Drive To Survive Season 7

What is Drive To Survive?

Drive To Survive – or Formula 1: Drive To Survive to give it its full name – is an award winning behind the scenes documentary series which is a collaboration between Formula One and Netflix.  The Netflix crews are given access to the paddock and follow a team or teams for each weekend; sometimes this results in pure TV gold, for example when they happened to be following Pierre Gasly’s then team Alpha Tauri on the weekend of his totally unexpected win at Monza in 2020.

Each season of Drive To Survive has 10 episodes and covers the previous year’s Formula One season, starting in 2019 with Season 1 which covered the 2018 races.  Drive To Survive Season 7 is due to be released in early March 2025 and covers the 2024 Formula One season. In complete contrast to the 2023 season when the actual racing was pretty boring due to Max Verstappen running away with the drivers’ championship very early, 2024 was a thriller with SEVEN different drivers winning 2+ races each, a maiden win and championship challenge from Lando Norris, George Russell disqualified from a win at Spa, Ollie Bearman becoming the super sub to end all super subs, Alpine’s shock double podium in Brazil, Sergio Perez struggling throughout the second half of the season and much, much more.  DTS also highlights what’s going on behind the scenes so expect to see terrible strategy calls, power struggles, LOTS of coverage of Lewis Hamilton’s shock move to Ferrari and Gunther Steiner’s sudden exit as well as the conclusion to the story arc of Daniel Ricciardo who Netflix have been following since season one.

What’s Controversial About Drive To Survive?

Many Formula 1 fans have criticised Drive to Survive for its overly dramatic representation of real life events such as Romain Grosjean’s horrific crash at the Bahrain Grand Prix in 2020 and for its exaggeration (some say invention) of tensions between drivers (we expect to see that again in Season 7!)  The series has also staged certain events for dramatic effect, such as the telephone call between Sergio Perez and Christian Horner when Perez was signed to Red Bull for 2021, and George Russell’s signing to Mercedes for 2022. It’s also well known for splicing footage and radio commentary from different races together in what some consider to be a misleading way (this was exacerbated by Covid restrictions during the 2020 season as the film crews were limited in where they could go).

The biggest controversy, though, is not so much to do with Drive To Survive itself, but to do with attitudes towards the influx of new fans it brought to the sport.  Some longer standing fans of F1 apparently feel that “DTS fans” are not proper fans – a view endorsed by Red Bull team principal Christian Horner during an interview on talksport when he said “it’s bringing in a lot of young girls because of all these great-looking young drivers”.  This kind of view, which absolutely reeks of gatekeeping and misogyny, is thoroughly deserving of the robust pushback it has been getting on social media and indeed during the interview itself.

How To Play Drive To Survive Bingo

The original Drive To Survive bingo card was designed to be single player but this year’s is playable.

• Tap to start creating a set of cards to play as a group.
• If you like you can add some more items at the bottom of the list in the “Enter words/emojis or numbers” box and/or change the background image, colours or grid size before using the Generate Bingo Cards button.
• You’ll then be taken to the invitation screen where you can print out a set of cards that aren’t the same as each other.  Alternatively you can invite your friends via email; they’ll each be sent a link to their own unique card which can be printed out or played on screen.  Anything you mark off on screen as you watch will stay marked off so you can leave a break between episodes and keep your progress.  Have fun!