Drive to Survive Season 4 — A Battle Like Never Before
A tight championship battle puts the docu-series in a position its never been before. How will it handle the pressure?
Seven races into the 2020 Formula One season, Lewis Hamilton led the driver’s standings with 157 points. Max Verstappen trailed by 47 points and Valtteri Bottas was adrift from his teammate with only 107 points.
Hamilton went on to win a seventh world championship. Such was his dominance that his points total was enough for him to win the constructors championship as well.
This meant that the most dramatic narrative arc of the season came from who finished fourth in the drivers standings and who came third in the constructors.
These were the battles that still went down to the wire. Three teams arrived at the final race in Abu Dhabi still with a shot at third place.
This was well reflected in Netflix’s Drive to Survive, which spent its final two episodes looking at these three teams and their drivers.
Meanwhile, Hamilton’s championship victory in Turkey didn’t get focused on at all. While it was historic, it was also predictable.
The 2021 season has continued with another intense battle over third place in the standings, this time between old enemies McLaren and Ferrari.
As detailed by the docu-series, McLaren were made to work hard to claim the bottom step of the podium in 2020 and now Ferrari are ensuring they won’t be allowed to ease-up before the new regulations in 2022 if they want to keep that place.
The brutal reality of the situation is that, frankly, who cares if Ferrari or McLaren comes third? At least, that will become the attitude as long as Red Bull and Mercedes continue to fight for race wins.
When Drive to Survive first aired in 2019 it failed to focus on the championship battle. It didn’t have access to Mercedes or their rivals Ferrari and so were forced to put their weight behind the midfield tussle.
The gap between the Big Three teams and the rest was so vast that the other seven were essentially playing a totally different sport.
The battle for fourth in the standings, and seventh in the drivers championship, was also known as Formula 1.5 by fans.
And so, the series-makers were smart and adapted to their surroundings and it thrived even though it had no access to Hamilton facing off Sebastian Vettel.
By highlighting F1.5, it gave the drivers at these teams an audience they never had before.
It gave viewers a fantastic insight into people that were often neglected for the fight at the front. Because, after all, when there’s an intense race at the front, who really is going to focus on seventh place?
But, after three seasons of the Netflix show, they now have a championship battle and two contenders that will give them behind the scenes access.
In France, the cameras were reportedly following Esteban Ocon. It was the Alpine driver’s first race since signing a three-year contract with the team, and of course it was his home Grand Prix to boot.
However, the Frenchman finished outside of the points and was nowhere to be seen throughout the race coverage. It was an unspectacular weekend during a spectacular race.
At the front, the lead of the race changed hands on the penultimate lap as Verstappen increased his championship lead to 12 points.
This puts Drive to Survive’s editors in a tricky spot. It was stories like Ocon’s that helped build the series into a juggernaut.
While the on-track action wasn’t ever this intense while they’ve been in the sport, they still found the interesting stories that cut through and grabbed viewers.
Will Ocon’s story now be left to the cutting-room floor as they try to scramble together a compelling narrative for the championship fight?
The previous three seasons all contained 10 episodes each so presumably that will be the case with season four.
The season’s also are not told in chronological order, nor are they overproduced season review DVDs.
Ocon’s story fits perfectly with what Drive to Survive has done in the past, but will fans be so patient when they know just how good this Grand Prix and how little Ocon featured in it?
The scope of 10 episodes leaves more than enough room to focus on all sorts of narratives, so an episode on Alpine or Ocon makes total sense.
But given that there will be footage shown from Paul Ricard, but potentially none of it on the great race everyone watched, will it rub people the wrong way?
This will be a tricky balance for the production crew to deal with. They also cannot predict the future and the previews to the French Grand Prix were to expect a quieter race weekend than in recent races.
After seven races, there is still so much that can happen. Right now, Verstappen’s 131 points is good enough to lead the championship.
But there are still 16 races scheduled to go, maybe he too will blow out the season with three races left. Maybe focusing on the likes of Ocon will prove more than worthwhile.
For now, the championship battle is the place to be for the first time in the series’ history, but will it be there?
