Cyril Abiteboul: a Drive to Survive documentary could be the shot in the arm WEC needs
Cyril Abiteboul, Genesis Magma Racing’s freshly announced team principal, believes a Drive to Survive-like documentary could propel the World Endurance Championship to the viewing figures currently enjoyed by Formula 1. He was speaking to Goodwood Road & Racing at the team’s launch in Dubai.
Abiteboul is not a man unacquainted with the highs and lows of the media spotlight. He became famous as Renault F1’s team principal on Drive to Survive (DTS) for, among other things, feuding with Christian Horner over the signing of Daniel Ricciardo and the Austrian team’s termination of its engine contract with Renault. It was a bruising encounter even for viewers.
We asked him if it’s an experience he would like to repeat.
“There are a few things I have learned from the [DTS] experience,” Abiteboul reflected.
“But we cannot deny that [DTS] has been a game changer for Formula 1. There’s no silver bullet to change something as sophisticated as a sport, but it was also the perfect storm for finding the right format to tell the story of F1 differently.
“But telling the story of endurance racing or rally racing should be shown in a different way because actually, we are in a world where information is more and more depressed with the formation of 20-second scripts, and the more we go into that, the more we probably need something different. Much more space, much more time, much more depth in particular because we are talking about sports which are pretty sophisticated and complex.”
“So yeah, I think [a WEC documentary] would be good for the sport but a pure copycat of DTS would not work. It’s about finding the right narrative, the right angle and the right time, but I think the time is good and as far as we’re concerned I think we have an intent to find a way to tell our own story.
“Funnily enough, Netflix’s DTS story started with Renault. We pitched the story to Netflix and it said ‘That’s a great idea, thank you very much, and we’re going to do it but for the whole of F1’ and maybe that’s also how things could start for endurance with Genesis.”
Luc Donckerwolke, Chief Creative Officer at Genesis, meanwhile answered the question on the lips of all here at Goodwood HQ: when will see his GMR-001 Hypercar taking to the Hill?
“Talking about the race car, the engine should be ready at some point in February,” he said, “the car built in the course of next spring and begin testing at the end of summer […] and of this we have no choice if we want to be ready for homologation around December time.
“So working backwards, we will try to share the car with the media, so while it might not be ready for [next year’s] Goodwood we will [in the future] do something for sure.”
At least if WEC on Netflix doesn’t take off, we all still have something to look forward to…
Main image courtesy of Getty Images.
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