[Image: F1/ Facebook]
The new season of Drive To Survive promises to feature a new but old villain to unseat Christian Horner from his throne of controversy: Flavio Briatore.
Horner was the guy everyone loved to hate during previous seasons, with his antics in the Red Bull pit getting as much coverage as his time hanging out at his country mansion home in Oxfordshire with Spice Girl wife Geri Halliwell.
Season seven starts off quite similar – with Horner at the wheel of his 4×4 locked in conversation with Geri – but it’s the WAG’s words that give viewers a taste of what’s to come: “You never know what life’s going to bring.”
Too true. Episode one is titled “Business as Usual”, and features the two biggest stories in F1 this time last year: Lewis Hamilton’s move to Ferrari, and Horner being accused of “inappropriate behaviour” by a female colleague. Horner beats his chest at a feisty press conference where McLaren’s Zac Brown calls for “greater transparency” into Red Bull’s investigation, and calls Brown “f****** annoying.”
Horner sets the tone for the new season by telling Red Bull’s communications director in episode one: “Zak is p****”, and then we’re off to the racetrack.
The following episodes of the hit Netflix series follow Mercedes’s search for Hamilton’s replacement, Carlos Sainz’s move to Williams, with a smidge of an episode focused on Daniel Ricciardo’s emotional second retirement and Guenther Steiner’s sacking at Haas.
Naturally all the drivers get their airtime, but then Flavio Briatore, who joined the Alpine team last summer after 15 years out of the sport following the Crashgate scandal, enters the pit.
There is surely much more to come from the 74-year-old and the show is filled with moments where he tells his naysayers “People are jealous of me,” and “Everyone makes mistakes.” Perhaps the first sign that he might be one of our new villains is when Briatore tells Jack Doohan: “I control you every millimetre.”
Once banned from F1 for race fixing after his involvement in Renault driver Nelson Piquet Jr’s deliberate crash in 2008, Briatore is back and looking to take his seat at the adults’ table.
While many shows have tried to capture behind-the-scenes action, Drive To Survive seems to have expertly tapped into all the drama and glory that surrounds F1 racers, their teams, and their love lives.
F1 fans, start your engines.
[Source: Independent]
