Some of the season's most compelling stories involving Red Bull were left out. Photo / Photosport
Some of the season's most compelling stories involving Red Bull were left out. Photo / Photosport
OPINION:
Drive to Survive has undoubtedly done wonders for Formula One. It has brought new fans to the sport, boosted the teams’ coffers and made household names of Italian-American team principals called Guenther. The fact that every other sport from golf, to tennis, to professional cycling has now jumped on the bandwagon, hoping for the same transformational lift, shows just what an incredible job Box-to-Box Films have done.
But the question must be asked: after five seasons is Drive to Survive reaching the end of the road?
The latest season, which has now been released on Netflix, right in the middle of pre-season testing in Bahrain, has all the usual fun and games. Plotting, swearing, backstabbing. It has the painful break-ups and stories of redemption. It captures some of the raw emotions of last year, of which there were lots.
But despite some classic ingredients with which to work, the format is starting to feel a bit tired.
Maybe it is all the driver complaints we have heard about quotes being taken out of context, splicing audio from one race with footage from another. Maybe it is the nagging suspicion that Netflix now has too much power, that the tail may be wagging the dog.
Whatever it is, it is hard not to watch it now without a certain degree of cynicism. The narrative devices they use, the heavy foreshadowing of events further down the track, the quips to camera. It all feels a little more staged.
Guenther Steiner, team principal of Haas F1, makes for entertaining TV (he must get a swear bonus given his insistence on getting the word “f---” into every sentence). But even the Steiner Shtick is wearing a little thin. In the first episode we see him visiting wineries with Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto, swearing his head off. In the fourth we see him jet-skiing with his daughter and relaxing lakeside with his wife.
All of which is fine — as mentioned Steiner makes for good TV — but when the producers then leave out big stories later in the season, it feels unnecessary.
The stuff Box-to-Box left on the cutting room floor was mad. There is nothing on Red Bull’s decision to boycott Sky Sports in Mexico, for instance. Perhaps that spat did not amount to a hill of beans, but it felt like great Netflix fodder, generating a discussion about the toxicity of social media.
Nor is there anything on the team orders row in Brazil, when Verstappen refused a direct request to pull over for team-mate Sergio Perez. That row provided a fascinating insight into the power dynamic within Red Bull, and led to explosive allegations from the Verstappen camp that Perez crashed on purpose in Monaco qualifying earlier in the season. Sensational stuff, and again, one would have thought, perfect Netflix fodder.
Strangely, there is next to nothing on George Russell’s first F1 win, which came at Interlagos. Apparently that only warranted mentioning in passing in the final episode.
In the case of the Red Bull omissions, the team have told Telegraph Sport they did not lean on Netflix to leave anything out. So one can only conclude that Netflix ran out of space (the penultimate episode deals with the budget cap row, which comes to a head in Austin, before the final episode jumps straight to Abu Dhabi) or more worryingly, that they chose to leave out those stories on editorial grounds.
If that is the case, it raises other questions. Are the documentary makers now too close to their subjects? Too involved? Perhaps, having got Verstappen to talk to them again, they don’t want to lose him? Who knows.
There are some great moments in Season 5. The team principal meeting in Montreal is a classic. The emotions involved in the budget cap episode, which takes in the death of Red Bull founder Dietrich Mateschitz, are very raw. And Episode 4 ‘Like Father, Like Son?’ which follows Mick Schumacher’s struggles, is brilliant. The pressure of living up to Michael’s name, the stinging criticism from the pitwall and his own garage when he crashes for the umpteenth time, the emotion, including from his mother Corinna, when he finally claims his first points. Those humanising moments are where Drive to Survive remains really strong.
But elsewhere, it is beginning to feel a little performative.
