I don't know about you but trying to squeeze in 10 episodes of this before the start of the season was impossible. The series is a great warm up to the season but why can't Netflix bring it out during the long, cold Winter?
The season opened with Mattia Binotto and Gunter Steiner hanging out together and visiting Mattea's vineyard, his hobby, now presumably his full-time occupation. It took a long time to get around to the Mercede's porpoising. It briefly looked like they weren't going to mention Russia either but then it came. Moving through the Bahrain race weekend, I had completely forgotten about Gasly's fire, I suppose this is Netflix gold though. The main focus was on Haas, with comeback kid, Magnussen, finishing somewhere. They blurred over exactly where he finished but he did finish and the comparison was made with Ferrari's 1-2 result. The edits really stretch things sometimes.
The second episode opened looking at on Mercedes and Wolff. I'd forgotten just how bad the bouncing had got, how much pain Hamilton was in and how much more dominant Russell looked. There seems to be more access than ever for Netflix into FIA led meetings, the team principals featured more than ever this year. Then events reached Silverstone, where Zhou had his massive accident. There was a lot of unseen footage from this and Russell's involvement in it, when he stopped running to help. Ultimately Russell got to watch the race with Tom Cruise. The spin on the race was that Hamilton was battling for the win, when it was actually a battle for third and a podium. If you only watch Netflix, you would come away thinking race results were very different from reality.
On we moved and episode three focused on Ferrari and Miami. Halliwell showed up everywhere a Spice Girl shouldn't be, making insightful comments about how well Ferrari are doing. We saw the Ferrari chief strategist fumbling about with a piece of paper, trying to remember what the team should be doing under a Safety Car. It was an early insight into their downfall. Monaco was sped through (including the delayed wet start). The engine failure in Baku was barely mentioned and Jack Nicholls gave some commentary to make the point that they made the same mistake in Canada as in Monte Carlo. Then more focus on Silverstone, where Sainz scored pole and got two chances at staying ahead of Verstappen off the grid. After that the two drivers were allowed to race at the front of the pack and then not allowed and were given team orders to switch positions. At this point, everyone is blaming Binotto, which signposts where this is going. We hear Sainz begging to attack LeClerc rather than defend from Hamilton and he does overtake him. By the end of the series, I don't think Ferrari fully got the criticism they deserved.
Episode four was an accounting exercise for Haas, which started as a tribute to Michael Schumacher and than quickly became a catalogue of his son's errors over the season and how much it cost the small team. With Guenther repeatedly on the phone to Gene swearing like a trooper, we then see Magnussen's camp (who received glowing reviews in ep.1) dripping poison into Steiner's ear. They paused at Baku and I racked my brains to remember whether this was a great race for Mick that exonerated him or another crash. It was neither but he finished whilst Guenther criticised him from the prat perch. By Silverstone, Schumacher had enough stickers on his reward chart to be allowed to overtake Magnussen. For some reason, he radioes in to see if he is allowed to overtake cars ahead of him. He gets his first points in F1 finishing 8th. There wasn't even a conclusion about whether Schumacher would be staying in F1.
By episode five, I'd picked up that the overhead pitstop shown at the start would be the team the episode focused on. So ten episodes, ten teams, I was looking forwards to the Williams episode. This one opened in Oxford but it was to be all about the only French team on the grid - Alpine. It was mentioned early on that Alpine had invested $4 million in Piastri so far. A reserve driver has never featured so heavily in the show before. We've pretty much stopped being told who wins any race, with mid-team battles being the be all and end all. Otmar Szafnauer is doing his best in front of the cameras but comes across in the same way that Rishi Sunak does when he has to meet a bus driver.
By now, we'd been waiting for the Piastri/Ricciardo/Gasly switcheroo and episode 6 served this up. The editing leant heavily on Norris being slightly backstabby, Gasly being an all-conquering hero and Ricciardo having dramatically burnt his bridges with Renault/Alpine. By now any involvement from Webber or Alonso was forgotten. There was no on-track action at all and so by episode 7 I was ready to see drivers race and we were back focusing on the front of the grid. The production was looking at Monaco and Perez' contract.
In episode eight, Yuki was back and more petulant than ever. They focused on his home track, where he scored a point and the ed op was that he was a winner. De Vries insisted that he will wipe the floor with him this season (I think he'll potentially be gold for the next series) and Gasly painted a picture of Yuki as a misunderstood youth.
Finally, episode nine, where Verstappen was being given lots of cake that he's not allowed to eat. As the episode would show, you can't have your cake and eat it - vis-a-vis money and spending it on F1. Horner was disappointed that there was "no room for manoeuvre" in the rules.
The final instalment came at last and I realised that other than a reel from Instagram, we hadn't heard from Vettel at all. Over and out. The episode focused on the battles between Mercedes and Ferrari for second and McLaren and Alpine for fourth in the constructors' championship. The edit made it seem like LeClerc won the final race of the season, when in fact he was second and claimed the superior spot for his team. Alonso had to retire his Alpine yet they still beat their rivals. The end of the episode was a tribute to the departing Ricciardo, Mr Drive to Survive himself. It really did give you an insight into why, perhaps, no one wants him to drive for them: drinking, swearing, clearly partying as hard as he plays. Yet I do wonder if this a persona and whether the programme will do as well without him (he is a producer of an F1-based TV drama, so understands the need to sell his brand better than most of them). As his best bits concluded, the attention switched to Vegas because the tracks might become more interesting than the drivers. And where was Williams' episode?
No comments:
Post a Comment