Aryton Senna movie

[douglasm]

Is Bruno Senna [[Renault) related? That was a heck of a qualifying run as Spa he had this morning [[I hope the stewards set back Hamilton after that brush with Maldanado during and after Q2).

[torbusto]

yes, Bruno is the nephew of Ayrton Senna. When he has his yellow helmet on [[similar to Ayrton's) and you see his eyes, he looks just like Ayrton.

[Gannon]

Downriviera,

That one picture of Senna going around that turn just threw me back to what I think was the last of the F1 Gran Prix races downtown. I had amazing seats with a friend's father's firm...he did displays for the auto shows, and was really connected...and had his VIP area setup just inside the windows at Cobo at the end of that straight. The cars would make that corner, then come screaming right at us all sitting in a small section of bleachers setup in the air conditioning! Free drinks and food...and some of the best seats in the house.

Thanks for jogging that memory...

[Downriviera]

Nice to see Bruno Senna back in F1 and carrying on his uncles name. And yes, very good qualifying effort for him, but no luck in the race. Red Bull team clearly has the best package at the moment and Vettel looks unstoppable. Love watching the cars run at Spa in Belgium, the last of the truly great road courses. I hope they never change it.

[Gannon]

Through a friend who was dating the sister of the Red Bull mechanical team captain, my only time 'backstage' at a race event was that Michigan 400 where they qualified and finished 1,2,3...and the first Indy event where Danika Patrick showed she had what it took to lead the good ol' boys, for at least ten laps near the end.

I figured it would never get any better than that, so I haven't even considered going to another oval-track race!!

Same with the courtside seats I got as a 'tip' from Vinnie Johnson when we setup his incredible hifi when he was with the Pistons, the year after he became the .007 man. How does one go back to the cheap seats after having a front-row view of a forest of giants running up and down the court?! Watching Isiah Thomas goof off with Karl Malone was a riot...I just found out that a few years later they had a fight. Weird.


But watching the cars get built, and the telemetry feedback they had in the control van...I was in heaven. I cannot imagine being able to be a part of a team like that every week for an entire season. These guys were really, really amazing.

Having the chance to see everyone except the drivers [[I think Eddie Cheever was the lead driver for the team that year) because they were sequestered in their meditation/prep session pre-race...in such a historic race, was just a bit much for me.


Cheers!

[Downriviera]

Watching the Belgian GP this morning brought back memories for me of how dangerous it was in the pitlane. Cars going in and out, all that fuel around, etc. As I would watch cars leave the pits with fresh tires, I always wondered if they got the tires on good or would one come flying off at me. I can't recall his name but that well known photographer from the Free Press was taking a pic of a car in the pits and he kept stepping backwards to line up his shot, He didn't realize that he was stepping back into an active pit lane. I grabbed his arm and pulled him out of the way just before a car would have hit him. Would have been a shame for him to have survived taking pictures in all those war zones only to come home and get killed in the pitlane.

During the race I worked the pit board on the pit wall. The in car radios didn't work well in Detroit because of all the buildings so the pit board was the best way to get the driver information. I had to put the lap number and his last lap time on the board as well as how many seconds he was ahead of the car behind him and behind the car in front of him. I had about a minute and a half to change the info on the board and have it ready to show to the driver the next time around. All this with cars going by me at 200 mph mere feet away. It was very intense and I was always watching the oncoming cars for trouble in case I had to duck down behind the pit wall. [[ Had to hit the dirt in Montreal once when a car slammed into the wall in front of me. The transmitter for the telemetry flew out of the nose cone and hit a guy in the head standing behind me, cut him real bad and knocked him out cold.) In Detroit I had to watch real close for my car to come around the chicane at the front of the pit straight, then put the sign over the wall so the driver could see it. The drivers liked me working the pit board because they could spot my blonde hair easily.

One time at Detroit there was a group of cars coming through the chicane in single file. I spotted my driver and put the sign out. At the last second a car went to pass another on the inside right along the pit wall. I didn't have time to lift the sign back over the wall so I just turned it sideways and held onto it against the wall for dear life. The track is dirty on the inside because its not the normal racing line, so all this dirt and dust flies onto me as the car goes by inches away from me. The suction from the car was pulling the sign away from me and I was lucky it didn't get away from me. If it had it would have flew onto the front straight causing real problems. The team would be heavily fined and I would have been in big trouble. It was a moment of sheer panic that I will never forget.

[Downriviera]

Another shot from inside the basement at Cobo Hall. Decals are on and bodywork is polished and ready to go on the car. Another job well done by yours truly. Then off for a few drinks with the crew. Those yellow rental trucks were used to haul our equipment from inside Cobo to the pitlane in the RenCen parking lot. Also used for fun times with F1 groupies.

[EastsideAl]

I saw this movie during my recent trip to NYC and I can highly recommend it to everyone, but particularly any racing fans out there. My only [[slight) disappointment was that it didn't show any footage of the Detroit circuit and his great drives here.

I was a circuit marshal for the last 4 F1 races here in Detroit and worked in turns 1 and 2, the pits, and the victory circle. Senna won the final 3 races here, 2 for Lotus and 1 for McLaren. My greatest memory of Senna is simply watching him from extremely close up drive through turn 1 lap after lap. He was consistently tiny fractions of an inch away from the wall in that turn, but also consistently fractions of an inch closer to it than the other drivers were.

He didn't have nice things to say about the marshalling and the circuit here, and a lot of the volunteers who worked so very hard on the races here really resented him for that [[and the movie does show this often prickly, rude, and perfectionist side of him). But anyone who was watching closely couldn't help but be in awe of all of the little things he did, and the chances he was willing to take, that gained him the crucial hundredths of seconds that led to so many victories.

[Downriviera]

I too was bummed they didn't show any of his Detroit drives. Maybe a directors cut with extra footage will. Senna loved racing the street circuit here and at Monaco. He was not good at speaking to the press and his comments were often mis-construed. My only gripe with the marshalls here was when we would have a small fire on the car. The marshalls would douse the entire care with fire retardent foam when they only needed a short blast. In their zest to do a good job and put out the fire, they made a big mess of the car. And guess who had to clean it. This also cut into my bar time. But we had a great rapport with the marshalls and support staff at Detroit, some of them even hung out with us at the bar.

[Whitehouse]

If the director doesn't do it, who will?


Oh, that's right, I will!

There are more Grand Prix clips on Youtube of several seasons, but this one really stands out. Feast your eyes on this!

Detroit Grand Prix 1987 ALMOST 2 HOURS LONG!!!
The second of Senna's three Detroit wins.





Some things I noticed.
- The beatings a car could sustain are almost terminal to present day cars. Notice how Nakajima's car gets a leg up and still continues, retiring later when he's kicked around.
- After Fabi exits the race after losing his nose wings he immidiatly gets a microphone under his nose. Will not happen these days.
- Questionable music in the beginning. Donna summer - She works hard for the money and theme music of the film Terms of Endearment. [[Djeez! I'm getting old!)
- The sheer number of people inside the pit area, some in shorts!!

@Downriviera
Did you supply this picture at Peter Warr's Wikipage as well? Seems to be in the Cobo carpark.

[Downriviera]

Did you supply this picture at Peter Warr's Wikipage as well? Seems to be in the Cobo carpark.

Not my pic but that is for sure in the Cobo basement garage where we worked on the cars. I didn't have time to take a lot of pics, so the only ones I have is of the teams I worked on. Peter Warr did offer me a job but I stayed with Benetton. Lotus was a fun team back then and I hung out with those guys a few times.

[BagAJellyDonuts]

Lots of good times when the race was downtown. The first race, we thought we had great seats. Turned out there were numerous trees blocking the view. Somebody came along and sprayed the trees and the leaves dropped to the ground. Ended up selling those tickets later. Found out that carrying some step ladders we could watch the race by simply looking over the tarps they hung around the track. When they started the first year, there was a big wreck off the start. Some of my friends jumped off the ladders in fear [[and beer) that the cars were going to get over the fence to us. Myself, I found that you could "maneuver" your way along the river to the outside of the track.

The next few years they changed the layout and we moved our ladders up by the Crain building. It was always a great set up but it was always amazing that we "got away" with it. But by the same token, the usual batch of stragglers and "bringnothings" would show up just before race time and try to weasel in.

Used a similar set up on Belle Isle. That is until somebody with less foresight pissed off the powers that be in the Arboretum and got us all kicked out

Of all the times of all the races, the qualifying battle between Mansel and Senna one year is my favorite memory. The format was different and they traded times back and forth. It was a different era then.

[Bigb23]

This is a short little clip that really puts those F-1 cars in prospective.

http://www.wimp.com/speedcomparison/

[Downriviera]

Of all the times of all the races, the qualifying battle between Mansel and Senna one year is my favorite memory. The format was different and they traded times back and forth. It was a different era then.

That Senna/Mansell battle was great. The qualifying format was much better back then, sometimes more intense than the race itself. Mansell was a warrior. He ran out of fuel in Dallas while leading on the last lap. He was in sight of the finish line about 50 yards away. In searing 100 + temperature, and after racing for almost 2 hours, he jumped out of the car and attempted to push it over the line. He collapsed after about ten yards as other cars whizzed by him. Wouldn't have worked anyway as the regulations forbid pushing a car but it was a valiant effort none the less.

I was always amazed at how many fans at Detroit found various free viewing spots. Every nook and cranny around the course had somebody in it.

After F1 left the downtown Detroit street course and Indy cars took over, we finally had a chance to compare the performance of the cars on the same course. Even though they took our the front chicane for the Indy cars, their lap times were about 15 seconds slower. Thats a huge difference. Not to knock Indy cars here as it is a great series. The differnce is in dollars. F1 teams spend much more. A top Indy car team could barely afford to make the back of the grid in F1.

[Whitehouse]

This is a short little clip that really puts those F-1 cars in prospective.

http://www.wimp.com/speedcomparison/

Would you believe I've driven there? Albeit in opposite direction and it was years ago. Back then the section between Les Combes and the La Source hairpin were open roads when there were no events going on. Since 2000 the circuit is a race only facility. Strange sensation coming from a straight into the Eau Rouge and up the hill to the old starting grid, exitng the circuit at La Source.

After F1 left the downtown Detroit street course and Indy cars took over, we finally had a chance to compare the performance of the cars on the same course. Even though they took our the front chicane for the Indy cars, their lap times were about 15 seconds slower. Thats a huge difference. Not to knock Indy cars here as it is a great series. The differnce is in dollars. F1 teams spend much more. A top Indy car team could barely afford to make the back of the grid in F1.

A different set up can also make the difference. At oval circuits the Indycars reach speeds that Formula one cars never make. [[Although if you trim the wings of an F1 car to indy standards, and let them loose on an oval, I expect them to also go like hell fire.)

One thing the Detroit 1988 Grand Prix was famous for was the piggyback ride of Nigel Mansell on the car of US driver Eddie Cheever. There were even toy cars made of that scene to commemorate it.



By the way, a few months ago I started a thread about the circuit. You can read it here.


Here's a detrailed explanation on why the impact at Imola was deadly.