Drive to Survive - Season 7 Review

Can we guess who, in the whole entire world of F1 was the second person to appear on the new season of D2S?  Yes!  A Spice Girl!  Newly Posh Spice, formerly Ginger, Gerri Horniwell.  Also making a career change comback is Claire Williams, who now seems to be a pundit for the show.

There was an interesting snippet where Sainz and Hamilton were "caught" discussing  Mercedes drive for the 2025 season; Lewis was advising that he didn't think the team were going to win again.  Carlos said that he had not heard from the team boss so felt an offer of driver there was unlikely.  It seemed a very sad start to the season already.

The release of the cache of messages and emails that were sent to team principals and every member of the press about Horner's alleged misbehaviour was a key selling point for the series.  He was looking hunted already on the show but it was starting to look like D2S was on Horner's side but also did manage to make him look a little shady.  It seems like it was a very long time ago and all has been forgotten now.  Geri's face could not have looked more tense if she was taking Ozympic.

The editor and director didn't seem to know what direction they wanted to take the first episode, was it all about Sainz's departure from Ferrari or Horner's failure to depart from Red Bull?  It finished with Sainz beating Red Bull at Australia.

In the second episode, they brought up the name Lando "No Wins" Norris.  I've never heard this, neither had Jenson Button.  Having created a little extra jeopardy for the McLaren driver, in episode three, they went for George Russell.  I don't think there was ever any question that George Russell had a drive at Mercedes in the 2025 season but it was played that he was contending for the lead driver position.  There was a lot of comment about how he needed to step things up to achieve this.

Where it used to be that Netflix were lucky to be embedded in the right team at the right time, they are now staging increasingly awkward interactions between drivers and their team principals and other staff.  It's really taking away from what was a somewhat serious sporting documentary.

The episode felt rushed, Antonelli's announcement coming hastily at the end and Toto Wolff not looking completely confident in his decision.

Episode four can't have been easy viewing for Logan Sargeant.  It was his crash highlights, with Williams Team Principal, James Vowles, listing the parts he had gone through.  The title was "Carlos Signs".  We didn't know that Sainz had backed out of the first signing with Williams.  It was the second coming of Briatore.  Some of us remember him from the first time around and his no holds barred support of Schumacher.  Those younger will remember crashgate, when he was the engineer of Piquet Jr deliberately crashing to enable Alonso a late-career win.

There were some episodes where the focus was so obvious I had nothing to comment on about it.  The one where they gave them phones to film on and focused on the brotherhood was sweet. Then they moved on to the Danny Ric Story.  Someone, probably Will Buxton, made the point that if he had only stayed at Red Bull and not left to go to McLaren, he could have been world champion.  You could see that Netflix were sad to lose him from the show and this was his grand finale.

With Steiner gone, the production team were looking to the returning Briatore to bring some fire.  You could see he was tired with the idea.  One episode was Haas vs. Alpine.  Ocon really presented that he chose to go to Haas.  This was contrasted with Flavio calling him "a spoilt brat"; then we saw someone in the Haas factory questioning his appointment there.

The final episode tied up loose ends with Verstappen winning the Drivers' Championship and McLaren winning the Constructors'.  As well as the number of drivers leaving teams.  The bizarre outpouring of emotion at Hamilton leaving but only for Ferrari, not forever, was shown.  He was allowed to do doughnuts, what will they do when he finally quits F1?  Shoot him, embalm him and set in a glass tomb in Stevenage?

Didn't mention: Sargeant being dismissed, Newey leaving Red Bull.

Drive to Survive - Season 6

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.

Drive to Survive Season 5 Review

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?