A old cowboy bursts through the doors, as the saloon bar clock (or factory canteen in this case) strikes high noon. Time’s running out before it’s all too late.
Left in the wilderness for years and years, the return of a flawed yet brilliant old player has the potential to re-energise not only their F1 team but also the sport itself, along with its accompanying docudrama.
Netflix’s wildly successful Drive to Survive series has weathered dangerously boring waters in recent years. Can the return of an old anti-hero conjure up new magic in Season 7, released on March 7?
It’s suffered from candid access being limited as PRs’ vice-like grip strengthens, drivers have their personalities (if they ever had one in the first place) media-trained out of them and the championship itself being unwilling to portray itself in any negative light.
Recent seasons 4, 5 and 6 have been largely bland affairs as a result. The halcyon, Guenther-Steiner-fok-smashing days of S2 and 3 – when F1 exploded in popularity – feel like a distant memory.
At one point championship bosses spoke vaguely of a making a change with the Netflix format, implying DtS might even stop completely after some of the buzz had been lost.
Without perhaps needing to reinvent itself, a rejig to the formula clearly needed to be made – and some are immediately evident in the new series from the off.
It takes a little while to establish when the first episode has actually got going. The action from scene-to-scene is cut so rapidly for the short-of-attention-span, and with so many explosion-like noises, you initially wonder whether you’re still watching the trailer to begin with – and suspect the next time new Haas boss Ayao Komatsu puts down a cup of green tea in the team hospitality, it’s going to be accompanied by a massive ‘BANG!’ sound effect.
However, it all adds to an enhanced cinematic impression, and one that is certainly viewable (if your eyes haven’t gone square already). Mercifully, after six seasons, DtS has finally managed to sort out its engine-noise-to-car shots too.
No longer, judging by the engine notes, do we watch someone apparently taking Monaco’s Grand Hotel Hairpin (probably F1’s slowest corner) at 200mph, or barrelling through Monza’s Parabolica in, err, second gear.
When we are sure that DtS 7 is actually happening now, the first episode gets off to a flying start by combining a couple of bombshells story lines.
Series bosses have waxed lyrical about one driver’s contribution in the past, but really it’s a certain team boss who has made the series, so omnipresent has he been to so many dastardly DtS storylines. It’s proven again more than ever in S7.
Firings, hirings, unsigned contracts and even at one point a driver’s panic attack form the behind-the-scenes drama. You also have to give full credit to DtS for squeezing all the editorial juice out of 2024’s most boring story line about a midfield saga: tune in to find out which one gets the Netflix treatment.
That these type of narratives – and not just those surrounding the championship battle – are apparently of interest to fans is a tribute to both documentary makers Box2Box and F1.
The world championship completed its apparent WWE-ification with its F1 75 extravaganza, team bosses walking out on stage like Hollywood Hulk Hogan if he came Oxford and worked in computational fluid dynamics.
WWE was subject to its own Netflix doc recently also, with one quote from a wrestling executive being “Emotions are what sell tickets.” Well, grand prix racing has this in spades.
F1 – largely through Netflix and social – has been brilliant at bringing it to the fore. Cycle back 25 years, and was anyone so upset about the demise of Mika Salo’s or Pedro Diniz’s careers? Nope! DtS has made you care.
One team principal pens love letter after love letter to a prospective driver: “It would be a complete transformation to have [insert driver] by my side. I go to sleep and wake up thinking of nothing else.” Blimey! To quote George Russell.
Another isn’t so pleasant. He says the car is “s***”, tells one driver he thought he was a “w*****” prior to meeting and, worst of all, declares the factory coffee not up to much. He then falls out with and fires his other driver. It’s all happening.
F1’s conflict of its cigarette-branded, non-PC old versus its acceptable, more corporate new – something Netflix has been central to – is summed up by one old stalwart lamenting the changing of the guard as the technocrats take over: “All these vanilla engineers, all they talk about is data and probabilities… data, data – not like it was a few years ago…” Yearning for a bit of Eddie Jordan in their life, clearly.
They’re right though: while S7 has some pretty decent material, it’s sat amongst a decent swathe of beige.
As we negotiate the series, the race sequences simply aren’t that interesting. They’re completely necessary to the Netflix-based fan who might tune in to the occasional GP, but if you’re a diehard who watches every round live, you’re just waiting for them to end and are sorely tempted to skip forward.
An episode where a group of drivers are given phones to record video diaries on one race promises a lot and delivers little – one giving a running commentary on the window cleaners outside his 20th story hotel room proves the highlight.
You feel the series’ better moments emphasise some missed opportunities– several key 2024 story lines are missing, replaced by some of the lesser dramas alluded to above.
Drive to Survive S7 is an amusing representation of F1 in 2025. Despite F1’s more young, vibrant modern day image, it’s the old guard who appear on camera to make it interesting, because they actually say something.
As the presented day-to-day human element of F1 gets ever more dull – teams offering up quotes, interviews and video that might as well be AI-generated, does DtS give us some ‘real’ behind the scenes insight? Does it present F1 as much more than just LinkedIn-plus-a hybrid system?
Yes, at times. But you’ll have to deploy a bit of fast-forwarding to get there…
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