Kaya Scodelario's character Laura Harrison is fictional. She is based on journalists that covered Ayrton Senna's career. Furthermore, Scoledario's family is Brazilian, from Senna's home state of São Paulo. She's also fluent in Brazilian Portuguese.
Writers of this series have said they had some limitations due to Senna's family involvement in the production.
According to friend Galvão Bueno, Senna was in love with Adriane Galisteu and intended to marry her before his death, but Senna's family didn't approve the relationship. To this day, his family doesn't allow Galisteu to be included in anything related to him. Reportedly, Netflix refused to make the series if she couldn't be shown somehow - although she only appears for roughly 180 seconds in the final cut.
The Xou da Xuxa (1988) sets were rebuilt from scratch to recreate the infamous moment Xuxa welcomed Ayrton Senna on stage.
At Senna's wake, Adriane Galisteu, who had been living with Senna for a year and a half by then, was designated a sticker with the letter "F" for Friend and was separated from the coffin by a fence, while Xuxa, the pilot's ex-girlfriend, stayed by the family's side and left in their car, all the while Galisteu was put on a bus with several people. Viviane Senna, Senna's sister and president of his estate, rejected the idea of Galisteu being his widow, stating "she was just his girlfriend of the moment, like many others before her".