Netflix has aired seven seasons of Drive to Survive, and the series has helped bring the international motorsport to a new audience.
Not everyone is a fan, however. Jeremy Clarkson, best known for his roles hosting BBC’s Top Gear and Amazon Prime’s The Grand Tour, recently wrote a column for The Sun complaining that the show is taking the real drama out of the sport.
In the column, which bears the unwieldy headline “F1 used to be all cash, supermodels and private jets but now drivers are stuck in slow lane — and I know who to blame,” Clarkson complains about the crush of media that now follows Formula One.
“You spend three hours a week driving your car and three hundred hours being interviewed by every damn herbert with an iPhone,” Clarkson writes (via Deadline.com). “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.
“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.”
Drive to Survive, Clarkson says, has sucked some of the drama from those post-race driver interactions. He pointed to a specific instance after the recent Australian Grand Prix when Max Verstappen and Fernando Alonso seemed reluctant to share their thoughts because the Drive to Survive crew had a camera rolling.
“In the early days, we were regularly treated to hissed altercations, as people didn’t realize they were being recorded,” Clarkson said. “Now, whenever anyone sees a Netflix microphone, they go into PR mode.”
While Clarkson’s not a fan, Drive to Survive has put up big streaming numbers for Netflix, and inspired the series Full Swing, on pro golfers, and Break Point (Grand Slam tennis) on the streaming service. While Break Point got canceled in 2024 after two seasons, Full Swing Season 3 premiered in February.
