2 March 2020
Change is afoot in Formula 1
Although Formula 1 is a commercial juggernaut with millions of fans scattered across the world, it remains opaque and secretive for all but a few insiders. But Netflix’s engrossing and beautifully crafted 10-part series about the 2018 season presents ample proof that things are about to change.
Update: March 2020
The latest episodes of Drive to Survive S2 are now streaming!
McLaren and more
Drive to Survive builds on the success of Amazon’s Grand Prix Driver, a 2017 series that focuses on the McLaren F1 team. Netflix’s series also features McLaren, but it casts its net wider and covers the sport with greater breadth and depth of both narrative and character.
This is an ambitious approach that uncovers the hidden texture of F1’s machinations, delves into its colourful cast of characters, unlocks some of its secrets, and most crucially makes even the most casual of F1 fan feel like an insider.
It succeeds because it showcases the best that F1 has to offer. Ferociously fast cars fly across the screen, their handsome young drivers exude confidence even after crashing at 320kph. But it also highlights the sport’s multitude of sins.
Dollars in hand often count for more than skill behind the wheel, corporate interests drive selfish agendas, team bosses snipe at one another, and, lest we forget, F1 is still a fundamentally risky business. Although life-threatening injuries are rare, death may be lurking at each corner, as Drive to Survive shows in one of its back stories: the death in 2015 of Jules Bianchi.
A new dawn
From the Bianchi tragedy as told through current F1 star Charles Leclerc’s eyes to the rise of Max Verstappen and the troubles at Williams, the series is a new dawn for F1. The all-access approach to the 2018 season is a major departure from the sport’s previous commercial rights owner’s philosophy, which was to deny access in order to drive up the price of grand prix broadcast rights.
Liberty Media, the new owners, have embarked on a different, more open, approach since taking over in 2017, in part because revenues are under siege due to declining viewership figures.
Drive to Survive should be seen for what it is: marketing material for F1, but also as entertainment. That may sound like a criticism, but F1 is itself marketing masquerading as entertainment pretending to be a sport.
Drive to Survive, therefore, should be seen for what it is: marketing material for F1, but also as entertainment in and of itself. That may sound like a criticism, but F1 is itself marketing masquerading as entertainment pretending to be a sport, a point underscored by even a casual look at the entry list that includes the likes of Ferrari, Mercedes and Renault — corporations that are in the sport to showcase their technology and to build or enhance their brands.
Money, money, money
It is the corporate backdrop that provides some of the best action in the series. The acrimonious divorce between Red Bull, which was using Renault power units in 2018, and the French company is a key storyline in the series. Red Bull decide to end the relationship, arguing that Renault has failed to deliver both on performance and reliability. Renault then drop a bombshell by poaching star driver Ricciardo from Red Bull.
“You need an engine and a driver,” Renault team principal Cyril Abiteboul says to Christian Horner, his counterpart at Red Bull.
Horner shoots back: “Do you have any money to spend on your engine now that you’ve spent it all on a driver?”
“We’ve got plenty of money,” says Abiteboul.
The dialogue is cutting, awkward and thoroughly engrossing — more than worthy of a Hollywood script. But this, of course, is unscripted banter between two rivals under immense pressure from their respective boards of directors. As Horner says, “Red Bull Racing is the subsidiary of a drinks company.” Abiteboul, meanwhile, is the man responsible for the racing fortunes of Renault, one of the world’s largest automotive brands.
“Suck my balls, mate”
While corporate interests cut through F1, the spirit of romantic ragtag racers remains alive in the sport through Haas. The American team is a focal point of Drive to Survive and for good reason. It has no real F1 pedigree but challenges the might of Renault for fourth place in the championship despite having a budget estimated to be around half that of their rival.
Drive to Survive hits some its highest highs when digging into Haas’s lowest lows. The first episode focuses on how errors at pit stops cost Haas fifth place in the 2018 Australian Grand Prix.
The series tracks the progress of both Haas drivers and offers great depth of insight into the personalities of the maverick Kevin Magnussen and the fast but emotionally fragile Romain Grosjean, a driver so error prone in the early phase of the season that rival teams bet on him failing to make it past the first corner of the Spanish Grand Prix. He duly obliges by spinning out.
In contrast, Magnussen tells a fellow driver to “suck my balls, mate”, and operates under the general premise that he is not racing to make friends.
Meritocracy only gets one so far
Even as Haas do more with less, F1 remains a stubbornly undemocratic and sometimes unmeritocratic endeavour. The richest teams Ferrari and Mercedes receive more TV money than smaller outfits (and refused to participate in the filming of Drive to Survive), and have little interest in efforts to redress that balance.
Meritocracy, too, only gets one so far in F1. Fast and talented, Esteban Ocon, unlike many of his wealthy peers, rose through the ranks through skill and determination alone. Despite having an excellent 2018 season, the French driver loses his seat at Force India to Lance Stroll, whose billionaire father Lawrence buys the team and rebrands it.
Ocon emerges looking like a victim, but Drive to Survive falls short because it fails to add some key detail. He will be the Mercedes reserve driver in 2019, and to his credit also defended Lance Stroll after fans slammed the young Canadian. “The hate I saw on social media, it’s not normal,” said Ocon, adding that although he and Stroll “come from different backgrounds…we have the same motivation [and] passion.”
Ocon, too, is far from the perfect driver, notoriously colliding with Max Verstappen in the Brazilian Grand Prix and costing the Red Bull driver a race victory. Verstappen’s response — to seek out Ocon and shove him after the race — was dramatic but not completely surprising. “We don’t condone violence in any way but you have to understand that emotions are running very high,” is how Horner, Verstappen’s boss, summed up the incident.
“He’s running from a fight”
Horner’s response to Daniel Ricciardo’s decision to leave Red Bull — “he’s running from a fight with Max” — goes straight to the cut-throat nature of F1. Given the nature of the beast, Drive to Survive does set Verstappen up as something of a pantomime villain. But that is why people watch F1.
Yes, there is technology and speed, but the gladiatorial aspect of watching heroes and villains go into wheel-to-wheel combat is a key ingredient. Drive to Survive not only understands this but shows it from hitherto unseen perspectives.
And in the absence of Ferrari and Mercedes, the focus naturally shifts towards the midfielders and backmarkers. This reminds old and new fans alike that there are 10 constructors in F1, and not just the two or three top teams. And who wouldn’t want to be a Haas fan after watching Drive to Survive? And that, for both Netflix and Liberty Media, means a job well done.
