Luca: Seeing Red…. behind the scenes of Montezemolo film

If ever there was a character in Formula 1 who was made for the screen it is Luca Montezemolo. The suave Italian with matinée idol looks, easy charm and aristocratic lineage came to epitomise the image of Ferrari in the 1970s. And now thanks to Manish Pandey – the man behind 2010’s Senna – he has a full-length feature film dedicated entirely to his extraordinary career.

Motor Sport was invited to a pre-release screening of the new – and at the time not completely finished – film just before Christmas. Directed by Pandey and Christopher M Armstrong, Luca: Seeing Red tells the story of how a young Italian law student with a passion for rally caught the eye – or rather ear – of Enzo Ferrari while defending the sport on a local radio station and rose to become chairman and CEO of the company, as well as one of the most influential men in Italy, before being ruthlessly dispensed with in a corporate coup. Along the way and as team manager of the Scuderia he oversaw the rebirth of Ferrari on track with world titles in 1975 and 1977 during the glory years of Niki Lauda.

But this is no ordinary biopic. In a piece of inspired casting the film is narrated and fronted by Chris Harris, the former Top Gear host, see page 90. Harris brings a note of levity (“Can Pavarotti fit an F40?” he asks upon being told the opera great was an early buyer”) as well as deep knowledge to proceedings as he and Luca shoot the breeze in a variety of locations.

For Pandey the project was a long time in the making – even by the famously glacial timescales of movie making.

“I was introduced to Luca through a mutual friend in 2012,” he says. “I’d written a Ferrari feature film straight after Senna, and this friend of mine sent him an email saying, ‘Would you meet Manish?’ And the next thing I knew, I was in Maranello to discuss the idea. I remember my first meeting with Bernie Ecclestone for Lucky! [the documentary on the F1 impresario released in 2022], and he has a particular charisma, and Luca also has that. It was a half an hour meeting. And I remember when I finished just thinking what an incredible man he was. As I left he gave me a big remote control Ferrari for my son.”

The idea of a Ferrari film never made it – and in fact Michael Mann ended up doing a similar project on Enzo in 2023. But the idea of working with Montezemolo stuck and the two men stayed in touch.

“Walk down the road with Luca and you are swamped with fans. He’s like Paul Newman”

Then, in 2020, when Pandey had just started the Lucky! project and was interviewing Ecclestone in Switzerland, he received a call from Montezemolo: “He said he’d never done a book or anything about his life – and is that something that I would like to make? I was just amazed. A year later we had done Bernie and I went out to Rome and spent two full days with him and it was a very surreal experience but he spoke from the heart and I thought, ‘We just have to make this.’”

The key to the project was signing Harris. “I had dinner at a hotel in London where Luca always used to stay with Niki Lauda – because it’s right across the road from Hyde Park which Niki used to run around. Chris joined us and it was just amazing watching the two of them chat at such a high level about everything Ferrari.”

A recce mission was agreed in May 2023 but things didn’t go well. Armstrong takes up the story: “I remember the idea was the two would get to know each other, we’d do a road trip… beautiful Ferraris… Italian countryside… but at the time Italy had the worst weather you can possibly imagine. It was like Lost in La Mancha, the Terry Gilliam film where everything was a washout. I mean there were literally landslides, torrential rain, mudslides, you name it. It was so far from the beautiful Ferraris on a road trip through the Italian countryside but somehow we made it work and the relationship between Chris and Luca was magic. When we came back to the edit suite we realised that we had something.”

In the film the two men meander through the streets of Rome and the corridors of Montezemolo’s palatial home reliving the highlights of a long career. It is beautifully shot, although as Pandey recalls filming wasn’t always easy: “Walk down the road with Luca and you are swamped with fans. It’s like being with Paul Newman.”

Armstrong adds: “Apart from that time we were in Rome and were driving down the street and someone with an English accent shouted, ‘Chris ’Arris! Oi! What ya filming Chris!’”

For me, the best of the film comes when Harris moves seamlessly from being a narrator to becoming part of the action. In the section about Montezemolo’s downfall under the new boss of Fiat, Sergio Marchionne, Harris recounts how he covered the story as a journalist. “Yes, Chris was there for all the big milestones in Luca’s life,” says Pandey, “from the Fiat 500 launch to his resignation from Ferrari. There is so much empathy there.”

As ever with Pandey’s work the archive material is incredible, in particular film from that colourful period in the mid-70s when Montezemolo and Lauda were forging their relationship – much of it ferreted out by the archive researcher Edoardo Stella, son of the current McLaren F1 team principal Andrea.

“What you get from the footage is the interaction between Niki and Luca, who were pretty much the same age,” says Pandey. “It reveals the depth of their relationship. These are soulmates and even if you think you know the story of Luca and Niki you will be amazed at the closeness that you can see. It takes the Lewis/Bono [Peter Bonnington, Mercedes’ race engineer] thing to a whole different level. Imagine Lewis and Bono straight after a race go out for dinner, then get drunk together and stay in the same hotel. That is the thing that completely floored me.

“The other thing you see was the depth of his love for Michael [Schumacher] and how he papered over those titles that slipped away in 1997 and ’98 in the face of the Italian press. In the end this film, if it is about anything, is about loyalty.”