I’ve never made any secret of the fact that I’m a massive Ayrton Senna fan. I have even penned a few Senna related articles. Like the time Ayton helped to design a video game, or my review of the Senna Forever DLC for Horizon Chase Turbo. Then there is my lengthy post looking at how I became a fan of Ayrton and a retrospective of his career. So when a miniseries/biopic of the man was announced in 2020, I was all ears. Well, now in November 2024, that miniseries has been released – and I just binge watched all six episodes.

If you’re already familiar with the story of Ayrton Senna, then this Senna show is not going to really offer you anything that you don’t already know. If you don’t know anything about Ayrton, his career and his life – then Senna is a pretty good place to start learning. As with all biopics, Senna takes liberties here and there. Not everything shown in this series is an exact representation of events. Some things are pretty accurate, others not so much. Some elements and characters have been distilled or pushed to the background, others are left to flourish.

Senna begins at the end, with the Imola 1994 race and the crash that claimed Ayrton’s life. It then flashes back to Ayrton as a child getting his first go-kart, built by his father. Then we jump to Ayrton competing in kart racing, Formula Ford, Formula Three, his first drive Formula One drive with Toleman and his career right through to the end. Along the way, we get insight into Ayrton’s private life, his relationship with his parents and sister. Some of the women that came and went. His famed rivalry with Alain Prost and more.

Overall, Senna gives fans a really entertaining biopic… even if it is not always 100% accurate. But, this is the very nature of the biopic genre. No biopic that has ever been made is 100% accurate, they all take certain liberties and use creative licence to tell their stories. As good as Senna is, there are moments of the man’s life and career that are either skimmed over, or just outright ignored. For instance, it goes from the end 1991 and Ayrton’s third championship win, to the end of 1993 and then jumps right to Iamlo ’94. So it skips over Ayrton’s 1992 and ’93 seasons. This means that it doesn’t even acknowledge what many consider to be the single greatest lap in Formula One history… Ayrton’s opening lap from Donington ’93.

The massive Martin Donnelly crash that affected his life and caused Ayrton to befriend Sid Watkins is not here, nor is Ayrton saving the life of Érik Comas because of what he learned from Sid. This makes even less sense to not include because Sid has a big part to play in the last episode, but you don’t get the impact of his and Ayrton’s friendship because the show doesn’t include the build up to that friendship. Ayrton’s relationship with Adriane Galisteu is only very lightly touched on, which considering that Ayrton wanted to marry her and the huge impact that she had on his life, is really quite surprising. Still, from what I gather, the Senna family were quite involved with this series, and they never did like Adriane, so that may explain the lack of depth here. There are other major moments of Ayrton’s life and career that are either glossed over, or just not mentioned at all.

Senna is not quite the biopic of the great Brazilian driver that the fans truly deserve, but it’s still good. Perhaps it could’ve done with being ten episodes long instead of six? Even though Ayrton died aged 34, he packed a hell of a lot into his life, and six hours just isn’t long enough to cover it all. The racing scenes are really well done, and they include a mix of newly shot footage (the production built loads of cars), CGI work and even actual footage from the races. The Senna and Prost rivalry is handled very well and this doesn’t make Prost out to be an evil villain and Senna an outright angel. In fact, it shows that they had the utmost respect for each other, even if there was the odd argument now and then. The soundtrack is brilliant too. Plus, the icing on the cake is Gabriel Leone as Ayrton Senna, he’s great and puts in a fantastic performance.

As a massive Ayrton Senna fan, Senna does a good job of covering the parts of the man’s life that it choses to cover – but still inexplicably ignores some pretty huge things that had a major impact that made Ayrton the man he was. It’s a good biopic, but also suffers from sugar-coating certain things and as with all biopics, you do need to watch with a pinch of salt.