SAM COLLINS THE DEPUTY
Brutal viewing
We lovked Sam away in a darkened room, and put on some motorsort films to keep him amused
both focussing on individuals competing in incredibly dangerous eras of racing. The first is Senna, which details some aspects of the three- time world champion’s career leading up to his death at Imola in 1994. Some of the footage is
T
Delta Motorsport is testing alternative powertrain solutions in small volume production cars.
stunning and previously unseen, whilst other parts of it have been on YouTube and
wo motorsport documentaries have hit the big screen recently,
of just how brutal these machines were compared to today’s digital missiles can be gleaned from this film. Where the new film also
scores is in its use of footage from the drivers’ briefing room, which sees FIA president, Jean Marie Balestre, at his most monstrous. Finally, seeing the Imola crash from new angles puts it all into sickening context, and reveals just how dangerous racing was in the mid-1990’s. The film makers
“by far and away the best motorsport documentary ever made”
viewed hundreds of times. What the film does make you realise though is just how raw and unhinged Formula 1 was during Senna’s time. The cars were beautiful, simple creations, with cigarette branding and big fat sticky slicks, and a real sense
do not flinch from showing the fatal accidents, but the crash that really hits home is that of Rubens Barrichello in his Jordan, the impact of which will make your heart skip a beat. I find it hard to see Senna being a huge commercial
success, but one film that will be is TT3D: Closer To The Edge. This follows motorcycle road racer, Guy Martin, through his attempt to win last year’s Isle of Man TT, and is simply breathtaking. In my opinion, it is by far and away the best motorsport documentary ever made. That’s a bold statement, but go and see it and you will see what I mean.
Super slo-mo One super slow motion
sequence in TT3D is as beautiful as it is fascinating. It shows Martin‘s bike landing after flying off the famous Ballaugh Bridge on the Isle of Man TT course, and you can see perfectly the extreme deformation of his tyres, the bike’s chain whipping around and the chassis ultimately bottoming out. This sequence is typical of this incredibly well-shot film, which really puts all others in the same vein to shame.
Motorcycle road racing is
fairly unique in world motorsport in that its biggest event is still an incredibly amateur affair. There is little corporate sponsorship, the scoreboard is still operated by Scouts (as it has been for a century) and the competitors arrive in Ford Transit vans. Yet the Manx TT is right up there with the Le Mans 24 Hours, Daytona 500, Indianapolis 500, Monaco Grand Prix and Dakar Rally. This unique aspect gives the event a real salt-of-the-earth feel.
In a similar vein to Senna,
one thing that comes across at the end of the film is the horrific injuries many of the riders sustain, and the matter-of-fact approach they have to their own mortality.
It was sold out! The real interest for me,
however, is how this form of racing has captivated audiences up and down the country. The first two times I tried to go and watch the film it was sold out, and almost a fortnight after its release it is still going strong in the UK. The raw, unhinged and
sadly dangerous nature of motorsport iswhat is switching on fans these days as everyday life gets more and more bound up in cotton wool safety regulations. It now falls to motorsport’s rule makers to realise this and act appropriately. Should racing be made less santitised and more extreme? Almost certainly but, as the fatalities in both these films remind you, it still must have some degree of safety.
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www.racecarengineering.com • August 2011
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