Jalopnik's Biggest Takeaways From 'Formula 1: Drive To Survive' Season 6

I don’t think this is going to come as any surprise to anyone who watched the 2023 season play out live, but Max Verstappen and Red Bull Racing’s absolute dominance are some of the least interesting parts of the sport. I saw a lot of backlash to the omission, and yeah, on one hand, I agree: Verstappen absolutely demolishing the competition and breaking countless records is a big deal. It’s also just not very compelling to watch — especially for the folks who woke up bright and early every Sunday to watch it happen live.

We already saw and celebrated the Verstappen/Red Bull dominance. Let’s let someone else have a moment in the spotlight.

The shocking announcement that Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton will be moving to the Ferrari team for 2025 may have undermined an entire episode where Hamilton meditates on sticking with Mercedes through 2024, but if you didn’t find Episode 6 enlightening, I’d recommend watching it again.

Sure, the Big Drama of the episode is that Lewis Hamilton wants that eighth World Championship, but Mercedes has built an absolute travesty of a car that won’t make that happen. Yes, the conflict that gets resolved here is Hamilton’s contract extension. But if you were just as shocked as I was that Hamilton moved to Ferrari, listen to the undertones. Hamilton mentions that he told Mercedes its car would be bad, and that the team essentially shut him down by saying that he was wrong. Yes, Merc ultimately conceded that it should have listened to Hamilton, but knowing how deep the frustrations lie really helps make sense of the Ferrari move.

Over the off-season, Haas team principal and DTS darling Guenther Steiner was fired from his job, and one of the first questions fans asked was: What will Drive to Survive do without its funny, foul-mouthed, take-no-bullshit star? The answer rang out loud and clear in season six. We’ve got new, fun personalities to fill Steiner’s gap.

Soft-spoken James Vowles, new team principal at Williams Racing, and cheeky Frédéric Vasseur, new team principal at Ferrari, both rose to the surface as possible replacements. Neither man has a particularly easy job ahead of him; Williams has been languishing at the back of the grid for years, and Ferrari can never get its shit together long enough to sustain a run for the World Championship. Still, both men manage to charm — Vowles for his self-proclaimed “geeky” approach to running a team and Vasseur for his sense of humor.

It seems as if we’ll be entirely unable to escape Danica Patrick’s presence in Formula 1 now that her role has been solidified as a talking head on Drive to Survive. Netflix definitely took some flack for not featuring enough women analysts (especially after Jennie Gow was sidelined with an unexpected stroke), but I can’t say Patrick is ever the right choice.

Aside from the fact that she has publicly and loudly adopted ultra-conservative and harmful political views in her podcast and on social media, she has also struggled as an F1 pundit. I can understand the assumed value she would have as an American woman with experience behind the wheel, but Patrick has proved time and again that she has little of interest to say. Her standout line from the series? “As a race car driver, your tools are your hands and your feet.”

Say what you will about her tenure as team principal of her family’s Williams Racing team, but Claire Williams’ value as a talking head and knowledgeable F1 pundit is unmatched. As someone who had gone through the rigamarole of trying to run a competitive team, she has keen insight into what works and what doesn’t, and she offers a really nuanced perspective on everything from driver rivalries to technical stumbling blocks. Personally, I hope this is a sign of greater things to come in the punditry sphere for Williams.

Netflix’s decision to kick off Drive to Survive season 6 with a Lawrence Stroll-heavy episode is bold. Stroll is a big-money businessman who first bought a Formula 1 team to guarantee his son Lance would have a seat, then bought Aston Martin to give that team legitimacy. We kick off the most recent docuseries season with Aston Martin’s car launch, Lance Stroll’s broken wrist, and the team’s shockingly quick pace at the start of the 2023 F1 season.

But the biggest takeaway for me is that Lawrence Stroll is basically his own main character. The season opens with staffers at the Aston launch desperately trying to ensure perfection before the Big Boss comes before essentially treating him like royalty when he arrives. Formula 1 attracts megalomaniacs, but it’s been a while since we’ve had a man like Lawrence Stroll keeping things interesting with his random influxes of cash.

Every year, it seems like we get the same Zak Brown-filled McLaren episode, and that inevitably generally means we see a lot of Lando Norris and hear a lot about how he’s the future of Formula 1. That’s all fine and good, but there was almost no mention of McLaren’s breakout star, Oscar Piastri.

Piastri was at the heart of quite a stir in 2022 when Alpine announced him as its driver, only for McLaren to snatch him up instead. The young Australian struggled to find his footing at first, but he was by far the most impressive rookie in the field in 2023, finishing ninth in the World Drivers Championship and winning the Qatar sprint race. Unfortunately, we didn’t see much of him at all.

Part of me thinks that Piastri’s absence can be primarily ascribed to one thing: Drive to Survive knows when Formula 1 can be too confusing, and as a result, it just leaves out anything that would be too much of an issue.

See, sprint races weren’t mentioned at all this year, not even in passing. If your only familiarity with F1's 2023 season came via DTS, you wouldn’t even know that six races featured a mini race before the main Grand Prix event. But I can’t fault the producers; the sprint races weren’t massively compelling this season, and trying to remind viewers about the concept and format would take more trouble than any result was worth.

There has been a lot of recent debate about whether or not Red Bull and its subsidiary team AlphaTauri are separate entities or just one big conglomerate. Over the off-season, we’ve had plenty of conversations about “conflicts of interest,” and that has placed a spotlight firmly on the two Red Bull affiliated teams.

Recently, they’ve both tried to claim that they’re actually separate entities, but they’re both owned by the same group, and DTS shows several instances of Red Bull boss Christian Horner dictating AlphaTauri strategy. That’s not really a surprise if you’ve followed the sport for any amount of time, but it’s a definite affirmation that these conflict of interest talks won’t be ending any time soon.

The Alpine F1 team commandeered two episodes in DTS season 6: one about the rivalry between drivers Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly, and one about the team’s recent cash influx from celebrity investors and the subsequent canning of team principal Otmar Szafnauer. They’re both fairly interesting storylines, but I don’t think they required two episodes — especially because we never really delve into the real reasons why Szafnauer was fired in the middle of a race weekend, and because we never hear very much about the celebrity cash influx, and also because Alpine just wasn’t really all that good. I wish we could have replaced one of those Alpine episodes with one that ties up some of the other loose ends offered by the series, such as Aston Martin’s sudden decline in performance and McLaren’s late-season resurgence.

For my money, Alex Albon is the most interesting Formula 1 driver on the modern grid. His childhood was wild; when his mother was imprisoned for fraud, Albon was 12 years old and became the caretaker for his younger siblings. He had a stunning rise through the Formula 1 ranks, only to be quickly fired by Red Bull Racing for failing to live up to the team’s intense standards. He spent time away from the sport, penned incredible introspective pieces for the Player’s Tribune, and returned at the back of the F1 grid with Williams. He’s had a lot of reasons to become bitter or reclusive, and instead he’s transformed into a friendly, insightful, and funny driver. He gets a smidge of air time in DTS S6, where he proves to be a gem — but Netflix, if you’re listening, give us more Albon.

Alfa Romeo’s Valtteri Bottas shows up for approximately one hot second in the first episode of DTS S6 to show off his mullet, and... that’s the extent we hear from Alfa Romeo. Every season, we inevitably see certain drivers and teams fade into the background of the Netflix docuseries for any number of reasons, but Alfa Romeo seems extremely conspicuous in just how little we’ve seen of the team in any season.

When Lance Stroll returns to the Formula 1 grid after breaking both of his wrists, Lando Norris’ first question is: “Can you wank yet?” When Daniel Ricciardo is shown at home, he’s tossing food into the air and catching it in his mouth. Formula 1 drivers really are just preteen boys at heart.

But that doesn’t always make them terribly compelling. On one hand, uncovering driver personalities is a big reason why Drive to Survive has found success. On the other, sometimes there isn’t a whole lot of personality to reveal. They’re also not exactly the most interesting to listen to regarding performance, especially when the best they can do is offer platitudes like “if you lose, there is a lot of pressure on you” and “we need a better car, then we can compete again.” Obviously! This comment adds nothing! It does not explain why the car is bad. It does not tell me how you actually feel about it. Dig a little deeper, fellas — give us some actual introspection next season.