Cooped up at home during the festive period? Feast your eyes on these new Formula 1 documentaries
RACE TO PERFECTION
Sky Documentaries/sky Sports F1
If Race to Perfection were a box of chocolates, it would be one of those giant tins of Quality Street which in happier times would do the rounds of the office at Christmas. There is much within to delight but also, sadly, rather a lot which would have been better left out – and, inevitably, once the tin has been passed around a few times, only the least interesting offerings are left.
A collaboration between Sky and Formula 1 to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the world championship, Race to Perfection charts those seven decades over the course of seven episodes, and promises exclusive interviews and never-before seen archive footage. Screened first on Sky Documentaries and Sky Sports F1, it’s also available via Now TV.
As a documentary series about Formula 1, it’s axiomatically of interest to fans and at its best it offers up moments or nuances you genuinely hadn’t seen before.
Felipe Massa’s revelation that Michael Schumacher admitted to him that he’d crashed deliberately at Rascasse during qualifying for the 2006 Monaco Grand Prix is among the early gems. There are poignant moments, too, such as John Watson describing how he cradled Niki Lauda’s head in the aftermath of Lauda’s enormous accident at the Nürburgring in 1976.
Much of the archive material is both fascinating and emotionally resonant: there’s a period interview on the farm with Jim Clark, a man whose voice has been seldom heard; and the footage of Ayrton Senna reacting with genuine horror to Roland Ratzenberger’s accident at Imola in 1994 viscerally evokes the horror of that weekend.
Where Race to Perfection falls short is its approach to storytelling. The very best documentaries maintain a laser focus on narrative, but here too many of the episodes lose sight of whatever their theme purports to be, descending into a procession of talking heads who disappear off at tangents or throw up superfluous details which are left unexplained.
There is a general absence of structure, a sense that it has all been assembled based on what interviews the makers had in the can and what archive footage they could get hold of. During some of the later episodes, archive footage (often repeated from earlier instalments) is splashed with no context simply to provide a different visual backdrop while the talking heads ramble on. To appeal to non-core fans it would have benefitted from more discipline in the structure, more ruthless editing, and some sort of narration to tie the various themes and threads together. As it is, it’s an evocative but aimless romp through the past.