Lewis Hamilton opened the season with a victory after a thrilling battle with Max Verstappen in Bahrain. Of course, track limits were a topic of conversation. IndyCar did some testing. Conor Daly isn't happy about a video game. Sébastien Bourdais has a new sponsor. Valencia and Rome have become doubleheaders for Formula E. NASCAR's dirt races from Bristol have been delayed and there have already been many concerns about this event. MotoGP began its season in Qatar. Here is a rundown of what got me thinking.
From Fandom to Fandom
The Formula One season got started prematurely, not at the Bahrain Grand Prix, nor at preseason testing two weeks prior. The first spike in interest came with the season three release of Netflix's Drive to Survive series.
The streaming service's documentary series of a Formula One season has been a big hit not only with motorsports fan but with general users of the platform. Over the last three years, Drive to Survive has brought Formula One to people who otherwise would not have interacted with the series. After years of losing viewers, Drive to Survive has revived interest in the global motorsports series.
Races are still hard to find as they are regularly on cable or pay TV channels. We live in a more fragmented television world and what was common ten years ago has become outdated. People don't stumble into races anymore. We don't flip through channels and have something catch our eye. There needs to be new ways to attract viewers. With a service like Netflix become the main source of television consumption, it makes sense to be available on that platform. Formula One is not going to put races there, and Netflix doesn't show any interest on spending money on live sporting events, but Drive to Survive is a suitable option to showcase the series.
Each season is not going to be a complete picture of a full race calendar. There are ten episodes and in 2020 there were 17 races. This year there could be 23 races. Despite this time restriction, season three does capture the nature of the 2020 Formula One season. There were a lot of lame-duck drivers with their 2021 plans made long before the 2020 season concluded. Those parameters flip any relationship and we saw the strains between a team who didn't want to see its driver leave (Renault and Daniel Ricciardo) and the awkward tolerance of two parties who were ready to part (Ferrari and Sebastian Vettel).
Season three does fall guilty of oversimplifying the 2020 season. In a year where a lot of the drivers were already looking to the future, Drive to Survive's attempt to capture that misses out on some of the drama on track. After all, Formula One is a motorsports series. None of the backroom drama exists without the races occurring on Sunday. We get a glimpse of the British Grand Prix's frenetic final laps with a handful of tire failures, but we miss Lewis Hamilton skillfully skating across the line on three wheels after a breathtaking lap. We see none of Max Verstappen's suspension failing at Imola and, other than Lance Stroll's pole position and Vettel hopping up and down on the podium, we see none of the incredible Turkish Grand Prix.
Even the Sakhir Grand Prix was oversimplified. While the show focuses on Sergio Pérez maiden victory, coming as the Mexican driver was set to be ushered out of Formula One when his heart wasn't ready to move on, it briefly mentions Hamilton's absence and George Russell's deputization of the Mercedes.
Yes, Pérez came from behind to win the race, but the 2020 Sakhir Grand Prix was a dichotomy of two drivers racing for their careers. Pérez was fighting for another day. Russell was fighting to setup what could be a decade of dominance. For Pérez, victory was a long-awaited breakthrough in a respectable Formula One career, a victory that saved his career. For Russell, this race was an audition, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to step into the best car on the grid. A victory would have cemented himself as the leader of the next generation of drivers. It would have made waves among the drivers. Difficult decisions would have to be made. Russell fell short of that, but none of it was down to him making a mistake. The team mixed up the tires and a tire puncture was force majeure happening at the worst possible time.
We didn't see Nico Hülkenberg, whose role of super-sub brought some life to the season. The makeshift and historic nature of the calendar was missed. We didn't know we were going to Imola, Portimão, Nürburgring or Istanbul when the season began in July. What did the drivers make of how the calendar was pieced together? Was there excitement? Fear? Anger? We don't know. We didn't see it.
This is where Drive to Survive breaks into two factions of Formula One. You have fandom of the show, the ten-episode series you can watch in three days, and you have fandom of Formula One, the ten-month, 23-race calendar with weeks between each round. For fandom of the show, I highly recommend reading The Ringer's article on the show by Kevin Clark.
Drive to Survive is digestible and it boils Formula One down to the intra-team conflict. Drivers fighting to be competitive and stay in the series. Team principals unhappy when a driver can't get the most out of the car and the results are dismal. It makes the pinnacle of motorsports relatable because we see the drivers having the same conversations we all have about the boss being an idiot and wanting out. We see the bosses calling the drivers worthless. Some days are great, but many are frustrating.
We get to see the dysfunction that exists in Formula One, which at times is just general unhappiness, not some toxic work environment with everyone at each other's throats. Most sports want to hide that. In other sports, we get to hear the robotic lines about teamwork and how a locker room is unified, but we know those real conversations are happening. The closest we have gotten to that is when an Uber driver shared a video of Ottawa Senators players expressing disgust about its coach and that was viewed as sacrilege in the hockey world. We get to see the humanity of athletes and competitors in Drive to Survive. They are us.
However, how long can it be this be a fetish item for the viewers? When do these viewers go from fandom of the show to fandom of the series? It is one thing to fall in love with the ten-episode series, but Formula One is a long game. These stories play out in real-time. Does the show have to evolve from backroom drama and win people over with what happens over the course of each grand prix?
If every Drive to Survive season is just a set of drivers wanting to quit their jobs and Haas being woeful in last place, why should people keep watching? We need to see competition, but not just the competition in the middle. It has to be at the very top where it matters most. Of course, this is a problem that can only be figured out on the track and not in a Netflix edit suite. The Wide World of Sports tagline remains true even into the 2020s. It is the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. We need to see someone's life fulfilled and another life completely devastated simultaneously.
We haven't had a wire-to-wire championship fight during the Drive to Survive era. We need people to fall in love with that. You can only watch Carlos Sainz, Jr. play recreational games with his father and have Daniel Ricciardo talk about tattoos so much. We need a season where it is a dogfight in each race with two or three or four drivers constantly going at each other, all fighting to plant themselves in Formula One lore with the likes of Juan Manuel Fangio, Jackie Stewart, Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna and Michael Schumacher.
I fawn over what a Drive to Survive season from 2006-2012 would have looked like, when you had the end of Schumacher against the rise of Fernando Alonso, the McLaren-Ferrari scandal, the Hamilton-Alonso feud, Hamilton's first title ripped from the hands of Felipe Massa and heart of Brazil, the emergence of Brawn, Renault's Crashgate, Schumacher's return and Vettel's dominance.
We need to see who is on top. I understand why the show isn't a string of Hamilton victories because that would be boring, but Drive to Survive is missing the history being made. Hamilton's success is akin to Babe Ruth obliterating the home run record or Wilt Chamberlain scoring 100 points in a game. That is as great as any other reason to watch. We might not see this again, someone truly re-writing the history book. We should not make winning lame because few taste such success and petty conflicts are more relatable.
There is nothing wrong with aspiring for greatness. It is happening in front of us each race, especially as this could be Hamilton's final season. We don't know when we will see a driver like him again. This time should be treasured. Drive to Survive has a chance to properly capture that.
The good news for Formula One is through three seasons of Drive to Survive, it has found something that people genuinely look forward to watching each year. The bad news is we are not sure if that has turned into sustained fandom who will turn on each grand prix over a season. We are not even sure this section of fandom likes what Formula One is after all. We know they like the drama, but drama can be found anywhere and there will be another new show debuting in 15 minutes attracting our worst impulses.
This is the reckoning Formula One has to face. Does it feed the impulses, or can it turn people into genuine followers?
Winners From the Weekend
You know about Lewis Hamilton, but did you know...
Maverick Viñales won MotoGP's Qatar Grand Prix. Sam Lowes won the Moto2 race. Jaume Masiá won the Moto3 race.
Liam Lawson and Oscar Piastri split the Formula Two sprint races from Bahrain. Guanyu Zhou won the feature race.
Sage Karam won the IndyCar iRacing event from Homestead.
William Byron won NASAR's iRacing event at Bristol.
Coming Up This Weekend
MotoGP remains in Qatar for another round, the Doha Grand Prix.
Super Formula season opener from Fuji.
IndyCar wraps up its three-race iRacing series with a round at Sebring.
