[Closed] Top Gear - Senna

Brilliant show tonight

One of the best ever episodes

1200bhp manual gearbox no downforce driving one handed around monaco, brilliant driver, not seen lewis speachless before either

the veyron was awesome too.

Ok maybe top gear is childish at some points but the bit on senna was awesome

+1

It would be nice to see Top Gear do more of this.

Agreed, great episode. Toureg and Veyron were awesome. Cruise and Diaz were great - can only assume they're fans? Senna piece was fabulous too and underlines that something has gone wrong with current state of F1

rich dare i say it, but the need to improve safety, and an ultimate persuit for the fastest car.

A fair few people on here knock Clarkson but he does some excellent documentaries

anyone know when its repeated? i cant watch it on iplayer as im not in the uk...

Great TV.

First part was the same wobbly however the last section on F1/Hamilton was vintage Top Gear. I actually checked the channel thinking I'd hit on a sideshow for JC.

excellent tonight, i'm a massive Top Gear fan but even i've tired of some of the challenge episodes.......tonight was a proper petrolheads show

Yeah that was a superb piece on Senna. It was ace to see a world champion F1 driver (Hamilton) so humble & excited at the chance to drive Senna's classic car.

Scotia, it's repeated tomorrow night on BBC2 at 19.00.

Amazing piece, really looking forward to seeing this film on his life later in the year

Agreed. The Senna bit should have been it's own 1 hour long show. It was funny to see Lewis laughing like a child and being speechless!!

And I really like the Cruise/Diaz bit. I normally flip over when the guests are on as they are dull as dish water but once Clarkson did the corporation plug the movie thing they were really funny and entertaining (mostly Cameron Diz though!). The look on Tom Cruise's face as Cameran set the fastest time was priceless!! It was a kinda "oh yeah, well done... damn you bitch I'd better beat you!!"

Ian. Understand the point about fastest car and safety - I suppose something would need to happen in the rules to introduce some overtaking - restrict aerodynamics in some way?

Best. Episode. Ever. As stated wish the Senna part was the full hour. Never tire of watching the great man.

i agree - top show tonight - the bit about Senna made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.

I could be being cynical, but major A-list celeb happens to go fastest???
I know they do a number of laps, but in the lap he got 5th instead of 3rd a couple of times...

Definitely one of the best episodes aired tonight. Veyron article was also great, really well produced too

A much better piece of tv tonight and the no bombshell end was a nice touch

Very good episode. definately should have had more on senna. he was A true genius and is sadly missed.

i loved the bit when Hammy was giggling whilst drving senna's maclaren

Watched the Senna section - was amazingly good for TG, non patronising and heartfelt.

Program on BBC2 now about the 1955 Le Mans race (and crash) is superb too.

"The Senna bit should have been it's own 1 hour long show"

If you've not seen it, here's the (nearly) hour-long documentary the Beeb made in 1995.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport/formula_one/8027912.stm

The thought of being given the keys to his MP4/4 is quite something.

All I can say is...

"I WAS THERE" (Donnington 1993 that is)... For possibly his greatest ever showpiece!

Greatest talent ever to step in a car... Got a few pics of various McLarens (and a couple of Lotuses) of his at Goodwood the other weekend, including the all conquering MP4/4... What a machine, and what a driver! To see Lewis Hamilton totally awe inspired was remarkable, but all I can say is that we were witnessing a man sitting in his childhood idol's seat, driving his car!

Senna was undoubtedly gifted but why is that if you are German and intentionaly crash into your opponent you are a cheat, but if you are Brazilian you are commited and passionate?

Druid - obvious really - the Germans bombed our chip shop but everyone loves a Brazilian!

Cracking show and great piece, Clarkson really can do nice non geeky informative entertainment when ge wants. Rememer senna's driving was outstanding, his crash though was one of the reasons for the increased safety measures.

Arton Senna; almost as successful a driver as Alain Prost.... 😉

Had to be the best bit of TG in a long time. The only thing I thought they could have gone in to more detail on was Hamiltons comments on the difference in cars, it would have been good to have had more explanation.

And didn't the cars look so much better back then. You can see a lot of the mclarens from that era at the donnington motor museum.

I say make it more dangerous again. Stirring moss recently said modern go is dull and too safe etc and it was kind of hinted at last night.

Senna was undoubtedly gifted but why is that if you are German and intentionaly crash into your opponent you are a cheat, but if you are Brazilian you are commited and passionate?

Must admit I found that bit slightly questionable myself, but then people tend to make many allowances for the dead - seem to remember he got quite a bit of stick for his driving ethics whilst alive.

seem to remember he got quite a bit of stick for his driving ethics whilst alive.

He did yes, and rightly so. But still a superb driver, no question about that. And it was a very good episode of TG too, agreed. 🙂

This must be a Mclaren store of old F1 cars:

Sweet Richmars it's lke an Aladdin's cave.

Any info on the Film about Senna JC hinted about at the end of the show?

1200bhp manual gearbox no downforce driving one handed around monaco, brilliant driver, not seen lewis speachless before either

Would have loved to see an cocpit view of Lewis doing Alap, he was like a school kid with the keys to THE candy shop 😉

There's a bit more about Hamilton's drive in this month Top Gear mag.

Very good episode.

Amazing how much clout TG now has - top Hollywood stars, they get first dibs on a £1.5m car and got Lewis H in a fundamentally lethal car that must be pretty much priceless. Think of the insurance costs!!!

Last episode of TG was little more than adverts for Cruise/Diaz latest film and the forthcoming Senna documentary.
I find "Star in a...." the most boring bit of TG, it's biggest attraction being an opportunity to put the kettle on.
There is enough fawining over celebrities on TV as it is.
As Homer once said " Celebrities, is there nothing they can't do...."

Touareg piece was dull too. Devoid of the usual TG humour and quite obviously more contrived than ever.

Veyron bit was interesting, I was impressed at how stable the car was at 200+mph. Mind you it should be at £1.6million.

Agree with everything said here (apart from Everywhen).

TG at it's best. Touareg piece, whilst as staged as ever, had some great camera work in it, Senna documentary was inspiring and even the Cruise/Diaz section was entertaining after my initial serious doubts.

Great stuff.

Always considered Senna to be a dirty driver. But it did use make F1 racing a bit more interesting back then unlike the bore it is now.

+1 with the le man's docu, very scary!

Senna was a complicated character; that's part of the interest. He could be utterly brutal and chop someone up, but that clip where he jumped out of his car to comfort the crashed driver (Comas?) was incredibly touching.

If you haven't seen it, you must watch it tonight (Monday) it will be pulled and never shown again. The repeat later in the week is 45 minutes long as the Senna bit is cut out. Something to do with F1 rights on the footage.

[b]Watch it! [/b]

On tonight at 7pm BBC2

the Le Mans Docu was very interesting!

Great TV. The rate that the figures were increasing on the speedo in the Veyron was just awe inspiring. 4 sec to 100mph? Our car hits 60mph in about 11secs!! Thats awesome.
And some of the drivers view of Senna's driving, sooo impressive.

Senna at Monaco was a frightening sight. He said at the time he just kept going faster and faster and he eventually realised he could keep going faster until he had an enormous firey crash and backed off. 1.5 sec a lap quicker than Prost in the same car? Astonishing. Precision versus flair.

Yeah the rate the numbers went up was just staggering and wide shots from the camera as it appeared and vanish in seconds. What a amazing piece of engineering.

In that whole piece about Senna, my favourite bit of driving was Piquet overtaking him sideways.

The front shot from the veyron just made it feel like a video game

When trying to view Top Gear BBCi Player is stating "Not available in your area" ?

I mean I know Portsmouth isn't exactly London but what's going on??

Just watched the first part of it - only caught the end of it on Sunday.

I am not usually one for fast cars, but that Veyron looks good. Not sure what it's really for though.

There must be something else cool we can do with cars that doesn't involve simply making them go fast?

Just watched it and agree with the comments about Clarkson and his ability to some really excellent documentary work.

The piece on Senna was right up there with his Victoria Cross documentary. Well worth checking out if you haven't seen it.

Yeah, was a great episode. The Veyron was amazing. The straight on that track was 5.5 miles long? Cant remember what the top final speed was, but at 240 mph thats covering a mile every 15 seconds! so that straight would of taken aound 1.25 minutes ... wow!

The bit on Senna was also very entertaining.

Senna bit was good, the rest was just the usual, only getting slowly more tedious.

The piece on Senna was right up there with his Victoria Cross documentary. Well worth checking out if you haven't seen it.

Was the one about the original Commandos pretending to be German to sneak up a heavily armoured waterway to blow up the submarine docks? If so, that was just one awe inspiring documentary.

No, it focused on [url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Henry_Cain ]Major Robert Cain[/url] and his VC winning escapades at the Battle of Arnhem.

Other VC winners were also covered.

Robert Cain being his father in law, and none of them knew.
The commandos one was good too.

Senna at Monaco was a frightening sight.

The in car footage of him driving round Monaco in his MP4/4, wrestling with the steering wheel with his left hand (as it constantly grabs and trys to throw the car off line over the cambers) whilst keeping his right on the gear lever, sliding the car round seemingly every corner, all the while balancing what can only be described as a time bomb of an engine to extract a qualifying lap of 1.5sec quicker than even the great Alain Prost!

He was a controversial figure that's for sure, and I remember really not liking Senna that much as a kid (combination of always being faster than Mansell and other British drivers and forcing Prost off at Suzuka), but when I witnessed first hand the race at Donnington in 93 in what can only be described as probably the least competitive F1 car McLaren ever produced, well...

Whatever you think of him, he was a genius!

There was only one repeat of that episode then that's it. It will not be shown again because of the price of showing old F1 footage. If you missed it the second time you've had it I'm afraid. Top gear producer Andy Wilman was on Evan's show on Monday morning and said the cost of showing the footage is prohibitive and it's heading to the BBC archives never to be seen again.

I think the other factory veyron test driver got the average up to 266mph!

For those of you who have missed the repeats, or are 'outside' of iPlayer's area....

[cough]torrents[/cough]

Thing is though, late on in the race, Prost gained a huge amount of time over Senna after overtaking Berger in the Ferrari, and Senna crashed after panicking and losing concentration. So all that work down the drain...

1988 was the year that McLaren won all but one race. Senna won the drivers because he had more wins (in those days only best 11 races counted), although Prost had more points...

The Senna piece was brilliant. I was equally pleased however, with a stunning return to form in the direction/camerawork. Some of the Touraeg shots and of Hamilton on the track were beautiful!

As someone mentioned earlier, i too wondered about the fact that two massive Holywood stars could come in and set two new fastest laps?!?

[i]As someone mentioned earlier, i too wondered about the fact that two massive Holywood stars could come in and set two new fastest laps?!? [/i]

Dont forget its:

a) a new reasonably priced car, with very few drivers on the board
b) Cruise (and probably Diaz) will have driven a fair few fast cars during there careers, probably with professional tuition too.

Cruise rides bikes and planes, so I dont think taking a mechanical object to its limit lark is new to him!

I wasn't that surprised.

In all fairness, like has been mentioned above, they have both probably had a great deal of training in fast driving, tom especially so. Also they just looked like they were going fast, we've all seen other celebs turn the car early into the final corner and do a small jump buy never end up on two wheels for a good 20m . Also what does anyone gain from them being at the top

The Veyron piece was predictable and the car is barge. Throw 8 liters and four turbos at it and it ends up just 28 mph faster than a normally aspirated Mclaren F1 launched over 10 years ago. Senna's MP4/4 had nearly 700hp from 1.5 liters in 1988. Now that is impressive.

I really have my doubts it'd beat a Gumpert or R500 around that particular track too. I'm sure keeping Mr Volkswagon happy had something to do with the time.

Said this on a different thread, Hamilton as always shows his utter passion for racing. Away from the Corporate-speak when he lets his hair down he just shows that hes in racing for the kicks/fun and not the job. Even on relatively bad performances have you ever heard him bitching?!!!!

I bet even if he was driving a taxi round Stevenage for a living he'd manage to get kicks out of it!

[i]Throw 8 liters and four turbos at it and it ends up just 28 mph faster than a normally aspirated Mclaren F1 launched over 10 years ago[/i]

Which tells you how difficult the drag is to overcome...

....and its a horrible bulbous two-tone coloured car. Having seen one in the flesh I'm curious as to why it costs soo much?

They could have made a more evocative bugatti.

. Even on relatively bad performances have you ever heard him bitching?!!!!

Yup - many times

Yes, we all know you don't like Hamilton, TJ - racist 😉 (kidding, seriously!)

He does moan sometimes but frankly who wouldn't - I'd say he's actually less of a moaner than most.

Anyway, back on topic, I recorded it - fast forwarded through the Toerag stuff, watched the TC/CD stuff and thought that while the do genuinely seem to like fast cars/etc that they were playing very hard at the 'we're good mates' thing which was pretty excruciating though I don't have any issue believing their lap times.

The Senna bit was good though a bit blinkered - he wasn't perfect and he wasn't always the best driver though he was consistently excellent and sometimes just stunning. I loved the footage of Mansell trying to get past him at Monaco in 92 though - brought the memories back and I know that getting past was near impossible for Mansell but it was still brilliant TV.

What saying 'we have to go away and do some work on the car'

'the upgrades didnt work so we had to revert back'?

Comes across as descriptive rather than moan.

Even when he didnt reach the podium- as recently he says 'it felt like the drive of my life'.

Remember a year back he qualified well down the field in the rain (c.14th?)- fought through but dropped back again and at the end described his race and enjoyable.

Clubber - He moans precisely because he is so passionate about things - I just wanted to correct Hora who said he doesn't bitch - when he clearly does.

Hoar - no - moaning when things go wrong - he does it many times - I don't think its wrong or bad that he does it.

Gordon Murray has ripped chunks out of the Veyron a few times. He reckons they dropped a massive clanger when they said "We're going to built a car that does 400kph and it'll look like this".

There's a reason why almost all really fast road cars share their shape with things like the McLaren F1 & LeMans prototypes. It's the best shape for the job.

I reckon it's pretty easy to see how the Veyron costs 5 million to make. Almost every other supercar manufacturer has either a fairly standard configuration of engine, or buys one in and hots it up. The Veyron has an engine which is unique to the car - not just different heads, but a different block. The thing's not aerodynamically brilliant, so it needs lots of radiators. And there's an astonishing amount of technology involved in keeping it on the ground. But ultimately, the big problem with making a Veyron is that it's scratch built. Almost everything had to be developed for that car, so all the set up costs are pushed into the price.

That said, get something like a McLaren F1 or an Ultima, and you'd get it going as fast with considerably less horses.

Its clearly a car for the wealthy rather than a real rich petrolhead.

Also what does anyone gain from them (CD/TC) being at the top

Top Gear getting more Hollywood A-listers to come on a pokey British motor show.

Agent: "Why the goddamn hell would Sylvester/Russell/Harrison wanna come on your hokey Brit show man?"

TG booker: "Well, dear boy, Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz set the fastest laps earlier this year when they came to promote their new film to our 6 million strong viewing audience...."

Agent: "When do ya wan' em?"

edit: this is TG Booker by the way....
[img] [/img]

its clearly a car saying 'look what we can do! up your mum!'

as an advertisement for VW engineering skills it does its job amazingly.

loved last sundays episode

one of the best ever

Hold on people - nobody has yet pointed out that MotoGP in Sennas period was soooo much better than F1. The world is going to end........

Elfinsafety will be along soon to talk about how he pi$$ed himself in the pub and how exciting Moto GP is compared to F1 as he seems to think that most F1 drivers don't watch any other form of motorsport at all.