F1 Drive to Survive Season 6: Spoiler-free review

Welcome to our spoiler-free review of the latest instalment in Netflix’s F1 blockbuster series. If you’d prefer to read a more detailed verdict with a few (small) spoilers, click here for our full Drive to Survive Season 6 review.

What is Drive to Survive without its characters? Writing a spoiler-free review of the Netflix hit series can feel like a generic F1 soap opera. Team-mate tiffs, long running contract sagas, bosses talking tough and the inevitable catchphrases? Check, check, check and check.

After five seasons, some are tiring of the format. Overlaid with spectacular on-track footage, the show has appeared too much like a marketing arm for F1, with viewers unable to see the woods for the saccharine sporting cliches in more recent series.

There were even rumours of changing the format in an effort to regain its va-va-voom or cancelling it altogether.

But that was hardly likely in F1’s age of excess. This season and beyond we’ll have more races (round car parks) than ever, more sprint-quali-something-or-others, more corporate partnerships on wheels (Stake and VISA CASH APP, but no Andretti thank you) and equally as importantly, another instalment of Drive to Survive.

Even so, the series that supercharged its sport now has many challengers. These come from rivals, like Amazon’s cookie cutter football series All or Nothing and NASCAR: Full Speed (clearly up all night thinking of that one), but also in the shape of friendly fire – DtS producers Box to Box are using a copy ‘n’ paste approach in making tennis, golf and rugby union versions of its breakout grand prix success.

So can DtS maintain…shudder… pole position? And also improve on its lacklustre recent efforts?

Well, there have been changes, and not just on the production side. It’s quickly clear that both the new series and its protagonists scream self-awareness.