I felt somewhat indifferent about the new Ayrton Senna miniseries on Netflix, but that didn’t stop me from aiming the remote at the TV and pressing play. What could the latest portrayal of the larger-than-life, three-time Formula 1 champion teach me that I didn’t already know? Thirty years after that fateful day at Imola, almost everything’s been said about the man who living F1 legends say is the F1 legend. Magazine articles, books, documentaries, rumors—it’s all out there for everyone to see. As it turns out, that very question led me to take another look into the Brazilian’s life—and eventually, a heartfelt chat with a member of the Senna family.
The miniseries made its Brazilian and American debut on Nov. 29, exposing more people to the legend of Senna in a single day than ever before in the racer’s history. This is not a factual statistic, but a personal observation based on the fact that nearly 85 million Netflix subscribers in the U.S. alone—racing enthusiasts or not—were offered this new release on their screens. If Asif Kapadia’s docufilm Senna succeeded at bringing this dramatic story to F1 fans via the big screen in 2010—when most viewers were limited to indie movie theaters playing the film—Netflix would eclipse that by bringing its $170-million production directly to people’s living rooms and smartphones.
My indifference toward the new series began to dissipate as I reached the end of the first of six episodes, which focuses on Senna’s early years. Brazilian actor Gabriel Leone is the show’s protagonist, playing Ayrton or “Beco” as he’s affectionately called, to such a degree that I often had to do a double-take. There’s a slight physical likeness shared between the two, but more than that, it’s Leone’s overall vibe that wildly resembles Senna through the various stages of his life. It’s the same for many of the supporting actors, from Matt Mella’s impeccable performance playing Alain Prost, Johannes Heinrichs as Niki Lauda, and Arnaud Viard embodying the spiteful Jean-Marie Balestre. The producer’s eye for talent and detail is truly exemplary, and nowhere is that more evident than in the cast playing the various members of the Senna family, as well as the sets, props, and locations where the series was filmed.
This attention to detail prompted me to reach out to the family, hoping they would share details of the series’ genesis with me. Bruno Senna, Ayrton’s nephew, whom I’ve had the pleasure of interacting with before through his involvement with McLaren road cars, quickly answered the call but was very straightforward: “I helped with some of the technical [F1] stuff, so my sister Bianca is the one you want.”
While I waited for a meeting to materialize, I continued watching the show and taking notes. Episode 2 picks up the pace as Senna jumps from Brazil to the U.K. and excels in Formula Ford and Formula 3 nearly right away. By this point, Lotus is already interested in him, though he decides to go with Toleman for his maiden F1 team. More interesting to me, however, is how the series covers Senna’s personal affairs, especially during this stage when he and his new wife were living far from home and with no friends or family around. Senna had originally promised her (and his family back home) that he’d come back to Brazil after one season abroad, but that was clearly not the case, which ultimately led to his divorce. It’s an aspect of his life that’s mostly ignored in other coverage, but one that’s crucial to his development as a devoted racer—but more importantly—as someone who had to make enormous personal sacrifices to chase his dream of racing in F1.
It’s this sentiment that Bianca Senna expressed to me during a chat about the show’s provenance: “We want to inspire people to find their purpose from within and fight to achieve their goals—things can be hard, but you cannot give up.”
Bianca is the daughter of Ayrton’s only sister Viviane, and as the CEO of the Senna brands, she’s responsible for safeguarding her uncle’s legacy. Despite her work calendar closing up due to the holidays, Bianca kindly squeezed in a last-minute meeting.
“We didn’t want to do a feature of the original documentary because it didn’t make sense, so we had to figure out ‘what stories can we bring to light that haven’t been shown yet?’. We wanted to cover his racing career but also bring his past experiences like the go-karts, the family, and everything else,” Bianca told The Drive. “But the hardest part of the project was finding the right balance between Ayrton’s personality, because people tend to look at him in a race and think that he’s ruthless—that he’s 100% that way all the time, but that’s not true. He was a very caring person and a very humble person.”
Episode 3 dives deeper into the genius developing within Senna and covers some of the most famous moments in his career, like his first F1 victory at the Portuguese GP in 1985, and his switch to McLaren two years later. A few minutes are dedicated to Senna and McLaren boss Ron Dennis’ meeting with Soichiro Honda at a Tokyo bar, where they manage to strike a deal for Honda engines over karaoke. My hesitance for the show had mostly been wiped clean by the end of this episode, mostly due to the several storylines series director Vicente Amorim—a Brazilian and Senna diehard—introduced that I’d never heard about. And not to mention, once again, the accuracy.
“Vicente [Amorim] joined the project—and he is like crazy about Ayrton—so he wanted to make it as perfect as possible,” said Bianca. “For instance, we sent him pictures of Ayrton’s house on the beach or the farm, so they could portray similarly in the series. When Ayrton’s character is at the beach house in the show, it’s actually the same beach where the real house was. Same thing for the house where Ayrton gets married in the show, it’s in the same neighborhood as the real house. Even the photos seen in the houses in the show, they are real Ayrton pictures.”
Up until that point, the series had focused on building a foundation for the leading character. A young, hopeful, talented racer from Brazil charting a path for himself in a ruthless sport and often unkind environment. Several scenes showed moments of ridicule Senna had to endure at the hands of British fans simply because he was fighting British drivers on British soil. When he wasn’t getting kicked for not being a Brit, he was paying the price for not being French, as Balestre seemingly had it out for him from very early on. The director introduces Balestre early in the show, when he also ruins Senna’s day at a karting competition, though this scene appears to be mostly fiction.
Episode 4 is when the traditional Senna story takes center stage. It’s 1989 and tensions are high in the McLaren garage, with Prost complaining to the press that Honda was favoring Senna, and Senna believing that Prost was upset because he was just jealous of his skills. Things eventually climax in Suzuka, and you likely already know the rest. I was mostly interested in the storyline developing parallel to this drama, the one of Senna’s famous girlfriend Xuxa Meneghel, played by Pâmela Tomé.
Once more, Senna’s love life has to take a backseat to his racing career, so he eventually calls it quits with Xuxa—or maybe the other way around. They simply don’t have time for each other, and Senna promises to see her in New York but he pulls the plug at the last minute. Likewise, Xuxa has her own traveling circus and can’t be Senna’s full-time, traveling companion. A scene where she visits Senna while on holiday with his family in Brazil is a nice reminder that, as Bianca said, Ayrton was a different person away from the track.
Titled “Hero,” Episode 5 focuses on Senna’s victory at the 1991 Brazilian F1 Grand Prix, which almost didn’t happen after he endured a mechanical issue during the race. Again, this is already well established, but I’d like to highlight the director’s emphasis on a very special moment between Senna and his father Milton, played by Marco Ricca. After fainting on the cool-down lap due to physical stress, Senna demands to see his father upon his arrival at the paddock ahead of the podium celebration. He is visibly exhausted and irritable and doesn’t want anyone to touch him due to the extreme pain. Except for his father.
“The first time I saw Gabriel playing Ayrton [in person] it was very strange for me and I had to sort of, get into that mood [of seeing him in character], because obviously I know Ayrton—but how can I deal with this?” said Bianca.
“One of those memories was the day we shot the Brazilian GP in ’91 when Ayrton won. I saw the scenes of [Gabriel] raising the trophy on the podium and the moment of him hugging my grandfather. That grandfather moment was really intense for me, really really intense. It brought back so many memories for me, of my house, my family, memories of my childhood.
“The first time I watched that scene’s first edit—without CGI or anything—I couldn’t stop crying. It wasn’t because I was sad, but because it brought so much back. Just the fact of seeing myself [played on the show] was funny because the little girl looks like me when I was a kid, it’s so cute. And my mother in the series—she is very similar in real life.
“My grandmother—Ayrton’s mother—she watched the series with me and said, ‘I like the woman who is playing me. She is good,’” Bianca said while laughing.
The worst part of knowing that a story has a tragic ending is that you can’t avoid it, and that’s the feeling you get when starting Episode 6. It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve seen the crash, for me, it never gets any easier. And not knowing how this producer and director will introduce Senna’s final moments had me a bit on edge, too.
Some of Senna’s closest friends appear in this episode, all of them alluding to what we wish he would’ve done: retire. Prof. Sid Watkins talks to Senna about hanging up the gloves and going fishing; something which is widely covered in the original documentary and his own book. His girlfriend at the time, Adriane Galisteu, played by Julia Foti, does the same—but in the show, Senna finds the strength to race in the many letters and pictures fans have sent him. Despite Rubens Barrichello’s enormous crash on Friday and Roland Ratzenberger’s death on Saturday, he doesn’t want to let Brazil down come Sunday.
I went into this series fairly skeptical, unsure of how Netflix was going to portray one of my heroes. I wasn’t sure they would do a fair job. And as a self-proclaimed Senna know-it-all, I believed I couldn’t possibly learn anything new. I was wrong.
Yes, there are moments of fiction—and even entire storylines were invented, such as the journalist Laura Harrison, played by Kaya Scodelario. But there is so much depth to the multi-faceted story that is Senna’s life, that even with those light additions, the series sheds light on Ayrton Senna the human, and not just Ayrton Senna the F1 champion.
While wrapping up our chat, Bianca shared a story about the show’s early stages that impacted me. It’d be easy to call it luck, but considering that Senna was a deeply spiritual person, I’d call it divine intervention. She explained that the Netflix series was going to be announced back in 2020, but then COVID hit. The press conference was literally scheduled for the same week when the world shut down, so it never happened. What was initially seen as bad luck or an unfair world playing a cruel joke on everyone involved with the project, blossomed into something even more successful and more beautiful.
“Nobody could travel to do the sight scenes and see where the tracks would be, how to produce this series in different countries,” said Bianca. “But because of COVID, everybody was in lockdown at home and a lot of people [in the U.S.] were introduced to F1 by Drive to Survive. So the F1 audience drastically increased through these years when we had to wait to launch, and basically everything fell into a 2024 release, which is the 30th anniversary of Ayrton’s legacy.
“So, it’s just mental. I think there’s someone up there [points at heaven] that made the plan and didn’t tell us beforehand, but it was just the perfect plan,” Bianca concluded.
Got a tip? Email us at tips@thedrive.com
