What it does have is team boss Günther Steiner, who has transformed “Drive to Survive” into one of Formula 1’s most popular personalities. Steiner, an Italian from the German-speaking area of South Tyrol, has spent three decades in racing. , including a short time as technical director of Red Bull. All this time, almost no one outside of sports was aware of its existence. “I had been following Formula 1 for years and had been to races as a spectator,” Rogers said. “And I had no idea who he was.” When I first met Steiner in 2017 at the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal, we walked undisturbed together through the paddock, the pedestrian thoroughfare used to access garages and temporary office space that teams are given for the week. In Miami, he was recognized every few moments. Box to Box had discovered Steiner’s propensity for frankness with German accents and salty language and used him as a recurring character. That made him a cult figure after the first season and eventually a star. He insists he has never seen the show. “For the simple reason that you look at yourself and maybe act differently,” he says. “And I don’t want to behave differently.”
He’s probably better off not seeing the second episode of Season 2, titled “Boiling Point.” In it, William Storey, an energy drink entrepreneur with a wavy chest-length beard, is shown on a helicopter ride. He explains that he has invested 35 million British pounds in Haas. “They’re kind of rock ‘n’ roll,” he says, “and it’s Davids taking on the Goliaths of motorsport.” The rest of the episode details the series of disasters the team goes through during the early stages of the season. There’s a spider in a wall in Canada, a collision between the two cars in England, engines mysteriously cut out. “This is the worst experience I’ve ever had in a race car,” Kevin Magnussen, one of Haas’ two drivers at the time, said at one point over the radio. The cameras record that Steiner describes both his drivers as “[expletive] idiots” and Steiner’s teenage daughter who asks him if he likes his job during a family walk. Storey soon withdraws his investment, leaving the team in financial trouble. By the end, Steiner seems almost in tears. When Haas finally fails, he says, “I would have no idea what to do next.” They were touching things. No one just watching the races would have known something was happening.
While Steiner became hugely popular while his Haas team remained virtually irrelevant, Red Bull team principal Christian Horner noted. From the beginning, Horner has been one of the show’s most compelling characters, a charming yet Machiavellian aristocrat who, in a feud with Wolff, his Mercedes counterpart, competed for the championship last season, as well as skillfully riding a galloping horse on his estate. with his wife, Geri Halliwell, the Spice Girl. According to Bratches, Horner called Netflix early in the show’s run to say that if they sent a crew to Red Bull’s headquarters in southern England, he’d make it worth it. “These guys are ridiculously competitive, and not just with the cars,” Bratches says. “We took advantage of that.”
Just as Steiner’s character might not have emerged if Ferrari and Mercedes had participated in Season 1, and Horner might not have opened the Red Bull doors as wide if Steiner hadn’t been in the spotlight, “Drive to Survive “don’t have the expanded access it does now, if not before the pandemic. Season 2 was released on February 28, 2020, just as the world went into lockdown. Fans had all day and night to watch sports but no live events. The viewership statistics of ‘Drive to Survive’ took off, Riegg reports. “Suddenly it was just that hockey stick,” he says.
In July, Formula 1 resumed competition by building a virus-free bubble that only included team members who were indispensable to the races. Somehow, Netflix has successfully claimed that “Drive to Survive” deserved access. The crews were given uniforms by the regulatory team to signal to local officials that they were part of the bubble. In fact, they are embedded in the drivers and engineers. “The material we got as a result was incredible,” Rogers says. “The access you get when you’re part of the team gives you those moments with the real intimate feeling.” More than two years later, the presence of Box to Box camera crews dressed as team members has become part of the sport’s landscape.