Has Netflix's lacklustre 'Drive to Survive' run out of road?

F1

Netflix's hit series 'Drive to Survive' has changed F1 largely for the better – but has it finally run out of momentum?

Christian Horner F1 Red Bull team boss

Horner and Steiner have helped make 'Drive to Survive' a huge success, but has the series run out of dramatic road?

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Author

James Elson

Season 5 of Netflix’s hit show F1-themed Drive to Survive has generated hype typical of a groundbreaking show.

Following in the wake of the series’ success so far, it seems as if every sport now has its own docudrama show in emulation and no wonder – it wouldn’t be an understatement to say it has transformed F1.

The show has pulled back the shroud that Bernie Ecclestone placed over the F1 paddock, restricting social media posts and making any behind-the-scenes show impossible.

It was a glass ceiling that prevented F1 from expanding its audience further — one that the championship’s new owner, Liberty Media has smashed through, with DtS playing a significant part.

Cyril Abiteboul in 2018

Former Renault man Abiteboul also provided much ‘DtS’ entertainment

Though the new show was immediately popular, it was Series 2 and 3 (covering the 2018 and 2019 seasons) which really catapulted F1 into the mainstream consciousness.

Its drama series storylines meant viewers who had never watched a Grand Prix in their lives were soon weighing in on the row between Christian Horner and Cyril Abiteboul over Renault’s hand grenade engine, or Horner’s bullying of Gasly, and it made an international superstar of Tyrol’s angriest man – Haas boss Guenther Steiner.

Instead of having to piece together live coverage, interviews and previous historical events to get the full picture, DtS did it for you in a riveting, rolling, ongoing soap opera.

The mix of raw competitiveness and high-definition footage was mesmerising.

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But no more. It’s all too easy to press pause on the latest instalment, where the fun seems to have stopped. The viewing figures will tell their own story, but for F1 fans, it’s hard to argue hat the series hasn’t peaked already.

The Cinderella sport always waiting to break America has now finally gone to the ball, has taken over the US, taken over the Arab Emirates (or is it the other round?), and is taking over the world.

With DtS being a main tool to do this, the world championship has become self-aware on a level it never was before. Via Netflix it caught sight of itself in the mirror, and decided for the most part it didn’t like what it saw.

What little innocence remained in the F1 paddock has evaporated, as drivers and bosses — backed by PR advice — seem only to present themselves in a Netflix-friendly light.

Things started to go downhill in DtS 4, with everything appearing increasingly shallow, only acting as an advertisement for the series in its most glamorous light. Mercedes and Ferrari’s involvement seemed essentially pointless aside from acting as dress rehearsal for its press release B-roll. Toto Wolff’s faux meetings to bin off Valtteri Bottas and promote George Russell appeared toe-curlingly staged. The Scuderia’s potted appearances, perhaps unsurprisingly, didn’t even make sense.

Oscar Piastri portrait during 2022 Abu Dhabi F1 test

McLaren’s Oscar Piastri is at the centre of the new series’ best storyline

Mark Thompson/Getty Images

The latest series is blander still, only held up by the ever-reliable Steiner and the sizeable Oscar Piastri spat between McLaren and Alpine, good enough to spread over two episodes.

The dwindling dramatic interest offered up by the series isn’t necessarily the fault of its creators, Box to Box Films. With the show acting as advertising for the world championship, F1 clearly has the final say on what goes in.

The coverage of the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix – in both S4 and 5 – was wetter than the wettest of lettuces. BtB had a camera trained on now ex-race director Michael Masi, but key moments of footage are not revealed.

Last year’s Saudi Arabian GP, which featured a terrorist attack within sight of the Jeddah circuit and subsequent unprecedented drivers’ meeting lasting for hours, was completely ignored, whilst examination of Red Bull’s cost cap breach also felt incredibly light.

But F1 appears not to want to show the tumultuous side of its quest for global domination. Paddock catfighting is fair game, but not any real-world problems. It wants to show everything coming up roses – in contrast to its previous guise.

And without the frank honesty of previous series, you have to ask what is Drive to Survive for? And whether audiences will stay hooked.

Much of the current series feels like a recap of last year’s season, which many will have followed or watched live, witnessing the twists and the turns of the season as they happened.

Where does it go from here? Perhaps the more pertinent question for F1 is what happens if the series that brought vast numbers of new fans suddenly becomes less appealing – do those fans stick around or drift away?

2022 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix missile attack

The 2022 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix went ahead despite a missile attack 10 miles from the circuit – not that ‘DtS’ mentioned it

DPPI

In a chicken and egg scenario, the latest series appears to mimic the social media output of teams through rapid fire scenes and juxtaposition of key events, particularly in their TikTok videos and Instagram reels. If fans are tuned into this output as it happens, why would they want to watch a slightly slower-paced version of it nearly a year later?

Mark Hughes makes the point in Motor Sport’s 2023 F1 season preview podcast that for most of its history the championship has been a non-conventional sport that, compared to other international institutions, rarely conformed to what might be considered worthy values and morals – being a highly glamorous and wasteful cesspit of selfishness, jealously and backstairs intrigue to a large extent made it what it was.

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“Part of the core appeal of F1 is that it has always been a bit rebellious against the normal world,” he says. “But if you’ve got something that is so commercially successful, you run the risk of it becoming bland.

“It’s got to be a free-spirited thing, otherwise you’re in danger of losing its core appeal. That’s where they’ve got to be very careful as they might be expanding too quick to keep that core.”

What Drive to Survive now offers up, then, is beige on a plate – a glittering yet hollow impression of what’s going on, capturing some of its vague essence but very far from reality. Something similarly mindless to the satiating ‘Feelies’ media hub which the Earth’s citizens are hooked up to in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.

Consumers are being mis-sold a product. DtS claims to be a behind-the-scenes look at things, but it isn’t really – it’s the final embodiment of F1 shedding its 200mph fag-packet, grid-girled, emissions-belching snake skin.

Something which – on the surface at least – appears to be a much more in tune with idealistic morals of the Western world, but isn’t very interesting either.

Despite the obvious economic benefits F1’s new direction, DtS and the championship is in danger of slipping into a commercially-driven zombie march, therefore losing fans both old and new.

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