Formula One news is scarce as the series is in the middle of its annual summer vacation, with four weeks between races to give the traveling teams a brief break. That means a break for fans too, of course, but the biggest fans, like the team members, never turn off. And this summer is a great time for the fans to look at Formula One in from different perspective.
AP PhotoSenna in the McLaren at the Australian Grand Prix of 1989.
The documentary film made by Asif Kapadia on the life of Ayrton Senna is opening in the United States on Friday, and throughout the summer in other parts of the world. (It opened in June in Britain.) I spoke to the director for an article about the Senna film before the Hungarian Grand Prix. One of the things that we agreed on was that it is difficult to make a fictional film about Formula One, partly because the series always comes up with its own real-life scenarios that no one would believe if they were fictional.
Few other films about Formula One are as interesting, with the exception of “Grand Prix,” by John Frankenheimer, in 1966. What makes Kapadia’s Senna film so good is its subject: Senna’s life and his period in Formula One. And the director put the story together using only television and film footage shot by other people.
On Tuesday the Formula1.com Web site published an interview with Ron Howard, the Hollywood director, in which Howard says he will be directing a film about Formula One, focusing on the battle between Niki Lauda and James Hunt for the world title in 1976. Lauda was involved in a horrible accident that year in which he nearly died and burned off part of his face.
Howard also noted that the stories from real life are the strongest in this situation. But the jury will be out on whether he can pull it off in a drama better than Kapadia did in a documentary, or Frankenheimer did in a film that was particularly remarkable for its filming of live racing footage. Howard said he was not sure yet whether the crew would even film the Nurburgring footage at the track or just in a studio. Hmmm….