Having a Senna television series without any race cars in it would be absurd, but it would be impractical, if not impossible, to get all of the great racing cars of his career out for months of filming and running them on track. So Netflix worked with Argentinian sports car manufacturer Crespi to build two dozen-ish race car replicas in order to properly film scenes for the show. Each car was built from scans and drawings of the original machines, and some of the chassis were interchangeable with different bodywork to keep filming schedules on track. Neat stuff!
The series apparently goes back to the early days of Senna’s career, and will capture his Formula Ford days in 1981 and 1982 through his trio of Formula 1 World Driver Championships just a decade later. It looks like every F1 car the Brazilian superhero ever drove will be on display, from the Tolemans and Lotuses through his era of supremacy (and turmoil) with McLaren. In addition to Senna’s cars, you’ll see the competitive Ferraris, Williamses, and Benettons of the day.
These replica cars certainly won’t be as fast as their authentic counterparts, simply for the fact that it would be near impossible to film them at real-world racing speeds. Once the production figured out what kind of speeds were necessary for the in-race shots, the cars were built to manage those kinds of speeds and make them look real. Based on the single shot of the engine that Crespi used to power their cars, these will likely all be built around a commonly available four-cylinder engine. I would guess that these cars won’t have the aerodynamic efficiency or downforce of a real F1 car, either. As long as they look real, they’ll work for the show, though. They can fix it in post.
It seems like the production is going to the right lengths to get authentic race car sounds to dub over these inauthentic show props, so hopefully the show will sound good. And it seems the actors were all treated to racing school and some karting competition to get them ready to learn how to go fast enough to look real. The actor who plays Senna, Gabriel Leone, also played Alfonso de Portago in the 2023 film Ferrari, so he probably got a bit of driving experience from that shoot as well.