Netflix's Drive to Survive Made Me an F1 Fan: Season 7 is The Most Chaotic Yet

Drive to Survive is back for season 7, and it's absolute catnip to people like me who were converted to Formula One fans thanks to the hit Netflix show. It's even geared me up for a 4 a.m. GMT start for the Australian Grand Prix this weekend.

I'm one of many for whom having some narrative context behind the vroom vrooming and enigmatic helmet-clad figures made F1 feel accessible to me for the first time. The truth is that I could've never fallen in love with the sport if I hadn't had the chance to get to know these handsome boys and their high-stakes on-and-off-track squabbles, long-running friendships and rivalries. It's the only reality TV I watch, and better than any soap opera. Long may it continue.

Charles Leclerc at Silverstone.

Katie Collins/CNET

Last season seemed (in so many ways) to be the most chaotic F1 season in recent history, and Drive to Survive haphazardly captures it from all angles. It was even more exciting for me watching it in retrospect, given that this was the first year I made it to Silverstone (albeit for a practice day), and as a result I now know what it feels like to be on the receiving end of an IRL smile from Ferrari's resident heartthrob, Charles Leclerc.

Leclerc is set to have competition in the heartthrob stakes this year due to a dramatic move documented early in this season of the show. In case you missed it -- Lewis Hamilton announcing that he would finally part ways with Mercedes to move to Ferrari prompted a dramatic game of musical chairs. For those of you who aren't F1 superfans, this means that there will be an injection of fresh blood into the F1 world for this upcoming season. 

Even bigger news in the F1 world were the allegations of sexual misconduct lodged against Red Bull Team Principal Christian Horner, in which a female employee accused him of "controlling behavior" and sexual harassment. This resulted in Horner being suspended by the team. Drive to Survive tackles this up top in the season, alongside Hamilton's move, but dedicates no more than 20 minutes to the revelations and subsequent investigation in which Red Bull cleared Horner of inappropriate behavior. 

Given that Netflix captured the moment Horner finds out his alleged WhatsApp messages with the woman have been leaked to every F1 team principal, you could be forgiven for imagining the show might dedicate more time to it -- not because it's salacious -- but because it's serious stuff.

It's ultimately disappointing to see the producers seemingly brush the scandal under the rug at the earliest opportunity, and fail to use it as an opportunity to delve into what are undoubtedly some of the challenges of being a woman in this heavily male-dominated sport.

Horner has his chance to talk to the cameras, but the producers don't appear to have extended an opportunity to the female employee to tell her side of the story. And then the scandal is never mentioned again. The Red Ball chief gets more screen time than almost anyone else as the season continues to play out.

Perhaps fortunately for Horner, there's a new contender for biggest paddock villain this year in the form of Flavio Briatore. An Italian businessman, Briatore has returned to F1 after 15 years following an earlier career in the sport that was dogged by cheating allegations. Now he's back, and from behind his tinted sunglasses (with their orange frames that seem to reflect the glow of permanent tan) he's determined to play kingmaker for team Alpine.

The drama continues to play out on track as McLaren ends Red Bull's run of success in the Constructor's Championship, and little Lando Norris finds his feet as a serious contender to potentially dethrone Max Verstappen in the driver standings. 

Norris doesn't get the most sympathetic portrayal in this season (thanks to his growing reputation as an F1 playboy), and yet I couldn't help but feel sorry for him given his obvious discomfort with the media and some of the more intrusive aspects of the job. I even have a begrudging respect for Verstappen who continued to dominate on track, despite the fact his two toxic dads -- biological father Daddy Jos and F1 father Daddy Christian -- were in a big-time fight for most of the year.

The best episode of this season is the one in which Netflix gives phones to the drivers as they travel to and compete in the Singapore Grand Prix to record their own footage. The idea of Lewis Hamilton vlogging from his bed on the morning of the race feels entirely improbable, but some drivers took the assignment seriously. None more so than Hamilton's former Mercedes teammate George Russell (the F1 driver who I think is also most likely to read CNET) who gives us constant Alan Partridge-esque, behind-the-scenes commentary in a way that spells untapped YouTube career.

Amid the chaos, this season of Drive To Survive feels like the end of an era -- and not just because Hamilton has left Mercedes and Red Bull's run of unmatched success seems to have run its course. There's a real changing of the guard in the cast of characters featured on the show, with charismatic personalities like Daniel Ricciardo and Guenther Steiner (both of whom make for brilliant TV) signing off. 

Whether the batch of incoming young rookies will be as infinitely entertaining as goofy duo Pierre Gasly and Yuki Tsunoda were in their early F1 days remains to be seen. Right now, at the dawn of the 2025 season, they're probably more worried about how their on-track performances will measure up. But selfishly, I hope they find their groove off track too, and reveal something of themselves to the cameras for season 8. Whether it turns out that they're possible sociopaths, class clowns, unlikely softbois or something in between, I'm here for all of it.