Many people remember where they were on the fateful day of Sunday, May 1, 1994, for this was the day society was robbed of the greatest racing driver to ever grace the cockpit of a Formula One car, Ayrton Senna.
Yours truly, for one, was fast asleep in his bed, not yet three.
The phrase “ignorance is bliss” sums up the notion that I wasn’t present when the tragic event unfolded, through necessity due to infancy, rather than a desire to miss what would become the sport’s darkest day.
At the same time, it is a great shame that I was never old enough to appreciate Senna in his prime, to witness firsthand his endless feats behind the wheel, rather than simply knowing of him as the last driver to be taken so cruelly, who also happened to be a pretty good racer.
If I was 20 years old back then, I wouldn’t have missed that race, or any for that matter, for the world.
That was then. The now, seventeen years later, and Senna, the man who so many claimed was immortal, has now been immortalised on the big screen, with the long awaited release down under, of the self-titled documentary-film, SENNA.
41 wins (third on the all-time list), 65 pole positions (second only to Michael Schumacher – the man destined to rival Senna in the late 1990s), three drivers titles, but not least, his second-to-none obsession with success, captured on camera, for everybody to see the man for who he was.
It is easy to say that directors chose the very best moments to put into the film, giving onlookers some biased impression of his abilities, but the reality is, every time Senna stepped into the cockpit, he was about to engage in a masterclass.
Finally, through this film, some lasting justice is done to the great man’s legacy, and those, including myself, who were and still are Michael Schumacher fanatics, or Sebastian Vettel freaks, for those who go for the man who wins every time, can finally appreciate what he achieved, what he did for Formula One, and, more widely, what he did for society.
No driver was, nor likely ever, will be as emotionally attached to members of society as Senna, and through the film, you quickly understand why.
The film has been circulating in UK cinemas and European countries for some time, but now, Australia gets its chance to share in a phenomenon like none other. SENNA hits screens on Thursday, August 11.
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