Formula One reality show turns into soap opera
In an interview with Bloomberg a year ago, Christian Horner, head of Red Bull Racing and Formula One’s most enthusiastic reality TV star, described the Netflix show Drive to Survive as having turned the sport into “the Kardashians on wheels”.
This week, Marina Hyde, the Guardian columnist described by the great Clive James as being one of “very few writers who know that much about the fundamentally worthless and are capable of being funny about it , described the storm around Horner as All Very Keeping Up
To sum“up, Horner, the most With the Carkrashians”. successful boss of F1’s most successful team was accused by a female staff member of inappropriate behaviour, then cleared by an independent inquiry before an email, reported the Guardian, “sent from two different email addresses three separate times to the recipients and contained a link to a Google Drive folder containing 79 images of messages purportedly sent between Horner and the female employee” kicked it all off again.
All this drama before the first Grand Prix of the season in Bahrain, which passed without any drama or, indeed, little reason to watch a procession that saw Max Verstappen win with such ease he could have stopped, read the Google Drive folder and still won. Or he could have had his dad, Jos, read it to him as dear papa has been very vocal on the Horner subject.
EXPLODE
Jos Verstappen loves a bit of drama and has been vocal in saying that if Horner did not leave the team then the team was in danger of “being torn apart” and would “explode”.
Max, speaking before the Saudi Grand Prix, backed his dad: “I’ve not asked him that, but my dad … is very outspoken and he is not a liar, that is for sure. My dad and I are very close. We call every day.”
It all feeds into the sideshow that has become the main show of F1 for so many: Drive to Survive. The sixth season has begun to show on Netflix and has become a huge hit, particularly in the US, with more than 50% of new F1 fans saying it was the reason they had started watching the sport.
But, not for them the nuances of g-forces, tactics and slipstreaming, but, as American journalist Andrew Lawrence noted: “Americans didn’t much care about the main story becoming a B-plot. Instead, we swooned over Sauber’s Charles Leclerc and other heart-throb drivers; we felt for Claire Williams, the sport’s only female team principal; we salivated over the boss-level beef between Red Bull’s Horner and Renault’s Cyril Abiteboul.”
The series reimagined F1 as “a high-stakes clash of big egos, tense power struggles and stunning betrayals. The producers understood a fundamental truth of American binge watchers: drama is our love language.
This is the brilliance of Drive to Survive, presenting F1 in terms a Real Housewives fan can process: Daniel Riccardo is the guy you want leading your pub crawl. Lance Stroll is the spoiled son of a billionaire Bond villain. Christian Horner is married to Ginger Spice and yet Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff, aka Racing Arnold Schwarzenegger, lives rent-free in his head.”
INTERFERED
Chuck in the little matter of allegations that FIA president Mohammed ben Sulayem interfered in the Saudi Grand Prix last year by, again allegedly, had a 10-second penalty for Fernando Alonso overturned, and F1 has all the drama it can handle right now.
F1 wanted to invite the world to have a peek behind the scenes to distract from the unspoken fact that the sport can be mind-numbingly boring unless you love it more than life itself. Sometimes it is better to keep the back door closed. F1 has gone from reality TV to soap opera, from Carkrashians to Days of our Drives. Be careful what you wish for.
And, so, to return to the incomparable Marina Hyde for the conclusion: “Consequently, most of what people now have left to talk about is things that aren’t the sport with the Christian Horner scandal being the absolute mother lode. Asked last year if he wished F1 was more competitive, Horner scoffed: ‘There’s not one ounce of me that wishes that.’
Hmm. I wonder if there is now?”