[Ibrahim]

Living in s.e. asia, I have no access to Sky F1, but thankfully a blessed soul uploaded all of Senna Week onto Youtube. I have been watching since 86-87 and was never ever a fan of Senna at all. He seemed over the top arrogant, always complaining about something, completely unlikable. I like many others was completely blown away after seeing Senna, and found a real new respect for him, not only for his genius skills at driving, but for his personal side as well. More recently, I have kind of had the feeling like others that “Senna” was really over the top in it’s kind portrayal of him and the “bad” image put out about Prost. I was excited when I heard about Senna week hoping it would be well rounded and would like to know others thoughts on the shows. Here are mine, in the order that I watched them.
I capped it off with another (3rd?) viewing of Senna.

“The Last Teamate”
Great idea for a show, it was touching, and well done. I could respect how they didn’t show any clips at all of the incidents, but for someone watching who was new to the event’s, it may have had a lot less impact.
Didn’t really learn anything new from watching it, but enjoyed it.
And yes, the changing of the intro song to exclude the line “Where I have lived a thousand lives” is truly baffling, ridiculous, absurd, you name it, some kind of thought up overly respectful PC nonsense? If anything, that line in the song really was a testament to Senna.

“The Journalist Special”
Wow, wow, wow, really could not have predicted the general sentiment of the respected journos on this show. Senna was a flawed champion is what I got out of it. There were some opinions I saw on here F1F, that people were thinking they were really out to get at his reputation and tarnish the great Senna, but I didn’t think so at all, they were just laying it out there, their thoughts and experiences and they weren’t going to bathe it in some holy light. If you take a moment to really think about what he did at Suzuka, just THINK about it. It is completely unexcusable and something a truly sporting champion would never even consider doing. Can you IMAGINE if something like that happened today? And yes, I put some of Schumachers actions into the same boat.

“Legends of F1”
I have seen most of the other Legends of F1 shows, and I thought this one was probably the best, (besides the mostly all interview Mario Andretti one, I could listen to his stories all day!) just the most highly polished done, learned a few new things, enjoyed it.

“Remembering Ratzenberger”
I am very thankful to Sky F1 for making this. I really did not know much about Ratz, and really his story could be made into a movie! Found it odd that they kept repeating how handsome he was, and hearing that from other men! haha, but it was part of him I guess. I found the show informative, emotional, and well done.

“Senna on Prost”
It was a shame that most of the clips of this episode were shown in the Legends show, I guess they only had a certain amount of time to interview him. Really really enjoyed this though, and I thought it really put Prost into a new light. After how he was treated in “Senna”, he deserved to be able to have some say into his experiences with Ayrton. I thought it made him seem really more human and it gave me new found respect for the Professor. I know the producers of “Senna” had to cut their movie down in editing, but the fact that they could not save 10 seconds to show the clip of Senna/Prost at Portugal and Prost almost getting stuffed into the wall was a bit telling. That clip is shown here (sorry, maybe it was just shown in the Legends episode) and what a clip it is. You can here the crowd near the camera exclamating on the move, and I also noticed the sound! Why can’t our new version of turbo charged engines sound anything like that?

“Ted’s Notebook”
Ted at the McLaren factory looking over Senna’s cars. Was pretty neat, gosh they keep those cars in perfect looking order! The rear downforce section of the 90 car I believe is absolutely stunning. It is amazing to have been reminded of the Honda powertrain evolution. Small turbo v-6, then v-10, then v-12! A honda v-12! It is just hard to fathom. It was also great to see just how enthusiastic Ted Kravitz is about F1. He is speaking in hushed tones for a good portion of the show, you can tell he is just in awe and reverence of the cars. Good on you Ted.

I enjoyed watching “Senna” again as a cap off to viewing these shows. It put a lot of the moive/doc into more of a realistic perspective, for me anyways. I found that I respect Senna even more now for his driving skills, less for his professional actions, and still think of him as a human being very highly.

BTW, seeing that in-car again of him at Monaco is just so gobsmacking (even if the sound is a bit off?) I am wondering if anyone knows of where to watch more of his in-car qualifying laps from that year? Youtube has some pretty low quality stuff, anybody know if the official year review dvd includes this?

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