you want to tell me that even at 34 years old senna’s reaction time and they made a big point of this in the series that he needed to feel the car we got to tighten those straps so he can feel every vibration of the car that he didn’t know something wasn’t right Approaching the corner in the corner mid corner The only thing that can disprove that he didn’t go straight off is looking at the data from the car if it actually exists Because if he was full throttle through the corner, [01:04:00] let’s just say that.

Yes, you’re right. He planned his attack He set the car up and the car just gave way and tobogganed off the track. It’s

Prof. Jon Summers: not a corner in that period. Tamburello is not a corner, it’s a straight, right? The kink. How does Keith Coe define a straight? A straight is where you can do what you like with the throttle.

So from the time that you come across the start finish straight at Imola at that time, the throttle is flat until you are through Tamburello absolutely flat, then you slow down at the end to go into Tosa, or whatever that corner is at the bottom of the hill there. All it was a case of doing was deciding where you put the car on the track.

Crew Chief Eric: Go back and watch the crash, which I’m sure you’ve done. The trajectory is like laser straight compared to he’s mid turn and the car just under steers off the track and he ends up in the barrier. He literally goes straight into the wall.

Prof. Jon Summers: Yeah, it spears off. It’s not like an understeer y. Correct. You’re right.

It doesn’t seem to be. That’s why I always want to use the word toboggan. To me, it’s like toboggan. Straight off the track.

Crew Chief Eric: If there was race data, and even if he [01:05:00] was speared off, he would have reacted by a change in steering angle and slamming on the brakes. The race data would prove conclusively how he reacted to what was happening, even At high triple digit speeds.

Prof. Jon Summers: I thought he had tried to apply the brake. We

Crew Chief Eric: can all think different things. Again, I want race data.

Prof. Jon Summers: Well, I mean, isn’t that one thing about it that the car has been broken up? Yeah. We don’t know where the car is gone. And that is one of the things where if it was around. We could in future do different tests than we were able to do in period to maybe work out what happened.

William Ross: Well, they made it disappear because I think they knew in their mind that the Italian course because they’ve set precedent about going after like Caro and stuff like that. Didn’t they try and go after Frank Williams and charge him with manslaughter or something? But then they they couldn’t look at the car because oh, we broke it apart or whatever.

And they try and go after him legally.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s where I get the whole sabotage theory is that somebody sabotaged the steering and blah, blah, blah. And all this kind of thing. That’s where that came from because of the accusations [01:06:00] against Frank Williams that they tampered with the car. But why would you do that to your prized horse?

That doesn’t make sense.

William Ross: And here’s where I, and I’m kind of happy they did. They really didn’t get into theories. No. What cause they just said, Hey, he crashed and he died. They really didn’t get into touch either that, oh yeah, he was kind of alive for a bit after it actually was, according to Sid Watkins, you know, he was still alive for a bit.

I don’t know how long after, but not much, but, you know, they really didn’t delve into that, which is good, I thought. It’s like, why start to, you know, oh, maybe this or whatnot. Oh, hey, he crashed on purpose, you know, creating those candle worms. But it gets there and gets to that point. Then obviously they go on after the fact, briefly on the funeral, everything like that.

I thought they could have gone into more too about his legacy in regards to what after the fact and what up till now, I mean, even today, he is such a mythical figure in auto racing. He is such an inspiration, you know, even to kids that never saw him race, they just know who he is. How

Prof. Jon Summers: old was Lewis Hamilton when he raced, right?

Lewis Hamilton was younger than my son [01:07:00] when he signed up. Yeah. But this was the thing that I jotted down two topics in this sort of thing. The theme section that we’re in is greatness and the center difference, and that’s sort of the same thing. Does the series convey the center difference properly?

Does it convey what made him so great? Does it convey why the series is about him rather than about any one of the other guys in that driver briefing?

Crew Chief Eric: No, it’s exactly what I summarized in the introduction in that it’s about nationalism. It’s about pride. It’s about being the hope of a people. That’s how it ends.

That whole theme is cemented. With his win at Interlagos in 91, and that carries through the last episode. And to William’s point, they glaze over the funeral because Brazil is heartbroken. Jesus is dead. The hero has fallen with his shielder on it. And that’s where they leave you, and then it pans to the very famous.

Speech of inspiration and hope by Senna himself. And I’m including it in the articles. If people have never seen it, they can watch it. But it ends with Senna talking to the camera, breaking the fourth [01:08:00] wall. In his own words, this message of hope for the world.

Prof. Jon Summers: The actor or the real Senna?

Crew Chief Eric: The real Senna.

Prof. Jon Summers: And that’s where they

Crew Chief Eric: leave it. You’re still like, what did I just see? What happened here? You have a sense and understanding that he is a great driver. But we’ve had this argument before about greatness. If you compare Senna to Fangio, if you compare Senna to Schumacher, if you compare to Lewis Hamilton, it’s like always in period in the machinery and you can justify why he was great at the time.

He was great. I’m not saying that Senna wasn’t a great person. And I’m again, not saying that he committed suicide or anything like that, but there is still a lot of mystique around this story and there’s answers that we don’t have. And I don’t think we’re ever going to get.

William Ross: I hate to use the word. But they mentioned it once in regards to his work ethic, you know, and he was very well known that this guy’s just unbelievable in regards to work ethic.

And they really didn’t get into that too. And the other aspect I think that they should have touched on more too is, I mean, he was, had an engineering background. Mine. So he knew what he was [01:09:00] talking about. He wasn’t just some schlep. The guy was like, well, it’s just doing a little of this. So figure it out.

Then I’ll go drive it again. See if we fixed it. He had input and worked on the cars and knew what it was doing and how to fix that and correct it to see if it would help solve the issue.

Prof. Jon Summers: Yeah. My understanding is he had good rapport with the mechanics. Yes. They respected his work ethic. Obviously, they didn’t like it if he crashed, but they respected the level of commitment that he brought and that if they’d made a change, he wouldn’t just go out and be like, man, if they made a change, that would be reflected in his performance.

And of course, it’s that element that Michael Schumacher takes to the nth degree and allowed Michael Schumacher to turn Formula One into a procession for a number of years.

William Ross: That would go more to us automotive people, and we’d have loved to have seen it, but again, they’re making a piece to ride this, try to survive a wave.

They’re trying to make this appealing to a mass audience, and especially a mass audience that their knowledge and history of Formula 1 auto racing [01:10:00] itself is very minimal. So a lot of these people are just getting into it. They’ve only been for a few years. You know, they’re on the periphery of it. You know, now all of a sudden they’re kind of delving into it.

It has

Prof. Jon Summers: to be an on ramp for people.

William Ross: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: So one thought I had Hold on, hold on, hold on. Wait, wait, wait. The one other thing that it does do though is, even though he doesn’t qualify age wise, it enters him into that mysterious 27 club, they call it. Like a Kurt Cobain or an Amy Winehouse, where we don’t know the whole story.

story. It was a tragic death. There’s a lot of people in that realm. And so in my opinion, it depicts him in that way where it’s like, you should now understand that this person was larger than life. You might not have the whole story and you might not need all the details, but understand. That he is in a category with these other folks that were taken from us too early.

And what could have been, if he was still alive today, he’d be in his 70s. Let’s be real. We don’t know.

Prof. Jon Summers: Well, he’d be Martin Brundle now, wouldn’t he? That’s a really profound comparison though. The comparison with Amy Winehouse and Kurt Cobain. That’s [01:11:00] better than my Elvis and Monroe. Eric, you’ve really hit the nail on the head with those contemporary 90s characters.

And what I wanted to ask you guys a little bit about was I feel like the reason why, if you were a movie studio, you would have greenlighted this, despite the Cappadia film, the sort of retelling of the Cappadia film. If I’m a movie executive and I’ve funded this, I want big shoulder dresses. I want cocaine white Ferrari Testarossas, particularly.

I want this to look as cool as Miami Vice looked in period. If I’m signing the checks, that’s what I want it to look like. Did this piece look like good?

Crew Chief Eric: Yes. Yeah. You would have thought Ron Howard did this movie, much like Rush, but it was done by a crew of South Americans and Portuguese. I mean, it is not even filmed in English.

I watched it in the native Portuguese with English subtitles. There are dubbed versions. The whole cast was mostly non American. You look at the credits and stuff. I mean, you’re like, this was produced out of the [01:12:00] norm. Even for Netflix, which is fine because I took it like Money Heist and some of the other foreign shows that Netflix has brought to the table, which have been exceptional.

So it’s slightly a league above like a Money Heist and some of those other programs because it has that quality to it that you would expect from a Ron Howard film. It is that good looking and the machinery is fantastic. Again, very, very good. The pink jumpers. So there’s good with bad, but again, like I said at the beginning, I would recommend this to both the non racing enthusiasts to get an idea of what Senna’s life was like, but also to the die hard Formula One fans that maybe know even more than we do to say, you will enjoy this.

It’s a good retelling of There are other options out there for you. So I wouldn’t just pass it over and say, Eh, I know the Senna story, because there are other nuggets in there, like the Shusha thing is a prime example that I was like, Wow, okay. I always like when I walk away from something like this, mockumentary or documentary, going, that’s [01:13:00] interesting.

I’m going to pull that thread and I’m going to dig a little deeper.

William Ross: Yeah, because they don’t tell, I’m going to say, fabricate lies. Don’t know that never happened. You know, just for the story to try and make it even bigger, whatever you want to say it would be. You know, they stay true to the history of it.

They just like omit some things and maybe gloss over some things and that kind of stuff. But it’s not like they take some story, which we would know in depth or know what happened and just totally change it. Just for the storylines, which is good.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, it also benefits from the fact that this happened basically through the eighties and nineties, and there’s a ton of file footage to pull from.

Again, I say, when you watch the press conferences, the interviews, when Senate takes his stand and basically says the FIA is a bunch of idiots, all that was taken from primary sources and they reenacted, they dramatize those sources, but they did them exactly. And they were beautiful and they were brilliant.

Are they convincing? Oh, hell yeah.

William Ross: Oh, yeah. When you watch, it’s worth the time. I guess the one nice thing is you can break it up. It’s not like you got to sit there and [01:14:00] watch it, like a two hour movie. You know, Hey, you got an hour here, hour there. We had time.

Prof. Jon Summers: You did, but you don’t have to do that.

William Ross: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: I had to break it up because I was writing so many notes.

I wanted to digest. Every episode by itself and then I re review my notes. I was a little bit more pragmatic about it. But yes, you could binge it on a Saturday in front of the fireplace if you want to. But space it out because there’s so much there. Again, every episode feels like a movie because there’s a lot happening very quickly that they’re jamming into a 60 minute format.

You’ll definitely

William Ross: enjoy it. There’s no doubt about that. Yeah, you’ll definitely enjoy it. And I recommend people to, you know, definitely watch it. Not force it on someone, but definitely watch it. And again, it’s entertainment. This is not historically accurate, telling it so you know exactly what happened.

No, this is entertainment. Getting this, you know, history and background incentive for a period of his life. It’s definitely worth the watch. I will say

Prof. Jon Summers: that. I guess my last question would be, Is there anything about the series, plot, character, theme, or style, thought that you have, note that you [01:15:00] made, Eric, that you don’t feel like we’ve covered in the conversation today?

Crew Chief Eric: No, because what I don’t want to do is spoil it for people, especially for those that haven’t watched yet or planning to, didn’t know that it released on the 29th of November, or have been anxiously awaiting for it, or want to learn more about Senna. I want you to enjoy it the way it is, and then Go about and do your own research.

Go back to some primary sources. Go back to the F1 TV channel. Watch some of the old races. Watch Suzuka in the late 80s and 90s and the battles against pros. How all that stuff played out and how the media covered it. The journalist

Prof. Jon Summers: character is a real magazine. Autosport.

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly. Yeah. Go back and watch the documentary from 2010, which is absolutely excellent.

Just use this as a jumping off point to other things. If you’re an inquisitive person and want to know about a really, really important era in Formula One racing.

Prof. Jon Summers: Thank you, Eric.

Crew Chief Eric: So I’ll leave our listeners with this. And again, in the spirit of not spoiling it for those that haven’t seen it, we’re going to have a collection of additional supporting [01:16:00] information in the Grand Touring Magazine in issue 31.

It’ll come out alongside of the episode, but I also encourage you to go back and check out johnsommers. net and some of the articles that John has written about his day. Time following the Senna story, being a Tamburello photographs of the Andy Warhol picture that he talked about earlier, you know, things like that, but also understand that it is a fictional mini series based on Ayrton Senna, De Silva’s life.

He’s a Brazilian racing legend. He won the formula one championship three times. It’s available on Netflix for you to binge and enjoy. It’s six hours or so long broken into six episodes. So I just want to remind people to never stop learning and to really enjoy this. Almost unmatched era in Formula One racing.

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