It is impossible to deny that Netflix’s Drive to Survive has been a controversial topic among Formula One fans ever since the series first aired in 2019. The show, with its dramatic cuts and bold characterisations of drivers and team principals alike, has often been criticised for doing just a little too much to make the sport seem more intriguing than it already is. Furthermore, things can’t help but feel more than a little disjointed if you’ve already watched the season that DTS is following.
The series’ coverage of the season is, more often than not, unsatisfactory and selective due to limited resources. In season eight, Netflix’s filming missed several key moments — like Hadjar’s first podium, the whole Papaya rules debacle and Piastri’s late-season slump. Instead, they favour chasing rivalries between team principals rather than following the authentic lives of the drivers. I’m sure I’m not alone when I say there was enough Zak Brown screen time this season to last a lifetime.
In fact, the entire grid comes across as even more guarded when they realise that a camera is pointed in their faces, with obviously forced dialogue dominating several episodes. Are we really expected to believe that George Russell and his girlfriend Carmen Mundt just so happened to be speaking about Max Verstappen on their yacht? Or that Zak Brown would have a sit down dinner with Oscar Piastri during Lando Norris’ early-season struggles? It all comes across just a tad too calculated, but it is important to remember that the show is just that: artificial.
As long as you suspend any idea about Drive to Survive being a fully in-depth, authentic analysis of the previous season, it becomes far easier to enjoy. For thousands around the world, it has served as an introduction to the sport. In doing so, Netflix opened up F1 to a huge audience of new fans, making a sport rife with elitism more accessible to a younger audience, female fans, and an entirely new fanbase in America. While Will Buxton, one of the series’ key interviewees, is often mocked for his blatantly obvious takes, he’s an expert in making a complicated sport seem effortlessly understandable. After watching DTS, it’s fairly easy to understand the ins and outs of qualifying, tyre strategies and F1’s Drivers’ and Constructors’ Championships.
The show is extremely valuable in this way, and brings a more human side to a style of racing that comes across as impersonal and overly mechanical from the outside. Midfield teams such as Williams, and backmarker teams like Alpine have featured extensively in the series, which brings them more fans and all important funding, especially because they’re usually finishing lower in races and the Constructors’ Championship. It’s a lot easier to root for these teams every race weekend when we see the people and personalities that make them tick.
On the whole, while Drive to Survive is divisive for many, one thing must be said: just because you started watching Formula One when you were three years old, and have since attended dozens of Grands Prix, it does not make you a more legitimate fan than someone whose introduction to the sport was a Netflix series. It is no coincidence that so called ‘DTS fans’ are ridiculed online when 57 per cent of fans who accessed the sport through the show are women. Take Drive to Survive for what it is — a dramatised sports documentary— and be grateful that we as fans have access to something like this at all. It has breathed new life into the sport we all love so much, and without it, grandstands would certainly be a whole lot emptier.
Not everyone grew up trackside, and Drive to Survive proves that just maybe, that’s okay.
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