“Everything we make is massive so it wasn’t really a surprise!” jokes James Gay-Rees, one of the masterminds behind Formula 1: Drive to Survive, with his very first line.
He really is joking. Diving into the Formula 1 universe was hardly a safe bet for executive producers Rees-Gay and Paul Martin of Box to Box Films.
Now, as the fourth season of their record-setting Netflix docuseries is launched into the public domain, the pair have a brief moment to catch their breath and reflect on the evolution of the show and its stunning global success.
In an exclusive interview with RadioTimes.com, Gay-Rees said: “You never know how these things going to work out. You have no idea at all. The worst thing you can possibly do as a filmmaker is try to second guess your audience and try to plan for this kind of reaction because it doesn’t work out that way.
“These things tend to be come down to timing. It was right show, right time. It’s just so pleasing because it’s an incredibly hard show to make. If nobody watched it I think we’d be pretty suicidal but thankfully, lots of people seem to be. It seems to be growing, which is unusual.
“I’ve got a friend with an 18-year-old daughter in Los Angeles. She hadn’t even heard of Formula 1 and now she’s transfixed by the show. If we knew what it was, we’d be really rich because we could basically do it over and over again.”
Martin also didn’t expect the series to take off to quite the extent that it has but, with the benefit of hindsight, can see all of the ingredients that have combined to create a Formula 1 feast for the world.
He said: “If you go back and look at all the kind of the constituent parts of it, you can see why it would have turned into this.
“It’s a unique take on a kind of a familiar world. It’s a truly global sport, you can be Dutch and like Max Verstappen and watch it because you like Max. It goes beyond sport. At the time, we definitely didn’t expect people to react in the way they have.”
It has been a breathless few months for the pair. There were just 73 days separating the wildly dramatic, wildly controversial final race of 2021 and the first day of 2022 pre-season testing. Add another 16 days between the return of pre-season testing and the launch of Ft:DTS season 4.
Gay-Rees said: “I was in Barcelona last weekend sitting down with Christian [Horner] and Toto [Wolff] and they’re like: ‘We’re here again, it’s started again’. They’re all so knackered from the last year, they had a quick Christmas break but then they’ve been developing the car the whole time. It’s tough for us. It’s harder for them.”
Martin added: “We almost haven’t had time to stop to really think about how we make it. Literally, we’ve had people work on it from the first day of season one and they’re still on it now. Four years of just non-stop Formula 1. Continuous.
“You don’t get much time to process on the show, you’re already, even before the season has finished, looking ahead to the next year thinking: ‘Ok, if we do this again, what could that look like.’
“We were well positioned to deal with [the final race] and follow it. I was at home watching it – I wasn’t in Abu Dhabi – but it was like a gift and a curse. This is amazing but oh my god we’ve only got four weeks to edit this episode. How the hell are we going to deal with this?”
In terms of what viewers should expect from the new season, Gay-Rees says the formula remains unchanged but the focus does indeed revolve around the gift of such an unbelievable title battle between Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton.
He said: “The levers you can pull don’t change in terms of that you can film people in the paddock, you use the racing in certain narrative ways, you use interviews in different ways.
“What is obviously a different ingredient this year is that there was a proper championship battle which we hadn’t had in a previous season. We made a virtue of that in the first few seasons – we didn’t have Mercedes and Ferrari in season one – and so it was about the middle pack or the back of the pack, just shining a light on characters that didn’t get that much exposure normally.
“There are some great characters, as we know like the Guenthers [Steiner] of the world, but season 4 did become slightly more about the fight for the title because you couldn’t avoid it.”
Formula 1: Drive to Survive season 4 arrives on Netflix Friday 11th March. Seasons 1 to 3 are available now on Netflix. If you’re looking for something to watch, check out our TV Guide or visit our Sport hub.
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