Thoughts on Drive To Survive, Season 4
The elephant in the room, the excellent story-telling, the familiar stars and fresh faces, a nasty rivalry, a missed opportunity and a cliffhanger.
In one of the first scenes of the new Drive To Survive season, Christian Horner watches Lewis Hamilton cap off yet another championship-winning season by telling the crowd he’s just getting started.
“I wish he’d shut the fuck up,” the Red Bull team principal says. “How many times do we have to sit and watch this shit?”
It captures the tone of a bitter and nasty rivalry that defined one of the most riveting seasons in the history of the sport — between the dominant Mercedes and underdog Red Bull, between 7-time champion Hamilton and hungry young star Max Verstappen.
This was the fourth season of a show that has exploded the Formula 1 fan base in the United States. I became a fan as a kid in 1997 and resigned myself years ago to the fact that almost none of my friends care for the sport. Drive To Survive changed that. And this is the first season where there’s a real fight for the championship.
Here are my takeaways from DTS Season 4.
No Max Verstappen
The elephant in the room is the absence of the most important voice: Max Verstappen, the 2021 world champion, who declined to participate.
It’s a real loss for the fans that he isn’t there to shed light on some of the biggest questions of the season. How did he cope with getting taken out by Mercedes drivers in Silverstone and Hungary? How did he handle the crucible of the final few races against a Lewis Hamilton in phenomenal form?
Hamilton, by contrast, does tell his side of the story. And the largely scripted defending champion was on message about the rivalry, portraying himself as a clean driver just looking for some honest racing and depicting Verstappen as overzealous or dangerous. (Hamilton’s former teammate, Nico Rosberg, would beg to differ.)
Why did Verstappen snub the show? “They faked a few rivalries which they don’t really exist,” he told the Associated Press last year. “I am not really a dramatic show kind of person, I just want facts and real things to happen.”
Is Verstappen wrong? Lando Norris complained that some footage in Episode 2 about his race with his teammate is taken out of context. But overall, these instances are rare in the new season. The result of the absence is a steady stream of Hamilton building a narrative of an out-of-control Verstappen, without his rival there to respond and defend himself — a loss for the Dutchman’s own image.
Familiar Stars And Fresh Faces
It falls to Horner to defend Verstappen, a role he’s happy to embrace. Drive To Survive leans on other familiar fan favorites this season, including motor-mouth Haas team principal Guenther Steiner (who is literally and figuratively climbing a mountain) and the affable and smiley McLaren driver Daniel Ricciardo (who finally has his feel-good moment with a shock Monza victory).
The show’s popularity is driven by its ability to humanize drivers who are only seen by most fans on TV covered in a helmet and a racing suit decked out in corporate sponsorships. It takes us inside the relationships, the rivalries, the glory and the agony that define their quest for greatness. It is at its best when it pulls back the curtain on the inner sanctum of the drivers and team bosses with footage you can’t see on ESPN or Sky Sports or the F1TV app.
Season 4 has some excellent storytelling and behind-the-scenes content — George Russell finally getting the Mercedes promotion, Valtteri Bottas coming to grips with his exit from the team, Norris agonizing about qualifying half a millisecond slower than Ricciardo, Charles Leclerc driving Carlos Sainz around the streets of Monaco where he grew up (and the two of them scheming to get Norris to tell them how much he’s earning), Yuki Tsunoda not giving a crap how he comes across. And I didn’t think Nikita Mazepin could end up looking even less sympathetic.
That said, what about Sebastian Vettel? The four-time world champ — and one of the sport’s most beloved personalities — is virtually absent. He’s seen in Episode 1 in an Aston Martin suit in what looks like the DTS studio. Why didn’t they use him?
Wolff Vs. Horner Gets Nasty
The rivalry that jumps off the screen in Season 4 isn’t the obvious one. It’s the clash between Horner and Mercedes boss Toto Wolff.
When Hamilton spoils Red Bull’s party in the first race, Horner is heard venting, “Fucking Mercedes.” From there the tension only increases. Horner, the sharp-elbowed Briton who led Red Bull to four driver’s and constructor’s titles with Vettel from 2010 to 2013, is the hunter. He wants it so badly he asks his adorable young kids to make a wish, then wonders why neither wished for Max to win the championship. That turns to fury when Hamilton takes out Verstappen in Silverstone and puts him in the hospital. “That nearly fucking killed our driver,” Horner fumes.
Wolff, the once mild-mannered Austrian eager to extend his glory days, shows his impatient side as Horner gets under his skin. Wolff’s old composure from the days of Mercedes dominance is gone. “Losing to Red Bull so many times is a shocker,” he admits. He tries to stay above the fray but it doesn’t last. “We are in the ring there and gloves are off,” Wolff says at a press conference. Horner mocks his rivals as someone who likes to “shout and scream at the camera” and insists he won’t “kiss his arse.”
Toto’s wife, Susie Wolff, has one of the most memorable lines of the season: “Sport is brutal. You need to be ruthless, you need to be competitive. But I don’t believe that to become successful you need to be an asshole.”
A Missed Opportunity
One under-explored angle is Hamilton’s uncharacteristic errors in 2021, which put him on the back foot in the final stretch and ultimately cost him the title. He drove off the road in Imola and was saved by a miraculous safety car. He hit the wrong brake button in Baku and threw away a win (“It fucked me up,” he confesses to Wolff). He hit the barrier in Monaco and qualified 7th. He pummeled a kerb in Austria and slid a few places. He badly botched the sprint race start in Monza. That’s a lot of points lost.
Hamilton fans will forever be furious about the Abu Dhabi finale and the liberties taken with the safety car restart. But titles are won over a season, not one race. And any objective analysis will show that Verstappen had worse luck and made fewer mistakes than Hamilton over the course of the 22-race season. If Hamilton had fewer slip-ups early on, he wouldn’t have been at the mercy of race director Michael Masi’s desire to end the season on a green flag.
Cliffhanger
The season ends with Wolff delivering a chilling warning to his rivals: “Everybody has a target on their back next year.” That time has arrived. Preseason testing is over and the first race of 2022 is just a few days away. The new regulations could upend the dynamic. Mercedes and Hamilton, once again, insist they’re struggling and that other teams are stronger than them. It’s a familiar ritual and nobody seems to be buying it. Horner, angry with Wolff for spending the last three months trying to minimize his achievement, is sniping away. We’ll find out soon whether Wolff is in a position to exact revenge — or whether Verstappen, or perhaps a reinvigorated Ferrari — is primed to once again deny Hamilton a record-breaking eighth world championship.