24 December 19, 2021The Sunday TimesSport
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e-mail [email protected]. For all other reproduction and licensing inquiries contact Licensing Department, 1 London Bridge St, London, SE1 9GF, telephone 020 7711 7888, e-mail [email protected]David
Walsh
Final race in Abu Dhabi
was the day when sport
blurred into Netflix and
made entertaining
the fans more
important than
the result of a
championship
— not that F1
actually cares
per cent. Sky’s Europe chief
executive, Stephen van Rooyen,
talked about F1’s rising popularity in
the UK. “Sky has broken its own F1
audience record for a third time this
season,” he said. “Sunday’s stunning
spectacle will keep our customers
talking about Abu Dhabi until next
season rolls around.”
Along the way our youngest gently
advised that I shouldn’t consider
Drive To Survive like a normal
documentary. The makers
embellished events. They played up
conflicts that didn’t exist. I asked for
an example. The one-time McLarenteam-mates Lando Norris and Carlos
Sainz were portrayed as having a
fraught relationship when in fact they
got along well. How can they do that,
I asked. They do it because it makes
the narrative more interesting.
Sound effects are added and then
there was the riveting episode that
told the story of Grosjean’s horrific
crash at the 2020 Bahrain Grand Prix.
Watch the footage of the flames that
engulfed Grosjean’s car while he
remained pinned in the driver’s seat
for 27 seconds and every time there is
astonishment that he got out alive.
The last word heard from Grosjean
before he hit the barrier was “f***”.
Brilliantly dramatic except that hisThey know that
Drive To Survive
has got me paying
more attention to
their sport and that
is what matters
I
n the early weeks of the first
lockdown, our youngest
discovered Drive To Survive.
Previously she hadn’t been
interested in Formula One but
the documentary series
produced by Netflix and Formula
One had changed that. “You’ve
got to watch this,” she said. “There is
so much drama, so many interesting
characters.”
For most of my life, F1 passed me
by. Admittedly at great speed. I am
part of that F1 constituency who may
watch the start of a grand prix but
seldom hang around for the entire
race. Nothing against the sport. More
like Melvin Udall, the Jack Nicholson
character in As Good as It Gets, when
the well-intentioned Nora comes to
his door and speaks about God’s
goodness and how bad things happen
for the best. “Sell crazy someplace
else, we’re all stocked up here,” says
Nicholson, as he closed the door on
Nora.
Well stocked is where most of us
are when it comes to TV sport. If you
don’t watch the football on Sunday
there is the sense of having missed a
part of the day. Watch it and there is
the certainty of having missed the
whole of the day. TV football, rugby,
golf, racing, Gaelic games, cycling
have hijacked weeks, months, years
of my life. Still, she who had fallen in
love with F1 could not be fobbed off.
While the rest of the country was
listening to Professor Chris Whitty, I
was getting to know Guenther
Steiner.
Steiner is the boss of Haas, a
relatively new and struggling F1
outfit. Season one, episode one:
Haas’s drivers Kevin Magnussen and
Romain Grosjean have qualified sixthand seventh on the grid at the 2018
Australian Grand Prix. This is a
terrific effort by Haas and promises to
deliver more grand-prix points than
the team might ordinarily accumulate
over five or six races.
But then, pretty much immediately
after making pit stops, the two Haas
cars retire from fourth and fifth. In
the pit a wheel had been incorrectly
fitted on the Haas cars. Even to the
casual follower, this seems like
mindblowing, not to say dangerous,
ineptitude. Poor Steiner has to call
the team owner Gene Haas and
explain what went wrong. With
Netflix’s cameras trained on him and
sound recorders picking up every
word, he speaks to Haas.
“It’s unbelievable, the two guys
putting the wheel on, they were new.
F***, fourth and fifth, Gene, fourth
and fifth. We look like rockstars huh,
and now we are a f***ing bunch of
wankers. Bunch of f***ing clowns.”
You are right, this is incredible, I said
to our youngest. What have I been
doing listening to all those Jürgen
Klopp/Pep Guardiola/Eddie Jones/
Justin Thomas interviews when
Steiner’s private conversations with
his boss are part of the F1 package?
The storylines were interesting,
the race footage extraordinary and it
felt like Drive To Survive dragged you
into the room, shutting the door
behind you. It wasn’t difficult to work
out the deal. They gave you a
brilliantly produced soap opera and
you took more interest in the sport. It
seemed a fair exchange. F1 got its new
audience. According to The New York
Times, the television audience in the
US almost doubled in the two years
from 2018. The female audience for F1
is reported to have increased by 30expletive was taken from a previous
incident and grafted on to that scene.
There is also Lewis Hamilton’s
reaction to the crash: “It’s a little
scary, makes you feel vulnerable.”
Hamilton actually said this about
catching Covid but the guys at Netflix
thought it worked for the Grosjean
crash and got it in there. They call
Drive To Survive a documentary but it
is not that. Documentaries are
supposed to be factual accounts of
things that happened. What
happened in Abu Dhabi last weekend
was the moment F1 became Drive To
Survive, the moment a sport became
pure entertainment.
Rory McIlroy is not someone that
you are always guaranteed to agree
with but when he spoke with Chris
Solomon for the No Laying Up
podcast about the F1 controversy, he
made a lot of sense. Solomon asked
McIlroy if golf was an entertainment
sport or a participation sport. The
player said it had to be entertaining
because otherwise people wouldn’t
want to participate.
“Are you not in a huge hurry to
turn golf into F1?” Solomon asked.
“Oh my gosh, no,” McIlroy said. “Not
after last week. Netflix is about to do a
documentary with the PGA tour, and
that’ll be a wonderful thing and great
for the profile of some of the players.
However, what happened on Sunday
in F1 is that the narrative was more
important than the result, and that
can never happen in golf. The story
can never be more important than
the actual result.”
I agree with McIlroy. Formula One
won’t mind. They know that Drive To
Survive has got me paying more
attention to their sport and that is
what matters.Players have a
right to refuse
a vaccine – my
gripe is lack of
transparency
I have admired Jürgen Klopp’s
position on vaccination which, of
course, reflects my view that the
vaccinations offer us some degree
of protection against Covid. The
Liverpool manager has said that his
players and backroom team are 99
per cent vaccinated and has
rejected the notion that he is not
entitled to advise his players on
vaccination. Klopp says he has
spoken to experts and has the right
to pass on that information to
anyone asking. Of course he has.
Klopp likens anti-vaxxers to
drink-drivers, which is unfair
because those who drive their cars
under the influence are committing
a crime. But it is easy to understand
Klopp’s point; he believes that the
person who refuses to be
vaccinated shows the same
disregard for their fellow human
beings as the drink-driver. It is a
view shared by many.
Pep Guardiola feels players
should understand that vaccines
exist to protect the individual, their
family and the rest of society. The
Manchester City manager believes
players shouldn’t be pressurised
into vaccination. It has to be their
decision. Not everyone will agree
with that. My gripe relates to the
lack of transparency.
There is a general view that all
information related to who is and
isn’t vaccinated is private. This
indeed is how it should be.
However, the clubs are also
reluctant to disclose the percentage
of their players and staff who refuse
to be vaccinated because such
disclosure may lead to criticism and
abuse of their players.
Perhaps this, too, is
understandable. But looking at the
24 postponed games in the Premier
League and the EFL yesterday, one
thought struck me. What if those
teams with a relatively high
percentage of unvaccinated players
were the same teams now suffering
from high infection rates and
causing so many games to be called
off? This could be the case but there
is no way of knowing.
It could also be the case that
there is no correlation between the
percentage of unvaccinated players
and varying rates of infection at the
clubs. It is certain there will be
plenty of postponed games over the
Christmas period but those who
run the game will ensure that we
never know whether vaccine-
hesitant players have been a
significant part of the problem.Max Verstappen’s
win on the last lap
against Hamilton
produced a
gripping narrativeWHAT I’M READING
An American Marriage
by Tayari JonesTerrific story, beautifully told and an
utterly believable novel.HASSAN AMMAR*