Grand Prix Driver

Perhaps this was aimed at people who don't follow F1. For those who do it was a superficial review of problems from a year ago.

Purportedly a behind-the-scenes look those shots were carefully planned and orchestrated.

We see some engineering outputs. Some carefully constructed sound bites. We don't see passion.

Given that MCLaren is now led by a marketing man perhaps we should have expected this approach. But I didn't feel any more connected with the team at the end of the four episodes than I did at the start.

That might also be why they have had trouble finding a title sponsor. Everyone knows what McLaren once was. It's not so clear what someone gets today.

Like the team, the documentary could have been a lot better.

I follow the F1 racing scene casually. Meaning that i enjoy watching the races, but i am not deep into the material. So for me it was a quite entertaining look behind the scenes. I can understand that a die hard fan would be underwhelmed and give it a lower score.

The technology center in Woking - England, where the car is designed and built, is simply impressive and has a very clean look. I would work there, too :)

With only four episodes it is very easy to watch. If you liked the first one, then the rest is a nobrainer. I watched it in one sitting. I really appreciate, that it is NOT a PR Commercial from McLaren. You notice that they made a lot of mistakes during the build of the car and the executives adress them. You can feel the frustration of the drivers after the first tests on the track and the poor performance of the car.

If you're into sports documentaries give it a go!

I got the feeling that this was supposed to be a longer series that was going to celebrate a newly triumphant year for McLaren after two years of disaster. But when it didn't turn out that way they just cut it to four short episodes with a lot of hoopla about the launch. To have made this an effective series you'd need to show the letdown that followed, but the show just skates over that. In short, some bits for the F1 fan like me, but not enough, and not enough drama for the non-fan viewer, so really not very good.

I suppose if it was 2018 (the year before Drive to Survive was released) I might think this was in interesting behind the scenes look at an F1 team. Fernando Alonso is barely in this, despite being one of the top drivers on the grid at the time this was filmed. Instead the 4 episodes are weighted towards Stoffel Vandoorne, who ended up being a huge disappointment and has largely been forgotten.

The fact that there are only 4 episodes suggest to me that this series got a deal for a 4 episode "pilot" and once Amazon saw how boring it was they declined to pick it up for a full season. I know that they likely spent a tidy sum on the pilot episodes, but for the sake of pride they should have deleted this series from their library once they saw Drive To Survive.

This four part documentary is basically a McLaren marketing ploy that lays the blame for the last three years fiasco clearly at the feet of Honda.

Four really abysmal twenty minute episodes that are clearly not aimed at F1 fans and didn't really tell me anything that I didn't already know.

It seems to me that after the ousting of Ron Dennis the team is now being administered by 'marketing managers' rather than racers. This cant be good for the worlds number one motor sport.

Dreadful, really, really dreadful.