Lando Norris has issued a scathing critique of the new season of the Netflix series Drive to Survive, accusing the producers of falsely portraying drivers for dramatic effect and with “lying” and “fabricated nonsense” to better serve their narrative.
Drive to Survive has been a huge success since it was first aired on the streaming service in 2019 and told the story of each Formula One season since. It has been credited with inspiring the recent rise in popularity of the sport and been welcomed by F1’s owners and, for the most part, by teams and drivers. But questions have been repeatedly raised over the way stories are told and edited by its production company, Box to Box Films.
Related: ‘You get hooked so quickly!’ How Formula 1: Drive to Survive became the apex of TV documentaries
In the latest season, released this month, Norris plays a prominent role in his fight for the title with Max Verstappen and has earned praise for his open attitude and honesty with the film-makers.
However, before the first race of the season, Norris, who went on to take pole position during qualifying, was deeply unhappy with what he believes was the way producers manipulated footage, specifically to suggest he and Verstappen were at odds when the pair remain good friends.
“They need to show the truth about people more,” he said. “I’m not a fan of fake stuff. I want facts, I don’t want made-up scripts and fabricated nonsense, which there is. The portrayal of Max and how we were against each other so much. They don’t need to create.
“There’s drama, they can just show the facts of the drama. They don’t need to do anything more than that. They need to come back to reality a bit more, it’s drifted too far away.”
Norris won his first grand prix in Miami last season, which was portrayed in the series as a close contest with Verstappen when in fact the McLaren driver won comfortably. Verstappen was shown looking unhappy at the result, footage that had been filmed not in Miami but at the Dutch Grand Prix later that year. It has since been declared an “error” and removed.
Verstappen had been pleased for his friend’s success and went out to celebrate with him that night. Norris was concerned that viewers may form opinions based on selective editing.
“To portray someone in an incorrect way, people are going to have their opinions of that incorrect person, it’s almost lying in some ways,” he said. “I just don’t think that’s correct. I don’t think you can paint someone in the wrong picture when it’s not the truth. I don’t think it’s fair for anyone in the world, especially as it has such a big following and so many people love it, people believe what they see.”
Verstappen has also long been critical of the series and has limited his participation in it. “I watched two episodes, but I was not very impressed. It’s just not my thing, faking rivalries,” he has said.
Netflix began filming the eighth edition of Drive to Survive at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix. Norris acknowledged it had contributed to Formula One’s surge in popularity and understood why its behind-the-scenes access was so popular with fans, but felt it should shift the emphasis from drama to documentary.
“The one thing they need to get right is showing the truth about the people of F1, the drivers, the engineers, the bosses,” he said. “That’s the most important thing. To lose that, they lose the truth of the point of having it.”
A spokesperson for the producers of Drive to Survive said: “The stories we tell across a series of Drive to Survive are not fabricated, the narratives clearly follow real events. In order to help make Formula One appeal to a wider audience, we tell these stories in an entertaining and compelling way.
“The series is produced under incredible schedule pressure and sometimes mistakes do happen. When these are pointed out to us, as was the case this year with some footage of Max post the Miami Grand Prix, we move to correct these unintentional errors.”
A Formula One spokesperson offered support for the show: “Drive to Survive has been a very important part of growing the sport and reaching new audiences,. We should focus on the positive impact of the series and not criticise something that has been hugely beneficial to the whole sport.””
