The full trailer shows more swearing — plus Steiner fishing — and it would be of no surprise to see increasingly tense phone calls with team owner Gene Haas over the course of another difficult year for a team which has gradually morphed into a slightly more chic version of Minardi i.e. a quite slow F1 car made from the Italian motor sport odd bits bin.

What did for Steiner was a Haas which has refused to shake off its defining characteristic, being an F1 beast which loves nothing more than to munch on its own Pirellis, be they rare, medium or well done.

This meant that several times Haas would go from being Q3 heroes to grand prix zeroes in just the space of a few laps, leaving it last in the constructors’ race. Will the writing be on Steiner’s motorhome wall in S6?

Perez pressure

Sergio Perez has become the new Valtteri Bottas. A driver hugely demoralised after being utterly destroyed on track by his world champion colleague again and again, left to his own existential crisis while the rest of the team basks in the green Heineken-branded light of glory.

It was rumoured for much of this season that F1’s biggest grin Daniel Ricciardo might be about to beam his way back into Red Bull’s non-Verstappen seat for 2024, which Perez was forced to refute several times. Not only would he regularly lose out to his team-mate, but he also failed to make Q3 on more than a few occasions, with the pressure clearly getting to him.

Will we see Sergio mulling his fate over a brand of Checo-endorsed tequila? He doesn’t feature in the trailer, but we do see Daniel Ricciardo lowering himself into a Red Bull at a test. It’s inconceivable the series would turn its back on this soap opera storyline.

Christian Horner

There’ll be lots of him, don’t worry.

Yet another Alpine implosion

Poor Otmar Szafnauer: the man who has become fodder for a championship which seems to now see itself as LinkedIn on wheels (and is only slightly less insufferable), has been shot out of an F1-branded cannon yet again.

After being turfed from a now-Aston Martin-labelled team he had overseen score numerous podiums and even a race win on annual budget of about two quid, he was was given similar treatment at Alpine after informing the French management that vaulting the squad to the front of the grid simply wasn’t the work of un matin.

At this year’s Belgian GP, it was announced that Szafnauer plus two of his senior lieutenants Alan Permane and Pat Fry were being jettisoned after another season spent floating round the midfield.

In a statesmanlike manner, Otmar waved off his troops one more time as the lights went out at Spa before being whisked away in a ride to the airport. He’s back in the paddock in the Netflix trailer, being asked whether he’s better out of Alpine given the chaos within. To underline that point,  Pierre Gasly says, “There are tensions, we’ll never be best friends,” over footage of himself and Alpine team-mate Esteban Ocon crashing.

Should make for good viewing.

Must Be Seen

FIA President Must Be Seen (sorry, Mohammed Ben Sulayem) has proved himself to be pretty much as undiplomatic as possible for someone whose job is to be, err, diplomatic.

From his inauguration in late 2021 and throughout the following year, MBS has had several run-ins with Lewis Hamilton and F1 itself. 2023 proved to be more of the same.

In spring last year Shaila-Ann Rao, the FIA’s former interim secretary general for motor sport, accused the governing body of instances of sexist behaviour, having left suddenly in late December ’22 – which the FIA strongly pushed back on.

This also caused the slightly ugly head of MBS’s old website to rear itself again, it having featured that unfortunately quotable phrase that he did “not like women who think they are smarter than men”.

‘The prez’ also stuck his FIA lanyard into the 11th-team affair involving Andretti’s prospective entry, incurring F1’s ire once more before a number of governing body senior figures all deserted the ship at once late last year.

Will this delicious backstairs intrigue feature in DtS? Probably not. This series is an F1 vanity project after all. It hardly featured Hamilton’s diversity push in 2020, the 2021 Abu Dhabi debacle or Nikita Mazepin broadcasting live on Instagram footage of himself sexually harassing of a woman.

If MBS does get a mention though, perhaps with F1 using it as a tool to strike back, the results could be interesting.

 No tears for De Vries after Danny Ric comeback

Box to Box (which produces DtS) co-founder Paul Martin went full ‘Grid Luvvies’ (TM) in early ’23 following the news of Daniel Ricciardo being caught out by F1’s usual game of musical chairs (and also being really slow) with a gushing tribute to the Aussie.

“Without Daniel I think there probably wouldn’t have been a Drive to Survive,” he glowed to The New York Post. “He was the first driver that we talked to about it, the first driver that invited us to his home in Australia. I felt very emotional with him leaving.”

Luckily Martin was able to dry his eyes after Nyck de Vries was given the Helmut Marko treatment (i.e. getting fired from AlphaTauri after half a season), allowing Ricciardo a second chance.

It’s no coincidence that the voice of De Vries opens the teaser trailer, while Ricciardo is a key feature of the full version: before returning to the grid, he tested a Red Bull from AlphaTauri’s sister team, which is thought to have clinched his return and De Vries’s departure. Boss Christian Horner is seen saying: “That lap he just did would have put him next to Max on the grid”, and also putting in a call to Ricciardo: “Hey Daniel… something I want to put to you.”

We’ve previously seen Pierre Gasly go through mental torment after being thrown into the Milton Keynes wringer. De Vries’s fall and Ricciardo’s redemption should provide DtS with high drama.

Aston Martin: House of the failing son

Fernando Alonso and Aston Martin left the rest of the grid green after rocking up in Bahrain with the only thing which seemed capable of holding a light to Red Bull.

As ever, the Spaniard was good value for money on and off track in the first half of 2023, so expect a few soundbites to pop up in Season 6.

Stroll made a surprise start in Bahrain too, despite breaking his wrists in a cycling accident. A flash of him being bandaged is seen in the teaser trailer, so expect his heroics to be put in the spotlight.

Who knows, maybe Lance Stroll’s tantrums late in the season could feature too, after he decided he didn’t feel like racing in Singapore following a quali-wallop into the barriers. His dad and team owner Lawrence comes across like a fashion tycoon mixed with a Die Hard villain, meaning the DtS cameras love him.