![]() Of course, there’s also the fact that the narration of the season’s biggest story ultimately falls to their team principals, Wolff and Horner: men who spend so much time making analogies about the appropriate uses for testicles that I think I might owe someone a copay, and whose bickering threatens to turn this into an “Oops! All Villains” season of Drive to Survive.īut between the new contracts, unexpected friendships, and even more unexpected podium results, the Drive to Survive editors wind up finding just enough underdog narrative to go around. To no one’s surprise who’s watched the show, the sudden shift in Drive to Survive’s endgame-from stakes that only a Formula One fan could understand (the difference between 10th and 11th place for a team like Williams Racing) to stakes that anyone could understand (the race between first and second place)-dull the more personalized shine that characterized the first three seasons. ![]() (Oh, shit.)Ĭan Netflix’s ‘Drive to Survive’ Handle a Real F1 Title Race? Ranking the Top Formula 1 Drivers by Their ‘Drive to Survive’ Season 3 Narratives Alas, in Season 4, the sport’s signature fine margins have finally caught up with that very driver and that very dominant team, forcing the series to actually foreground the brutal battle for the championship between Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen-a battle that ultimately comes down to one lap in one race, and the extremely subjective call made by one man who shall remain nameless, lest Toto Wolff break down my door like the Kool-Aid Man for even mentioning Michael Masi. That those dudes happen to possess necks the size of a farmers-market watermelon, watches worth an annual paycheck, fluency in multiple languages, and hair so coiffed it could make a boyband member weep … is just the icing on the televised cake.īeyond the joy of watching 20 chic men go fast in their zoom-zoom cars, Drive to Survive offers a compelling exploration of Formula One’s aforementioned fine margins: watching how the back of the pack and the midrange teams shift around to create riveting stories of success and failure within a sport that, from the outside, seemed to be dominated by one driver and one team for years. ![]() Only one sport pits its teammates against one another, and then asks them to work together only one sport features 20 dudes in the entire league who are forced to interact with one another day in and day out, both on and off the track. That’s easier said than done, though, because Formula One is better positioned to showcase the interpersonal dynamics of its players. (If there is a third thing, it’s that Christian Horner is married to Ginger Spice.) The former is such an obvious mining ground for television it’s a wonder no one had thought to dramatize it sooner-and that TV producers haven’t tried to replicate the same notion in other individual sports. If there are two things that Season 4 of Drive to Survive pounds home, it’s that Formula One is a highly personal sport, and that its points are won and lost by the finest of margins. And as the series heads into its fourth iteration, even sports dummies like myself have made it a tradition to tune in and marvel at how the Drive to Survive editors weave a tapestry of narrative momentum, soaring plotlines, and intimate character arcs out of those 20 drivers shuffling around their pole positions (a phrase I totally know now!). Three seasons later, ESPN F1 viewership has nearly doubled. ![]() And yet, three years ago, Netflix introduced the uninitiated masses to this uniquely constructed sport in the form of sport docuseries–cum–reality show Drive to Survive. Ten itty-bitty teams of two seems more akin to how Madeline’s Miss Clavel might escort her pupils down a Parisian walkway than the infrastructure of the world’s most prestigious motor racing competition. On any given weekend, there are more people competing at your local squash club than there are for the World Drivers’ Championship during a season of Formula One.
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