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All the crucial information on the hit Netflix F1 series Drive to Survive: Season 7 preview, release date and trailers. Plus reviews of every series, news stories and key characters.
Season 7 of Netflix’s Formula 1 series, Drive to Survive (DtS) is just weeks away from revealing its behind-the-scenes take of the 2024 world championship.
Expect the same smash-hit mix of driver-centred storylines, fraught team-mate dynamics, warring bosses and a willingness to filter reality, whether that’s through splicing footage to increase the drama, or just playing team radio over in-car footage from an entirely different race.
It’s a recipe that has been credited for a resurgence in grand prix racing by attracting new, younger fans to the sport from across the world and there’s plenty for producers to get their teeth into from the 2024 season.
F1’s Drive to Survive documentary series – now in its seventh season – is credited with growing the championship rapidly
F1/Netflix
Potential storylines include the trials and tribulations of Red Bull boss Christian Horner; the sorry end of Daniel Ricciardo‘s career; the headline-making team moves of Lewis Hamilton and Adrian Newey; as well as the increasingly dismal year of Sergio Perez.
It’s all more fuel for F1’s soap opera, and should be compelling viewing for long-term fans and new supporters thanks to the film crew’s unprecedented access to teams and its easy-to-understand, almost cartoonish presentation which practically leaps out of the screen.
What new revelations will we see this year? Scroll down to read below our one-stop-shop for DtS with all the crucial information: the preview for next series, the release dates, trailers, reviews, news stories and the key characters, or click on a subject to jump to that section
• Season 7
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• Trailers
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The next Drive to Survive instalment is expected to hit screens late in February, at around the time of Formula 1 pre-season testing. As before, all episodes from Season 7 are likely to be released simultaneously. Each will look back to the 2024 F1 championship.
Once again, filmmakers have been embedded with teams throughout the season, capturing the action from every race. All drivers are thought to have been filmed in front of the famous black screen, with producers choosing to focus on a particular team race by race.
For more details on Season 7, click below for the full guide or get up to speed with last year’s series with our Drive to Survive Season 6 review.
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To see how Drive to Survive has shaped the nature of sports documentaries, you only need to look at Motor Sport’s review of the very first series. It’s fair to say that we didn’t fully appreciate the over-dramatisation of key moments (cringey sound effects added to minor collisions) and the sensationalisation of rivalries (see Carlos Sainz and Daniel Ricciardo) that didn’t exist grated on our reviewer. This was supposed to be a documentary! Where was that in-depth discussion of data traces, and why not do we not see more thrilling debate on the amount of run-off used at modern tracks?
Come Season 2, DtS had clicked for us – much like it had done for its rapidly expanding audience. Where else could you get Guenther Steiner summing up his season in a perfectly composed string of expletives? See the heartfelt pain spreading across Nico Hülkenberg’s face as he realises his grand prix career might be over, all the while he gets the mick taken out of him by both his boss and his team-mate? The season’s greatest moment perhaps came when Claire Williams looked like she was about to vaporise her outgoing tech head Paddy Lowe with one glance…
Since then the series has taken us through some of F1’s more dramatic scenes, including the 2021 season finale where a controversial safety car decision saw Max Verstappen crowned champion instead of Lewis Hamilton; the ups and downs of Ricciardo’s career; struggles of once-dominant Mercedes; and chaos at Alpine — although much of the really contentious moments are mysteriously never seen…
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Netflix has released the first trailer for Season 4 of the hit F1 series Drive to Survive
DtS has more headline names than a stellar IMDb entry; a huge contributor to the wild popularity of the series is that many of F1’s main protagonists were almost made for Hollywood – big characters who can express themselves fluently in a charismatic and individual manner. However, the series appears to be heading towards a reset as its star names leave F1. We run through the biggest hitters:
The antagonistic tones of Red Bull boss Christian Horner were a constant in Season 4 where he played perfectly up to the antihero role in his featured episodes: from engaging in a war of words with former Renault boss Cyril Abiteboul over Daniel Ricciardo and engine issues – “We’ve been paying to fly in first class but ended up with an economy ticket” – to seemingly psychologically dismantle both Pierre Gasly and Alex Albon when they drive for the team, Milton Keynes’ head honcho is the ‘evil’ villain viewers love to hate. How the series will address allegations of sexual harassment made against Horner (dismissed following an investigation), is one major unanswered question that looms over Season 7.
If there were to be any definition of F1 Netflix royalty, it would be the (sometimes) beleaguered Haas team boss Guenther Steiner. “F*cking everything’s f*cked up,” became his catchphrase during Season 2, when the almost comical travails of his team, with colliding drivers, slow and unreliable cars plus a sponsorship deal that went spectacularly wrong all provided fabulous viewing – and Steiner was at the centre of it. His unrelenting F-bombs, combined with a slightly terrifying yet endearing personality made him an instant favourite of DtS. However, with his ousting from Haas at the beginning of 2024, we wait to see whether Netflix will find a way to shoehorn him into Season 7.
Daniel Ricciardo’s easy-going charm and good looks are for Netflix. He leaves viewers hanging on his every word as he agonises in Season 1 over whether to earn millions at Red Bull or even more by plodding around with Renault. Poor Danny Ric plumps for the plod, so Series 2 showcases life in the midfield: throwing balls around with his personal trainer and considering life’s big questions, like which baseball cap to wear that day. Things go up a level in Season 3 as Ricciardo trades his Renault seat for one in the slightly faster McLaren. Heartbroken team boss Cyril Abiteboul laments his loss before flashing Ricciardo the ‘spurned lover’ look at the first race of the year. They do make up eventually, just in time for the end of the series. Season 5 saw Ricciardo leave, only to return to F1 in 2023 and Season 6, back within the Red Bull family. We know how that ended: Season 7 may be Ricciardo’s final bow in the Netflix series.
It all got a bit too much for Valtteri Bottas in Season 3: three years of being destroyed race by race by Lewis Hamilton was starting to get to him. It provided material for one of the best DtS episodes, with the Finn admitting he’d considered retiring after being told to move over for Hamilton at the 2019 Russian GP to help his team-mate’s title prospects. Via the most-talked about sauna conference meeting of 2020, Bottas devised a plan to fight back, which involved, err, Hamilton getting a penalty and the Finn cruising through to take victory. Still, a win’s a win. After an awkward Season 4, where Bottas visited Toto Wolff’s Monaco apartment for a pep talk — after being told that his services were no longer required for 2022. Bottas has been less visible in recent series during three dismal seasons with Alfa Romeo/Sauber and he has become yet another dependable DtS figure to leave the grid for 2025.
Pierre Gasly’s entire grand prix career has progressed under the DtS microscope. Season 1 brought heroics for the Toro Rosso squad, before a damaging early promotion to the top Red Bull team in Season 2, which saw him demoted back to the junior team mid-season. Gasly’s tears showed the strain drivers are under. It only got worse at the very next race weekend when his childhood best friend and F2 driver Anthoine Hubert is killed at Spa-Francorchamps. Gasly speaks with humility and dignity on the pain of losing a friend whilst doing what he loves best. Come Season 3 and Gasly had a newfound steel about him. Never was this more evident than at the 2020 Italian GP, when he came through the winner, a year and a week after the loss of his close friend. Prior to the race, we saw Gasly hearing his boss Horner giving his verdict on his former driver’s poor performances in 2019 – DtS gold.
DtS features 30 episodes of high-octane action, more than enough to see you through the off-season. If you don’t have time for all that though, or just want to sample a few more diving in, we’ve done the ‘hard work’ already for you. Here’s our pick of the best episode from each series. See more recommendations in our guide to all of the best F1 Drive to Survive episodes
It’s dictaphones at dawn for Red Bull team boss Christian Horner and his opposite number at Renault Cyril Abiteboul, as they both throw veiled insults at one another through press conferences, whilst boom mics lurk overhead as they snipe during ‘private’ moments.
The main source of mutual ire is Renault’s engine supply to Red Bull – the latter feels service has been patchy to say the least in recent years, whilst the French firm believes its not given the respect it deserves for helping to deliver eight consecutive titles between 2010-2013.
Things go downhill when Red Bull announces its about to make a change in the engine department, but Renault strikes back by nabbing one of Horner’s star drivers right from under his nose.
Calm before the storm: Haas’s dramas created Drive to Survive’s most memorable moments
Vladimir Rys
One of the cornerstones of Netflix’s DtS success: the complete implosion of the Haas team, and its boss Guenther Steiner’s reaction to proceedings.
Its new title sponsor is the energy drink Rich Energy, headed up by highly dubious entrepreneur William Storey amid much talking up of the new season. The team produces a car which has highly volatile tyre usage – it does brilliantly in qualifying, but immediately lunches its rubber during the race and finishes nowhere. Soon it can’t even qualify well either.
Then the sponsorship money (shock horror) doesn’t materialise either. Meanwhile drivers Romain Grosjean and Kevin Magnussen seem hellbent on crashing into one another as early as possible in the race. A highly watchable episode, and one which has contributed massively to the series’ popularity.
Romain Grosjean’s harrowing end to his grand prix career in a fireball crash at Bahrain provides DtS with one of its standout episodes.
The near-death experience is dealt with tastefully, Grosjean speaking eloquently on the fear he felt during the crash and the change in his outlook on life since.
The production does well to illustrate the apparent slow moving of time in such incidents. In reality Grosjean was ‘only’ in his burning car for 28 seconds, but in the episode the time from his entering the barriers to exiting the car – with all other members of the grid having their say on it in between – is almost five minutes.
The Frenchman describes going through an impact of 56G, momentarily making his body weigh 3.9 tonnes, before explaining his thought process whilst being engulfed in flames.
The other drivers also have their say on running through the full gamut of emotions in these kind of moments – Hamilton admits to feeling “vulnerable” whilst Sergio Perez points to the mental strength needed to take on a race restart after seeing one of your colleagues almost die.
Guenther Steiner’s reaction to the latest Haas crisis has provided a staple formula for some of the best Drive to Survive episodes, not least in Season 4 when Nikita Mazepin joined for the 2021 season, bringing plenty of sponsorship cash from his oligarch father
He also brought furore over past incidents, including using physical violence against other drivers and apparently sexually assaulting a partner and broadcasting it on social media.
Unsurprisingly, when he’s outperformed by team-mate Mick Schumacher, Mazepin accuses the team of giving him a car with an inherent technical issue — in extremely unpolite terms, accompanied by threats by his father to withdraw sponsorship. “No wonder everyone ****ing hates you!” is Steiner’s response to his driver’s antics, neatly teeing up the opening episode of Season 5, 12 months later, which sees Mazpin sacked following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
DtS needed two episodes to deal with Alpine’s chaotic 2022 season, starting with episode 6 where its carefully-laid plans crumble in the public spotlight. Having announced Oscar Piastri as its driver for 2023, he takes to social media to reveal that he won’t be racing for the team, having instead signed for McLaren.
The Netflix cameras offer an unrivalled behind-the-scenes view of the turmoil as Alpine and McLaren wrestle over custody of Piastri.
Netflix producers won’t have believed their luck when, in 2023, Daniel Ricciardo’s story arc wrote itself as he made a heroic return to the grid following his ousting from McLaren a year before. Beginning the year as a Red Bull reserve driver, Ricciardo is given a test at Silverstone where he impresses immediately, leading him to replace the struggling Nyck de Vries at Red Bull sister team AlphaTauri. The next twist in his tale comes in Season 7…
