The camera accentuates his features in the way it would those of a young Paul
Newman. In every shot, he smoulders. When a Japanese reporter declares her
affection, he kisses her twice. When one of Brazil’s TV presenters, Xuxa
Meneghel, asks what he would most like for Christmas, he flashes a
lascivious smile and replies: “What I really want, I can’t say here.
Censored.” These are roguish flourishes of which even James Hunt, F1’s
Casanova-in-chief, would have been proud.
Such indulgence is offset by the strength of his religious conviction. Here is
a man who, upon his F1 baptism in 1984 with the Toleman team, declares: “I
think God gave me this chance, which I have been waiting for so long. Now He
is helping me stay calm, relaxed, tranquil.”
Of his staggering performance in Japan to claim the world title in 1988, when
he stalled on the grid before rallying from 16th to win, he reflects: “I
thanked God. With all the anxiety and tension, I felt His presence. I
visualised, I saw God.” Prost, as the bête noire with whom he so memorably
tangled at Suzuka the following year, was inclined to dismiss such
statements as mere pieties.
“Ayrton has a problem: he thinks he can’t kill himself, because he believes in
God and things like this,” said the Frenchman, whose froideur with Senna
hardened into outright hatred after their first-turn collision at the 1990
Japanese grand prix.
Here lies the film’s most arresting sub-plot, as the Senna-Prost rivalry
descends into the acrimony one might expect of two such jarringly discordant
personalities. Senna, the maverick genius who pushed every car he handled
beyond its design capabilities, was never likely to sit comfortably next to
the professorial Prost, a remorseless points accumulator who would often
rather settle for fifth than risk the pursuit of victory. The venom between
them is raw. “I wanted to punch him in the face,” Prost says after the Japan
crash. “But I was so disgusted, I couldn’t do it. He revolts me.” And yet
the glamour of the duel is inescapable.
Both men cultivate a playboy air when the occasion demands it: Senna by his
appearance at the Rio carnival, and Prost by a hilariously flirtatious
interview with Selina Scott on the Wogan show. “You know Alain, if only
somebody would teach me how to drive a car, a racing car, then I might be
able to give up this job,” Scott simpers. With the leer of Depardieu, he
shoots back: “There is nothing important I could not teach you.” The Senna
film reminds us, somehow, of how people fell in love with F1 in the first
place. It is a fitting legacy for the incomparable Ayrton but a daunting
one, in this more sanitised age, for Bruno and his breed to carry forward.