Watch: Adam Driver and Michael Mann talk to Top Gear about 'Ferrari'

Where do you start when it comes to telling the story of Enzo Ferrari? Film director Michael Mann is one of the true titans of cinema – Manhunter, The Last of the Mohicans, Heat and Collateral, to name just a few – and he’s been wrestling with this project for more than two decades.

Indeed, Top Gear met Mann in Maranello back in 2016 when he was in pre-production for the biopic, along with Christian Bale, who had signed on to play the irascible, self-mythologising but brilliant automotive giant. Then Bale bailed, pausing things once again. Perhaps this one was destined never to see the light of day.

But now here it is. Based on a script by Troy Kennedy Martin – who wrote The Italian Job and Edge of Darkness – drawing on Brock Yates’ gossipy but insightful 1991 biography, Ferrari wisely focuses on a single year in Enzo’s life. And it’s not a very happy one. In 1957, Ferrari (played by Adam Driver) is still reeling from the loss of his son Dino, a torment that’s heaping emotional pressure onto an already fiery marriage to Laura (a brilliant Penelope Cruz). Maintaining a double life with mistress Lina Lardi (Shailene Woodley), Enzo also has a young son, Piero, to think about.

On top of all this, his 10-year old company is facing financial headwinds and increased competition on the race-track. Redemption, at least according to the film, lies in victory in that year’s Mille Miglia, a race Ferrari historians will know all too well does not go according to plan…

Mann is a famously fastidious film-maker, and he tackles both the domestic drama engulfing his subject and the wider one with his signature eye for detail. Ferrari is a handsome looking film, evokes this beautiful but tragic era in operatic style, and elicits formidable performances from its leads. The racing scenes are deftly handled, too, as you would expect from this diehard, life-long motorsport fan. TopGear.com sat down with Michael Mann and Adam Driver and asked – how did they approach this notorious and self-styled ‘agitator of men’?

(Ferrari is on general release in cinemas from December 26th)