Senna's battle to succeed made director an F1 fan

London film-maker Asif Kapadia has admitted he was no Formula 1 fan until he made a new film on the tragic genius of Ayrton Senna.

Kapadia, 39, trawled through 15,000 hours of footage on the Brazilian motor racing champion who died in a crash at Imola in San Marino in 1994 to produce the documentary Senna. It has its premiere in London tonight before its full release on Friday.

The director said his immersion in the complex politics of the dangerous and lucrative sport - including persuading F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone to allow access to his archives - had converted him.

"Before the film I had never read a book on Senna, never looked at one website and never read a book on F1. I had never been to a race, although I do remember watching that race live at my parents' house in Stoke Newington," he said.

"With motor-racing once you understand what is going on behind the scenes and the politics, it becomes more interesting. I watch it now."
But he hoped even sceptics would appreciate the story of Senna and his epic battle to succeed.

Kapadia, who lives in Finsbury Park, won a Bafta for his debut feature The Warrior made in Hindi. He constructed Senna entirely from archive material with no new interviews on screen. "By Imola, at the end of the movie, Senna has pretty much got 40 cameras on him everywhere he goes, so it became like cutting a drama," Kapadia said.

But the volume meant even some very poignant moments fail to make the movie - such as Senna at Imola a month before the accident saying: "Somebody is going to die at this corner this year."

The movie has the blessing of Senna's family. "They cried all the way through but they gave it the thumbs-up. They said it showed his genius on the track and his humanity away from it."