Netflix’s Drive To Survive is getting lapped by Formula 1 itself

For six seasons now, Netflix’s Drive To Survive has brought the behind-the-scenes stories of Formula 1 racing to new and old fans alike, coming out each year and covering The Story of the previous season of F1 racing. This caused some issues with the show’s previous season, which struggled to find a lot of interesting stuff to talk about after a year of racing where very few interesting things happened, and that problem is even more pronounced in the show’s newest season, which dropped February 23, but not because nothing interesting happened in 2023. It’s because too many interesting things have happened since filming ended last year, meaning the show itself can’t really acknowledge them.

Some of this drama is still ongoing: Christian Horner, the boss of the unbeatable Red Bull team and one of Drive To Survive’s most prominent talking heads, is currently under investigation for something related to an allegation of “inappropriate behavior.” Drive To Survive has regularly touched on Horner’s home life (he’s married to a Spice Girl) and has used him as one of its “main characters” (including in this new season), and while it wouldn’t necessarily make sense for a show about 2023 to talk about something happening in 2024, the questions around this investigation still hang over his many appearances here.

Also, seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton recently announced that he’s leaving his longtime home at the Mercedes team to drive for Scuderia Ferrari (the most historic and beloved team in the sport) in 2025, which renders an episode of this season—one that’s all about the relationship between Mercedes and Hamilton as his contract approaches its end—almost totally irrelevant. Anyone with a passing interest in F1 knows how his contract negotiations eventually worked out, and it’s not quite what is depicted on the show.

So, when there’s a triumphant moment as Hamilton decides to re-sign with Mercedes for two years, it feels empty and rings a little false since we know that he gets out of one of those years so he can sign with Ferrari. The whole season has a lot of that dramatic irony, where the viewers probably know what’s going to happen before the people on TV, which makes for weird television. It’s like watching an episode of The Office where you can’t help but think “that’s not going to work out” whenever Michael Scott plans to do something silly.

Drive To Survive is occasionally aware of this, like in an episode that plays up the story of rookie driver Nyck de Vries on the AlphaTauri team only for him to totally flame out and get replaced by Drive To Survive’s main protagonist Daniel Ricciardo halfway through the season—playing on your assumptions about a “rags to riches” story before pulling the rug out. But, on the other hand, people who followed the 2023 F1 season will know that Ricciardo almost immediately shattered his hand in a crash and missed out on a big chunk of the season’s second half, which changes the tone of the episode. (The injury, and the success of his temporary replacement, are covered in a later installment.)

But Drive To Survive alone has never been a good way to follow F1, as it has always been much better at covering the little, missable stories in a season of racing than the big, obvious ones (unlike Hulu and Disney’s phenomenal Brawn docuseries, which had the advantage of covering one of the best F1 stories ever). Unexpectedly, one of the standouts this season is an episode dedicated to billionaire Lawrence Stroll, the owner of the Aston Martin F1 team, a part-owner of the Aston Martin car company, and the father of Aston Martin F1 driver Lance Stroll.

The Stroll family seem like easy F1 villains because of all of that (he bought the team that his son drives for!), especially if you throw in the fact that the younger Stroll isn’t exactly the most charismatic or likable guy on the grid. And yet, the episode about them suggests that the elder Stroll actually cares more about F1 racing and his son than his son cares about anything.

Lance Stroll broke his wrists and a toe in a bicycle accident before the 2023 season, and though his unexpected return to the track right before the very first race should be a big moment for him (it certainly was for the team), he comes across like someone who would’ve been perfectly fine if his wrists never healed and he could never drive a car again.

Meanwhile, his stern billionaire businessman dad makes the most cartoonishly sad face when discussing his son’s accident and semi-miraculous return, and it’s so over-exaggerated that it loops back around to seeming inadvertently genuine—like he thought, “I should look emotional because I love my son so much,” and then he actually got emotional because he loves his son so much. It’s compelling stuff.

Drive To Survive is showing its age a little less this season than it did last season, putting more effort into what works and less into what doesn’t, but it continues to be a victim of its own success. The show is credited with drawing more American fans to Formula 1, but as you follow more Formula 1, Drive To Survive becomes less interesting. The best thing about this season, for better or worse, is that the next one should totally rip.