Drive to Survive returns…
Devotees of Netflix’s Drive to Survive (DTS) will not need reminding that the latest series dropped on March 7, 2024. For those of you who are not members of the DTS fan club, the latest series (Series 7) dropped on March 7, 2024.
For those who are still nonplussed as to what I’m talking about, DTS is a US-made documentary that gives a behind-the-scenes peek into the glitz and glamor of the world of Formula One. It first aired in 2018, and the series that launched last week is the seventh of what has turned into a hugely successful franchise.
used the series to take F1 to a new audience
It’s a collaboration between the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) and Netflix, which initially used the series to take F1 to a new audience – the US. And it has worked.
When the series first aired, there was one Grand Prix in the US – in Austin, Texas – but now there are three, with Miami and Las Vegas added to the schedule.
Back in 2018, the original intention was to make a documentary solely about the Red Bull Racing team but it quickly became clear there was more value and more than enough content to make a documentary that covered all ten teams. The storylines came thick and fast.
DTS was born
For F1 purists, DTS is little more than a glorified F1 soap opera that has been given the Hollywood treatment, and there is no doubt the dramas and tensions are overplayed for artistic purposes. But there is also no doubt that DTS brings the F1 pit lane into our homes in a way that’s never been done before.
Given the drama that unfolded during 2024, it’s no surprise that Series 7 hasn’t disappointed, and has brought to life and added new dimensions to stories that made the front and back pages.
So, on that note, now feels like a good time to delve a little deeper into the biggest talking points of the new series 7, some of which were already front and/or back-page news. What DTS does is take a deep dive into those same stories to bring the viewers a new angle and behind-the-scenes footage.
Okay… here goes.
Red Bull and Horner
There weren’t too many stories that could have taken the focus away from Lewis Hamilton’s plan to leave Mercedes for Ferrari at the end of the 2024 season – a story that broke on the eve of the season – but Red Bull and their team boss Christian Horner managed to create one.
It was, as it transpired, the big F1 story of 2024. It was a scandal that rocked the Red Bull organization to its foundation: the allegation by a female employee within the team that Horner had acted inappropriately.
Netflix was always going to cover as much of the scandal as its lawyers would allow, but quite how deeply it was able to delve was a surprise
Worth noting is that the scandal still rumbles on – it will be brought before the UK Courts in January 2026 – so there were certain elements that Netflix had to skirt around, but what the program portrayed was the suffocating level of press scrutiny it placed on Horner.
Intense media scrutiny
It was summed up perfectly by a single quote in a talking head segment with F1 journalist and DTS regular, Will Buxton: “If Christian thought this was going to blow over, he was sorely mistaken.”
Because, in addition to Netflix showing the viewers what they already knew about Horner vs. Red Bull, it also provided an angle on the level of F1 media interest and, crucially, the level of interest from elsewhere in the F1 paddock.
Toto Wolff (Mercedes) and Zak Brown (McLaren) were both happy to offer their thoughts
In terms of Horner himself, he adopted a blanket “no comment” stance – reflecting the legalities mentioned above – but fellow team leaders Toto Wolff (Mercedes) and Zak Brown (McLaren) were both happy to offer their thoughts on how the scandal reflected badly on both Red Bull and F1 itself.
It will have surprised no one that DTS’s villain of the piece was Horner – not for the first time – but it was interesting to see first hand the sheer scale of the grilling he was given by the F1 media.
The Carlos Sainz soap opera
While Hamilton’s move to Ferrari was, of course, the big story in terms of driver changes, its repercussions were far-reaching. Not least for the man whose seat he took at Ferrari: Carlos Sainz.
And fair play to Netflix, it again managed to offer viewers an angle that F1 fans had not seen before, namely that Carlos didn’t take the news well and was every bit as disappointed as he should have been.
the Netflix portrayal of the Spaniard as someone scorned
The official line was that Sainz was accepting of the fact that Ferrari was not in a position to turn away the chance of recruiting a seven-time world champion, but the Netflix portrayal of the Spaniard as someone scorned felt much nearer the mark.
In the DTS take on events, there were no bad guys, but just a disappointed driver who confessed to being “caught off guard” and “upset,” just as anyone reading this piece would have been if given that same news.
Unsurprisingly, the natural direction for this story was to take us on a journey with Sainz as he decides which car he will race in 2025.
We know now, of course, that the answer to the riddle is Williams, but Sainz’s route to making that decision was far from straightforward. In the words of Will Buxton again: “Carlos has to play this right, if he picks the wrong team he might never win a race ever again.”
Initially, it appeared to be a two-way choice between Williams and Stake/ Audi (formerly Sauber) but there was a late twist that for DTS must have been manna from heaven.
Before the twist, which I’ll come to in a bit, the two-way battle was seen through the eyes of Carlos (obviously), Williams’ team boss, James Vowles, and Claire Williams, the daughter of the late Frank Williams, founder of the team.
Audi is expected to be a big player in 2026
For the part of Audi, it was the connection to Carlos Sainz Sr., a famed world rally champion who has had much success driving an Audi, that appeared to take the Spaniard’s thoughts in that direction. That, and also the fact that Audi is expected to be a big player in 2026 as their takeover of Sauber becomes complete.
The meeting that never was
It would be a “project,” and Sainz would be leading it. No doubt Sainz Sr. had his thoughts on the prospect, although DTS didn’t manage to get his definitive view on his son’s potential move to Audi.
The twist came when, after debating the pros and cons of the two offers on the table, a curve ball was thrown in in the form of the controversial Flavio Briatore, who returned to the F1 fold as the executive advisor for the Alpine team.
So much so that the DTS cameras were present at a planned meeting between Sainz and Vowles at a hotel where they expected him to sign on the dotted line.
The meeting never happened. Vowles and co were “stood up.” No Sainz and no signature.
The reason was that Briatore, a long-time admirer of Sainz, had tried to use considerable charm and muscle in his new capacity at Alpine to lure the Spaniard to the Oxfordshire-based team.
evidence that Alpine had more than entered the equation
Ultimately, the flamboyant Italian was unsuccessful in his pursuit of Sainz, but the canceled meeting with Williams, which the DTS cameras recorded at close quarters, was evidence that Alpine had more than entered the equation. They gave Sainz an offer that had to be considered.
Eventually, of course, he did sign on Vowles’ dotted line, but what DTS also revealed was the impact Sainz’s decision had on the entire field. Essentially, aside from back to Ferrari, he could have gone almost anywhere, the impact of which would have rattled through the whole grid.
But it boiled down to longevity, the strength of a team, and, yes, the project, which Vowles did a magnificent job of selling.
the struggling Logan Sargeant
With the highly-rated Alex Albon already a Williams driver, Vowles’ wish to have two top-level drivers in situ to drive the team forward has now been granted. The days of having the struggling Logan Sargeant in his second car are long gone.
Incidentally, one thing we did learn from DTS was that Sargeant knew very early on in the 2024 season – well before the Sainz soap opera began – that he would not be driving for Williams in 2025.
Lando vs. Max
It was inevitable that DTS would try to dig deep into the ever-increasing on-track rivalry between current world champion Max Verstappen and would-be champion Lando Norris.
The scene was set almost perfectly when the pair, who have been friends and rivals ever since their karting days, had a string of on-track squabbles that spilled over into a war of words between their respective teams.
given a ten-second penalty
It was in the Austrian Grand Prix that this battle reached its peak when the Dutchman squeezed every last drop out of the current regulations to send the Brit off the track. He was given a ten-second penalty for the infraction.
But there were other less dramatic incidents that put the squeeze on the relationship in 2024, including Norris getting his first F1 win in Miami and then beating Verstappen in his home race at Zandvoort.
Both race wins were clear signs that Red Bull’s car – so dominant in 2022 and 2023 – was no longer going to have it all its way, something that didn’t sit comfortably with the ultra-competitive Verstappen.
But it was the personalities and mindsets of the pair, which couldn’t be more different, that DTS decided to focus on.
Plucky but sensitive rivals
Will Buxton summed it up in one sentence: “Key difference between Max and Lando. Max has a complete ‘f**k you’ mentality. That’s not Lando.”
While remaining friends, as human beings they are polar opposites, and one of the few things they now have in common is that they are F1 race winners and are set to dominate the sport in the next few years.
The Dutchman is very much perceived as DTS’s baddie, while Norris is portrayed as the one lacking confidence and who is sometimes a victim of self-doubt and overthinking. Norris even admitted as much: “My weakness is caring too much about what people say or think or feel.”
Max is mean and ruthless
This was nothing new, however, and regular watchers of DTS will recognize this narrative from the previous series: Max is mean and ruthless, while any challenger is perceived as the plucky but sensitive underdog.
Unfortunately for Verstappen, this is an easy win for DTS as he does little to steer the story away from that narrative. For Norris’ part, he was quoted as being unhappy at the portrayal of his and Verstappen’s friendship as strained.
Future of Perez at Red Bull
DTS ended up telling us what we already knew – that Sergio “Checo” Perez would not be driving a Red Bull car in 2025 – but the journey to get there was revealed to be more convoluted and complicated than most of us imagined.
The program skipped over the fact that Checo had signed a contract to keep him at Red Bull beyond the end of the 2024 season, instead concentrating on why he was no longer considered fast enough to partner Verstappen.
Oddly, while it is well known in F1 circles that most of the hiring and firing at Red Bull is done on the say-so of Dr Helmut Marko, a veteran Red Bul executive, DTS focused on the mental gymnastics required of Christian Horner to make the call.
It also highlighted, without even trying, how the Red Bull team is, in effect, a double enterprise that also includes its junior team on the grid. For 2024, they were known as RB Visa Cash App RB (VCARB) but may as well have been named Red Bull B.
Ricciardo and Tsunoda in joint-pole positions
In the frame to get the Red Bull “A team” seat were Daniel Ricciardo, Yuki Tsunoda, and Liam Lawson, with theoretically Ricciardo and Tsunoda in joint-pole positions as they were the starting drivers in 2024 for VCARB.
When the conversation started roughly halfway through the season, Ricciardo was the name being bandied around, but Horner openly questioned whether he still had the desire needed to be Red Bull’s number two driver.
“If we were to replace Checo the obvious candidate we brought into the wings is Daniel. But has he still got it? Is he prepared to put everything on the line?” was Horner’s hand-wringing reply when asked for his initial thoughts.
But, as it transpired, not only did the Red Bull hierarchy question the Australian’s worthiness for promotion, but they also questioned whether he was the right man to partner Tsunoda in the VCARB team.
Ultimately, the answer was no. Only three top-ten finishes were never going to be enough, and even the news halfway through the season that Perez was to be replaced was still not enough to add sufficient fire to the belly of the Australian.
In true Red Bull fashion, mercy and sentiment were in short supply, and with six races of the season to go, they announced that Ricciardo’s seat in the VCARB would go to Liam Lawson for the remainder of 2024.
Goodbye, Danny Ricc…
But while Red Bull may have given Ricciardo short shrift, he’s always been a DTS favorite and was duly given the treatment by them of a departing legend – one whose personality and love of the camera made him a natural for the DTS cameras.
His departure from the F1 scene made the contest for Checo’s seat a two-way battle between Tsunoda and Lawson, but it quickly became clear that it wasn’t an even one.
From the outside looking in, and based on the DTS talking heads, the Japanese driver – for a reason that was never clear – was never really in the frame. Based on his performances in the limited VCARB, Tsunoda had done everything in his power to earn that opportunity, but it was one that never came.
thrust him into pole position for Perez’s seat
Instead, a mid-season test at Silverstone by Lawson, one in which Horner claimed he was lapping at only two-tenths of a second slower than Verstappen, was what appeared to thrust him into pole position for Perez’s seat.
What would have been an interesting interview, but which DTS didn’t manage to nail, was an interview with the notoriously feisty Tsunoda, whose thoughts in being edged out by Lawson would have been television gold.
What DTS did manage to portray, and which would have swayed the Red Bull hierarchy, was Lawson’s drive, determination, and unshakeable confidence. Ultimately, it was those qualities, even more so than the Silverstone test, that opened up the opportunity for him.
Lawson being shoehorned into the VCARB for the final six races of 2024 at the expense of Ricciardo was, in effect, a six-race warm-up for the New Zealander, but it did provide a few tasty on-track clashes between him and Perez.
As ever, it was left to Will Buxton to sum up this storyline:
“He (Lawson) is like Max was ten years ago. When’s the last time a stand-in ended the career of two massively successful veteran drivers?”