Drive To Survive’ Season 4

This weekend has launched a few different new things on Netflix, most notably The Adam Project, the new Ryan Reynolds blockbuster, which I believe is his third at least on the service.

But for me, the big story of the weekend is the release of Drive to Survive season 4, one of the most surprising series I’ve gotten into the last few years, and something that has made me “F1-pilled,” as the terminology goes.

Drive to Survive is a series that documents the year in F1 racing, where brands like Mercedes, McLaren, Ferrari and Red Bull build supercars and hire the world’s best drivers to compete for points on tracks all around the world.

Does that sound interesting to you? No? Well it didn’t to me either. It’s not just that I’m not into racing, I’m not into sports at all. Outside of the Super Bowl and the occasional Michigan football game, I couldn’t care less about sports in general with all my media time taken up by video games and TV shows.

That’s why I was so shocked that not only did I like Drive to Survive when my friend essentially forced me to watch it, but now I’ve turned into an evangelist for it, a common trait among fans.

What Drive to Survive gets right is its narrative, which spans both drivers and their teams. F1 is unique in that there are only a limited number of teams with two drivers each, so this isn’t like traditional sports where you have to memorize entire rosters. It’s like, 20 people total, plus you’ll probably remember some of the more prominent owners and team leaders. Here’s an storyline I cited back when I first watched the show a few years back of the kind of narratives the show can present:

“Take the example of Pierre Gasly, a young driver demoted from the Red Bull team after poor performance in his initial debut. This past season, now driving for Red Bull’s B-team, he manages to go on to win a race in a car that has no business winning against the likes of Ferrari, Mercedes or Red Bull proper. A truly wild moment that may mean nothing to you as you read this now, but when I saw it, I was on my feet cheering due to the narrative that had formed to that point.”

Season 4 of Drive to Survive is another season that takes place during the pandemic, as was season 3, but things should be a bit less disrupted this time around. There is plenty of controversy and drama, however, as ever, as you may know if like me, you’ve become engaged with the actual F1 circuit now, following the races in real-time so you know what’s coming in the new season of Drive to Survive. I never thought a Netflix series would get me to wake up early on weekends to watch actual F1 races, but here we are.

While it doesn’t really matter exactly where you start in Drive to Survive, and you could probably just jump into the latest season, there’s no real reason not to start from the beginning to see the various arcs of these drivers and teams over the last few years, so you can see where they’ve been and where they are now. Cannot recommend this series enough, as if it can make me a convert, that has to be true of anyone.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.