Making a selection from all those films that can be found about Ayrton Senna is not easy. Because there is so much beauty. So see this section primarily as a first very rough selection. And where better to start than with Senna's first meters in the 1 formula?
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xwZCqHpX7Q&feature=BFa&list=PL5F8D309EFB05CCBE&index=8
The Brazilian took the test during a test with the Frank Williams team at the end of the 1983 racing year. After more than twenty laps in Donington, he went faster than the regular drivers of the team had gone in a whole year. Not a bad performance if you know that it was about former world champion Keke Rosberg. It was reason for Senna to get out and go home.
"To think about what he had done," the team boss remembers. Unique images from a Brazilian documentary show it all. Nothing strange or a rookie impressed by a new car. Senna throws and throws the Williams as if he had never done anything else. Everyone could see that there was a unique talent at work here. Afterwards, the team chief acknowledged that it had been a mistake not to immediately submit a contract to Ayrton.
He was already proving how special the megatalent was a year later. He missed the win over Monaco in his Toleman, except for one. A year later it was hit. Senna switched to Lotus and the first win is a fact during the Portuguese Grand Prix at Estoril. Again Youtube provides a unique, originally Japanese film. Senna talks us through his first won competition. It is beautiful and characteristic of how he has an eye for the smallest detail. He notes, for example, that team-mate Elio d'Angelis has his visor open because of the rain. No one would have seen it otherwise, but it was precisely this almost obsessive attention to detail that made the Brazilian who he was.
httpv: //www.youtube.com/watch? v = JW4Rln5OcaQ
What followed until that terrible day at Imola in 1994 were victories. 41 to be precise. And especially more than that pole positions. Senna was the master of the last minute. With the special extra soft qualifying tires that could still be used under his car at the time, he went outside at the very last conceivable moment and pulverized the time that stood at the top of the board at that time. Moments of magic that last even today.
httpv: //www.youtube.com/watch? v = SK6RZdb-Ooo & feature = related
Like the onboard images from Jerez 1990. The Honda V10 in the rear of the McLaren shouts with that crazy full 3,5 liter of sound. You also see that it goes fast. How fast and extremely good the reaction speed of the driver is, you notice on 1,28 of the movie when two slow-moving other cars almost completely block the road. In a smooth, almost careless motion, Senna shoots around. Nothing messed up. It's just good for pole.
httpv: //www.youtube.com/watch? v = oR6ODE15gRo
Two retrospectives that should not be missing from this list are from the BBC. I had the oldest on video for years and I could hardly see it until the end - like probably so many fans. In the meantime things are going a bit better, but it's still not possible to keep it completely dry. The combination of beautiful editing, music from racing fan Chris Rea and just the right people - Alain Prost, Gerhard Berger, Ron Dennis - hits the heart of those who saw it all back then. You have to struggle through that terrible shot of the rescue heli that takes the dying champion to the hospital in Bologna. But in return you get the nicest anecdotes about the man.
Like that wonderful story from former driver John Watson, who tells how he saw Senna during a qualification at Brands Hatch. Freely translated, the Northern Irishman says that he was sitting open-mouthed from his car during a roll-out round watching Senna take turns. “It was like rain that danced from a sidewalk. At that moment I knew that my time in Formula 1 was actually over. Here was someone who did things in a car that I had never thought of, let alone put into practice. ”
httpv: //www.youtube.com/watch? v = aNmqn3heGgE
A close second in this series is a tribute that Top Gear released last season. On the occasion of the film and due to the fact that Senna would have become 50. The tribute goes less deeply and partly consists of the same material as the BBC broadcast at the end of '94. But the added value is a nice link to the present thanks to all current Formula 1 drivers who fully recognize it. Yes, he was the greatest ever.