Ask Hollywood casting directors to make the picture-perfect racing driver and, if they were any good at their jobs, it would be Ayrton Senna. The dashing Brazilian, with his charismatic flair and penchant for dramatic victories, was defined most of all by his driving: a fast, flying, and aggressive style that seemed the very definition of God-given talent, and which only became all the more incredible when it rained, and the track became wet and dangerous.
Maybe that’s why the three-time World Champion actually has his own movie, the superb documentary Senna, now in limited release. Senna dutifully captures the passion and conviction of the upstart-turned-juggernaut, his faith in God and family in the face of the unsavory power games of Formula One, and above all his turbulent rivalry with teammate and fellow legend Alain Prost. Prost’s savvy maneuvering of the sport’s politicking turned their two championship-winning years at McLaren into bitter and often controversial grudge matches.
The McLaren MP4/4 is the car that took Senna and Prost to unprecedented dominance during the partnership’s maiden 1988 season, winning 15 pole positions and 15 races out of 16 that year. It all came to a head at the penultimate race, the Japanese Grand Prix. Senna, starting from pole position, saw his car stall at the start and immediately fall to 14th place. Then, needing a win to seal the championship, the Senna magic kicked in: up to sixth place by the end of lap two, fourth by lap four. Then, Senna’s favorite thing happened: It started to rain. He passed Prost on lap 27 and never let go, holding on to win by 13.263 seconds. And with the pair finishing first and second for the season, McLaren won the Constructor’s Championship with three times as many points as runner-up Ferrari.
Ayrton Senna went on to win two more titles, both captured beautifully in Senna. The documentary, of course, only takes the choicest footage; it seems that Senna spent every minute of his career either passing everyone at will en route to a neck-and-neck finish, or roaring out to unbelievable leads. Then again, Ayrton really did do little else, making podium in half and winning a quarter of all the F1 races he ever participated in, before his fatal crash in San Marino in 1994. The extensive safety regulations installed in the wake of that tragic accident were necessary, ensuring that no driver has been killed in F1 since; other parts of the sport’s evolution have been less successful.
As much as we are dazzled by the technological wizardly of Formula One, its appeal always has and always will be predicated on the drivers and their driving; there’s a reason we don’t race bullet trains. From Magic versus Bird to the Yankees versus everyone else, sport is the spectacle of monolithic personalities, the clash of heroes and villains, titans and underdogs. The Senna/Prost rivalry, needless to say, was a huge boon for F1’s ratings and public exposure. F1 has never seen anything like it since, and it might be because of the changing sport itself. A modern F1 team is a full-blown IT division on wheels, roving banks of computers and servers that pull in over two gigabytes of telemetry every race via the hundred or so sensors on board every car; teams can even fine-tune cars in real time from the pit. Within this synthetic, computerized environment, is there still room for the good ol’ boys? Do drivers still make the difference, or are we watching a showcase of dueling engineers?
Some conflicts have a way of resolving themselves: For all the vitriol thrown around during their racing days, Prost was a pallbearer at Senna’s funeral, and is now a trustee of the children’s charity in Brazil that bears his name. The schism between humans and our technology, however, is fundamentally more fractious. Technology has the annoying quality of being an inarguable but not comprehensive improvement. We shun PEDs because they’re "unnatural," and lament driving aids because they make racing less about "skill"—all the while, trying to forget that these forbidden fruits make the game faster, stronger, and, in some empirical sense, better. What’s the answer? Who knows? Until we find out—or until we’re watching the Cyborg Football League in 2051—some of us will be reading paperbacks, switching off the traction control on our joyrides, and yelling at the kids to put down their PlayBos and Facesquares. Why? Because, for our humanity’s sake, sometimes worse is better.