The third season of the Netflix docuseries Drive to Survive presents us with the greatest behind-the-scenes action in the show’s history.
A major contributing factor to this is that the filming crew had to be stationed with a particular team across a race weekend.
This undoubtedly allowed the filming crew to gather far more byte-worthy action and for the team memebers to begin to feel comfortable in their presence.
Haas boss Guenther Steiner even claimed that their integration was so seamless that he even forgot they were there.
A major talking point has been Ferrari’s engine and its legality.
This has been documented well in the series. While Ferrari returned after the 2019 summer break with blistering pace, team boss Mattia Binotto claimed that they did not do anything illegal to achieve this.
As things panned out, the team won a number of races in a row, even those where top speed of the engine is imperative to notching a good result. They ended up dominating qualifying sessions too.
This led to Mercedes and Red Bull getting curious about just what Ferrari had done to achieve such results.
They wanted the legality of the engines to be investigated. This is confirmed by Red Bull boss Christian Horner in the show.
FIA came out with a verdict that clarified the technical regulations regarding fuel consumption.
The next race saw Ferrari fall completely off the pace, as Leclerc finished almost a minute behind Mercedes and Red Bull.
Prior to the start of the 2020 season, FIA claimed that ‘irregularities’ had been found in the Ferrari power-plant, and that an undisclosed agreement had been made to prevent a recurrence.
Binotto, however, stands by the fact that his team was up to no wrongdoing.
“We never broke the rules, those are just rumours. There’s not much else to add, it’s a closed issue.”
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