Drive to Survive has been credited with bringing the sport of Formula One to a whole new fanbase, but one longtime admirer of motor racing complains that the drivers themselves have become more boring as a result.
Jeremy Clarkson, who helmed the BBC’s global hit motoring show Top Gear then The Grand Tour on Amazon Prime, wrote in The Sun newspaper that the glamour that used to go along with the life of a Formula One racing driver now belongs to the past.
Clarkson said:
“You spend three hours a week driving your car and three hundred hours being interviewed by every damn herbert with an iPhone… in Formula One, everyone is interviewed all the time. On the way to the track. On the track. Before the race. After the race. It’s constant.”
He added: “If you finish in the top three, it’s worse because then you are interviewed after the race before being put in a room with the other podium-finishers so we can hear what you are saying to one another. And then there are more interviews.”
Clarkson wrote that this doesn’t happen in any other sport, and cited the Australian Grand Prix last weekend when neither Fernando Alonso nor Max Verstappen would express themselves fully, knowing every word was being captured by the Netflix crew for the hit series Drive to Survive.
Clarkson said this new discretion had had an effect on the series itself, writing:
“In the early days, we were regularly treated to hissed altercations, as people didn’t realise they were being recorded. Now, whenever anyone sees a Netflix microphone, they go into PR mode.”
Drive to Survive is now in its seventh season, and has spawned a string of similarly intimate shows about the world of sport, including Break Point about Grand Slam level tennis and Full Swing about what goes on behind the scenes of professional golf.
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