Special episode with Dax Shepard: F1 and the 30th anniversary of Ayrton Senna's death

**Peter Attia** (0:11)
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Welcome to a bonus episode of The Drive. I'm joined today by my friend and fellow car enthusiast Dax Shepard.
The purpose of our podcast today is to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Ayrton Senna's death, May 1st, 1994 The idea for this podcast came up a couple of months ago when Dax and I were talking about this upcoming anniversary. And Dax has sort of had a fascination with my obsession with Senna. Dax was not a fan of F1 at the time of Senna's death, but has more recently in the last five or six years become a fan of F1. And so he wanted to sit down with me and better understand why it is that I have such a fascination with Senna's career and remain an enormous fan all these years after his death. So in many ways, that's what this episode really is. It's sort of a discussion between us that focuses on a lot of things that have to do with racing, F1, some of it in the modern era, but really most of it focuses on Senna's life, his death, the circumstances of his death, and his lasting impact and legacy on the sport. So I hope you enjoy this very special episode of The Drive. Hey!

**Dax Shepard** (2:25)
Oh, this is delightful.
I'm in your house, yeah. You asked me to come do a Senna episode. I was very forthcoming and said, that I'm a three out of 10 on Senna. But the reason I wanted to do it is so that I could pry and figure out what's really going on with the Senna obsession.

**Peter Attia** (2:44)
Yes.

**Dax Shepard** (2:44)
Yeah, and I'm curious how much you're aware of it or not.

**Peter Attia** (2:48)
Probably not. It's probably at this point, sort of like the David Foster Wallace fish in water thing. Like it's the water I swim in.

**Dax Shepard** (2:55)
Yeah.

**Peter Attia** (2:55)
So I don't actually notice that I'm obsessed with Senna.

**Dax Shepard** (2:59)
Do you remember what year it started? Did it start with the dock?

**Peter Attia** (3:03)
No, no, no, no. I mean, I remember growing up, when you grow up in Canada, for whatever reason, motorsports actually pretty popular in Canada. And I don't know why, it might be because of Gilles Villeneuve.
Although I don't have any real recollection of Villeneuve. So Villeneuve died in 1982 I was nine years old, but for whatever reason, like I don't even recall his death being on my radar. But IndyCar was incredibly popular and F1 was incredibly popular.

**Dax Shepard** (3:30)
Because you always had the Montreal race.

**Peter Attia** (3:32)
You have Montreal for F1 and you always had Mostport. You always had the IndyCar and Toronto race.
Because my dad was in the restaurant business, meaning he was buying beer by the truckload and Molson was the beer in Canada.

**Dax Shepard** (3:44)
They would give you tickets and stuff.

**Peter Attia** (3:45)
They would give you tickets or something like that.

**Dax Shepard** (3:47)
Did you go to races?

**Peter Attia** (3:48)
Yes. The 80s, which is when I came of age. I also think that there's just, I don't know, I just think there's some boys that get really into cars.
Not to say that there aren't girls that do, but I think it's a boy thing. What did you have posters of on your wall? It was cars and boxers. Those were the two things I had posters of.

**Dax Shepard** (4:06)
Yeah. I didn't have boxing posters, but I loved those 80s boxers. My dad was super obsessed. You and I have even bonded over like the Tommy Hearns, the Hagler, the Sugar Ray. That whole sweet era of boxing was huge in my house.