What a Netflix documentary needs is drama. Through two seasons of racing the Drive to Survive F1 documentary has provided some drama, but never a massive gut wrenching moment. Well, 23 seconds into the trailer for season 3, Netflix finally has that shocking F1 moment it will have always wished for.
We won’t dwell on the fiery crash Romain Grosjean suffered at the Bahrain Grand Prix in 2020, but there is no doubt that it will be a major part of the latest season – the third – of Drive to Survive, despite drivers expressing distaste for the amount of times footage of the crash was shown last season. “You almost accept that you were dead,” adds Grosjean, hands still bandaged, in the trailer. Before adding with a grin “I’m the man that walked out of fire”… helpfully his wife is on hand to roll her eyes at this moment.
Thankfully, the trailer moves on pretty quickly from such matters, onto the other talking points of the season, like Carlos Sainz Jr. and Sebastien Vettel’s team changes, various incidents through the season and the insight Drive to Survive manages to bring from time to time into the lives of the drivers it follows. Although as usual the major focus of the racing footage seems to be crashes and broken cars.
It is through the series that many characters who might not otherwise have been that famous have risen to prominence, so as the trailer closes you do wonder if Guenther Steiner telling a Haas team member to “F*** off” when offered an umbrella is just him playing up to the cameras or if he really is so angry all the time. How much do we actually see of the drivers’ real personalities?
Well we can all find out on 19th March, when the whole of season 3 lands on Netflix, promising to “take fans deeper than ever into Formula 1”. The real question now is how they managed to do that in the Covid-ravaged paddock.
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Formula 1
F1 2020
Drive to Survive
Romain Grosjean
Lewis Hamilton
Charles Leclerc
Daniel Ricciardo