Yanira D. Kivi 
Netflix Season 4 Drive to survive hit the streaming platform last week to another round of mixed reviews. The Formula 1 docuseries which follows drivers and teams throughout the season has completely transformed the landscape for fans – but it also comes with a heavy dose of criticism for its dramatized portrayal of the sport. But I have some advice for you: stop taking it so seriously and enjoy this.
I haven’t been immune to pleas to make SDR more realistic. In my previous reviews I called for a plus chronological formatand I criticized the series’ use of post-recorded commentaries and team radio outside of its original context. Fellow writer Owen Bellwood even made his own predictions for the overblown storylines. docuseries would appear this time.
But looking at this season of the show, I think SDR has found out exactly who its audience is, and it’s not us diehard racing fans who want a true account of the past season. And, for the sake of F1, that’s a damn good thing.
Several electrical outlets have referred to SDR like a soap opera this year, and as soon as I heard that line, I knew they had struck gold. It’s a reality TV show. Do you think keeping up with the Kardashians accurately reflected the life of pop culture’s favorite family? Did the real housewives series is skyrocketing in popularity due to its faithful account of the lives of painfully rich people? Absolutely not. These shows may be based on a thread of truth, but that thread is woven into a tapestry that’s far more interesting to watch.
F1 fans somehow hate this. A TechRadar review titled “Why F1: Drive to Survive season 4 can only disappoint” argues that sport can only be enjoyed live, when it is most unpredictable. TechCrunch asked if SDR at “ruined“F1. EssentiallySports fell into the trap of indicating that “older fans weren’t necessarily happy with how the producers portrayed several incidents and rivalries”. Although racing fans calls the show “must-see”, it is “flawed” due to its embellishment.
SDR, however, is not for die-hard F1 fans who greedily consume up-to-the-second data in pre-season testing, struggling to find the truth amid team principals’ political battles. It’s not for people who want a race-by-race recap of the previous season. It’s not for viewers who want the exact narratives of the previous season brought to the screen. After four seasons, it should be clear: SDR is not an F1 season review – but the critics are pouring in nonetheless.
Sure, SDR beautifies F1 — but I’m going to say something controversial: so do you. The same goes for all the fans who watch the sport. Commentators too. We love commentators who get poetic about on-track action, who give us unforgettable phrases that become part of our motorsport lexicon. We like to ask Christian Horner for his comments on Toto Wolff and vice versa, and we Above all enjoy creating our own stories around Why these men said these things. We like to speculate on a bad day in pre-season testing. We like to put on our rose-tinted glasses to remember the good old days. And U.S absoutely I love to shit on people who don’t share our exact opinion of the world’s greatest driver, or the sport’s greatest season, or F1’s most fascinating decade. We are – all of us – rewriting the “facts” in history that we choose to remember.
All SDR has done is to present the action of a single season in a new way that values messy, bitchy and glamorous stories – interpersonal relationships, off-track rivalries, driver history, team struggles – in a way that mainstream F1 coverage has ignored. It becomes talkative. It becomes dramatic. It’s when you text your friend “you won’t believe what happened today” and turn a brief coffee shop encounter into a hilarious, over-the-top story that spreads like an inside joke for the rest of your relationship. It’s your weird habit that turns into a viral TikTok meme. SDR is reality – it’s just a different view of reality.
Does that mean I loved every second of Season 4? No I didn’t. There were way too many Christian Horners. There weren’t enough Aston Martins. The Verstappen vs. Hamilton rivalry lacked punch it could have had if Verstappen had been on the show. I would have liked to see more fallout from the controversial 2021 season finale, especially since it’s ongoing.
But you know what? I still enjoyed the season. I opened a can of wine and enjoyed a little weekend entertainment from the sport I love in one hell in an appealing and appealing way. Watching SDR less like watching a recap of 2021 and more like reading someone’s dramatic Twitter feed about it – which is arguably more fun. Why rehash the same shit we’ve seen before in exactly the same way we’ve seen it before?
You have the right to hate DTS. It is your prerogative. But the fact that the show contributed to a massive demographic growth that F1 has struggled to reach for years – younger fans, female fans and American fans, many of whom have gone on to record podcasts popular gossip or writing popular gossip newsletters – should be indication enough that Netflix has found the secret sauce that mainstream media has been missing.
So take heart, guys. Drive to survive is fun, and it’s here to stay.
