By Joe Murphy
Netflix poured considerable money into its new series titled “Senna”. This biographical piece has seen mixed reviews so I thought it was Wheel2Wheel Reports’ turn to share some honesty.
As an F1 fan, we have been and continue to be spoiled for content outside of regular race weekends. “Rush”, “Drive to Survive” and the new “F1” film set to launch next year are just a sample from a long list of which “Senna” is now a part of.
From someone who wasn’t alive at the peaks of the Brazilian, prior reading needed to be conducted to fully understand the accuracies and inaccuracies of this presentation of his life.
In short, it had both. For the record, it was a really stirring piece about arguably the best to ever do it in motorsport. Split into six episodes, it told the story of a young Brazilian going from Karting to F2000, then to F3 before rising up to all the highs and lows of his F1 career. Battles with Prost, love and family all featured throughout.
Despite reviews to the contrary, the acting was phenomenal. Gabriel Leone plays the lead role wonderfully and has a supporting cast that are convincing as lead figures from F1 at the time, including the likes of the aforementioned Alain Prost, Ron Dennis and Niki Lauda.
The story is good, but that isn’t really to do with the series makers, instead just the drama of real life.
The action on track is accurate too. One of the major problems with “Drive to Survive” is the race action isn’t correct. Corners are out of place, pit lanes are not chronological and team radio messages are inaccurate. With “Senna”, this isn’t the case. To a true F1 fan, this is appreciated.
This isn’t to say there aren’t inaccuracies, however. Despite the love for the story and the driver, there are two flaws to report. Firstly, the fans at UK’s Norfolk track (which looks rather more mountainous in Hollywood land), are all seemingly right wing thugs. Scenes with topless, angry, UK face painted fans seem to literally drool over a young Martin Brundle, with such scenes not accurate at all.
And this leads to the second criticism. Senna himself did face adversity, of that there is no question. However, the human error factor of his person was left out completely. Apart from one mistake in Monaco that had what looked like supernatural causes, everything else seemed to be someone else’s fault. Racing from F2000 To F1 never commented on his rivals beating him fairly. To say Martin Brundle was cheating is literally the opposite of true. Senna had a 40% DNF rate during his career due to his desire to win. He was amazing but flawed. For this viewer, thats a far more fascinating insight into a man than this perfect superhero underdog with the world against him. Senna made mistakes and had flaws. This doesn’t make him any less interesting or the story of him becoming a 3-time world champion less romantic. In fact, I’d argue the contrary.
However, it is a brilliantly done mini-series getting more negative comments than it perhaps deserves. The story is a beautiful and emotional one and aside from a few minor discrepancies, it’s told in a beautiful and emotional way.
8/10.
WHEEL2WHEEL REPORTS 