Season 6 opened with Norris driving through the Monegasque countryside and then the drivers airily discussing their privileged lifestyles. Verstappen demonstrated that he wears Red Bull team attire off-season too. Because four drivers playing paddle in Monte Carlo hadn't been set up at all. The gear was moved up and we zoomed in on a fancy-schmancy Aston Martin event, painting Stroll (senior) as a villain, in opposition to the people's hero Steiner.
Forward to Bahrain testing and Vestappen comments they will see the drivers a lot on track, more than over the holiday. Not how it would end up, Max. Stroll comes back from breaking his wrists and talks about how painful it is. Then, boom, Claire Williams!
Despite being presented at the time with a miraculous recovery from his biking injuries, it is revealed that Stroll was in a lot of pain and taking a lot of pain medication upon his return to F1 in Bahrain. Even his colleagues are commenting that the shouldn't be there. He moved around the paddock looking stoned and demonstrating a somewhat unusual relationship with his father.
Episode 2 started with Father Christmas (not Santa in Ginger's Posh house) asking Christian Horner if he'd been a good boy this year. We know now that, no, he was not. The focus of the ep. was De Vries and Ricciardo. Luckily Geri, was on hand to talk it through.
Everyone emphasised that Ricciardo was specifically there to do marketing duties, not sim work as outlined at the time. I suppose this makes the return to racing later much dramatic: from boy holding golf sale sign to F1 hero.
Episode 3 was Piasti's (and McLaren's), once again Norris was portrayed as dismayed until a little victory, or second place. They didn't do much with this well-told story.
Circling the bottom, was Episode 4, focusing on Haas and Williams. Claire Williams star turn had come. It was the story of old-sweary war horse Guenter Steiner and James Vowles, the new Team Principal in town, who couldn't get his introduction right. I'd forgotten how good the start of the 2023 season was for Haas and how poor for Williams but then the order switched on race 3 at Melbourne and the writing was on the wall. For his Netflix career, Steiner came out with: "There's nothing left in the lemon, all the juice has been squeezed." It will be on a T-shirt already. The slant of the end was building up to Steiner leaving F1, which wasn't on the cards at the time. Did the editors have to rehash the storyline?
Then we moved onto the French affair of Episode 5. I have no recollection of Alpine getting a podium with Ocon at Monaco. Gasly, who seems to be popular in the paddock (unlike Ocon), was portrayed as the villain of the piece. In the end, they showed a bit of the spat but overall it was uneventful. Netflix must have been contractually obliged to include the team.
Episode 6 was Mercedes and opened with Hamilton mentioning his contract was up for renewal this year. Ears perked up; would this have had a late edit to include his 2025 news about Ferrari? After some petulance from Hamilton, we switched to the team boss. In some sort of Horner-Halliwell vs. Wolff-Stoddart one-up-manship, we saw the Wolves take their son karting. They dwelled on the doom and gloom at the start of the season, then moved to over-taking Aston Martin in the championship at Barcelona.
There was no last minute edit and the sun shone on the silver arrows as Hamilton said, "There's never going to be a time when I'm not a Mercedes driver." It hasn't aged well.
And back to Alpine...are they paying Netflix for air time? We saw the firing of Otmar and it was portrayed quite sensitively, with snide comments shown behind the scenes from other F1 personnel but lots of lovely conversations to his face. Bruno, the new TP (new phrase for 2024), is shown in the slightly embarrassing position of speaking excellent French but not English like the majority of staff he is now hoping to improve the morale of.
From a flailing TP in Episode 7, we moved on to Red Fred in Episode 8. We were building up to Sainz's great triumph in Singapore (I'd completely forgotten that Russell crashed on the last lap, losing any chance of the victory) after not winning Monza. Winning Monza is the number 1 item on the Ferrari Team Principal Job Description.
The next episode focused on box office gold Ricciardo, they went from back in the seat to breaking his hand. The film crew got a lovely trip to Milton Keynes to meet Liam Lawson. He couldn't have come across as any greener with Danica Patrick commenting, "He's probably shitting himself." To make matters worse, we saw all the other drivers bullying him outside the press conference. He then qualified in his first race ahead of all the other Red Bull drivers and finished in the points. And after all that, when Danny is given the seat over him, he expresses just how upsetting it is. I suppose this is the reason behind Drive to Survive's great success.
The grand finale was Vegas baby. The drivers looked aghast at the showmanship they were being asked to perform. It felt like Netflix would want to make the Las Vegas race look glossy and all-American top fun but perhaps they were happy to show some of the elements that made it less popular with the teams and drivers. Ferrari closed up on Mercedes. We moved on to the last race at Abu Dhabi and the picture widened to include the rivalry between McLaren and Aston Martin. Creepy Uncle Fernando reared his head. As Russell had "the drive of his life", LeClerc was left frustrated that Ferrari couldn't even hang on to second place in the constructors championship.
And so it was. They threw in a card to inform the fewer that Steiner's contract was not renewed but nothing about Hamilton's move to Ferrari; they have that in the bag for next season.
Overall, the episodes were fairly predictable. The weathered F1 fan who is familiar with the Netflix production, could write the show, as Albon did mid-season. With Verstappen's domination they were obliged to focus on the race to be best of the rest. Let's hope 2024 provides them with more interesting fodder.
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