50: Immortalising the man who made Ferrari great again

James Allen On F1

This week James Allen welcomes Manish Pandey, the film maker and master storyteller who shot to prominence with the award-winning 2010 documentary Senna, which he made with Asif Kapadia and James Gay Rees of Drive to Survive fame. Since then Manish has followed up, gaining exclusive access to F1’s ringmaster Bernie Ecclestone, to tell his behind the scenes story in the streaming series Lucky.

Now he’s done it again with a new film, Seeing Red, about another of F1’s biggest characters, Luca Di Montezemolo.

Montezemolo was only 28 years old when he won the 1975 F1 World Championships as Ferrari team manager with Niki Lauda. He then came back in the 1990s to lead Ferrari’s renaissance, putting in place the “Dream Team” of Jean Todt, Ross Brawn and Rory Byrne that dominated F1 with Michael Schumacher. At the same time he brought the magic back to Ferrari’s road car fleet.

Manish talks about what has drawn him as a film maker to tell the stories of Senna, Ecclestone and Montezemolo, what they have in common and how their stories intersect. He reveals the conversations that Montezemolo and Senna had in 1994 about the great Brazilian joining Ferrari and looks at the Ferrari of today and asks: how important is it that the person at the top of Ferrari loves F1?

Seeing Red is on a limited cinema release via Everyman Cinemas in the UK and will be released on major streaming platforms soon.

Send your comments or questions to: @jamesallenonf1 on X or [email protected].
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