Calling all race fans! Are you excited for the seventh season of Formula One: Drive to Survive (DTS)? After 2024’s revolutionary season, the Netflix documentary series will hit the streaming service on March 7, 2025. The 2024 Formula One (F1) season saw new race winners, controversial battles, intense crashes, and petty drama between teams and drivers. Netflix has even gone as far as to call it their “biggest season ever.”
Here are our predictions of what we will and won’t see this time on DTS:
Episode One:
Going into the 2024 Formula One season, fans expected Red Bull driver Max Verstappen to walk away with a win almost every race weekend. In 2023, Verstappen dominated most of the season by winning 19 out of the 22 races. However, in 2024, the wins were spread across seven different racers––Max Verstappen, Carlos Sainz, Charles Leclerc, Lando Norris, Oscar Piastri, Lewis Hamilton, and George Russell––something the sport hasn’t achieved since its record-matching eight winners in 2012.
In the first episode of season seven, Drive to Survive will focus on the year being groundbreaking for Formula One. Previous seasons of this motorsport series have been critiqued for its inability to keep racing exciting. In 2024, race fans saw drivers like Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri receive their first wins in Formula One. From the rainy Canadian Grand Prix to Verstappen’s excellent climb from P17 to P1 in Brazil, the F1 season has been jam-packed with so many exciting moments that the season’s pilot episode will set the stage for a season of drama and glory.
One key moment of driver politics that will surely be brought up in episode one is Lewis Hamilton’s controversial move to Ferrari. The now ex-Mercedes driver kick-started the F1 2025 “silly season” when his contract was leaked before the start of 2024. Now ex-Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz will be driving for Williams Racing, ex-RedBull chief technology officer Adrian Newey is moving to Aston Martin, and five more rookies have been added to the grid! The pilot will probably establish these underlying politics before diving into the more exciting on-track moments.
Heroes and Villains:
George Russell and Max Verstappen ended the season in a huge rivalry. One that certainly contains enough drama for its own episode, though it remains to be seen if DTS will feature it. The producers could set Russell up as an antagonist in the series, though he didn’t pose much competition to Verstappen throughout the season. Russell and Verstappen’s battle occurred off-track and in the media pen, which raised many questions surrounding the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile’s (FIA) involvement with driver politics. This multi-layered rivalry could be covered in season seven, but it will be interesting to see who they choose to be the antagonist: Verstappen, Russell, or the FIA.
McLaren has always been portrayed as a bit of an underdog in the Netflix show, as their previous seasons’ faults have left the racing team with poor race results and unhappy drivers. In 2024, however, McLaren raced away with the constructor’s trophy, so it isn’t hard to imagine that the team will be painted as the hero in season seven. If they do choose to go a different route, it’ll be interesting to see the series highlight the mistakes McLaren made this year as well. Their bad strategy call during the Hungarian Grand Prix led to a controversial first win for Oscar Piastri. Is it possible that McLaren will be posed as an antagonist for their drivers?
Lando Norris is a driver who will most likely be given the villain treatment this season due to his rise in Formula One. The young Brit stood as the only antagonistic force against the championship winner, Max Verstappen, and during times when he celebrated his achievements, fans began to villainize his character. Controversial radio messages that targeted his opponents, risky on-track moves, and ever-present drama with his teammate caught the attention of race fans. Of course, online spaces have overdramatized the situations at hand, but Netflix has never been known to be nice. Norris will most likely be an antagonist.
Fresh Blood:
The producers certainly will not pass up the opportunity to introduce the new rookies who joined in the middle of the 2024 season. One rookie they should give screen time to is Ollie Bearman, the Formula 2 driver who filled in for both Carlos Sainz at Ferrari and Kevin Magnessuen at Haas, scoring points for both teams and making history at only 18 years old. It would be a great way to introduce Bearman to Netflix audiences as he will be one of the six new rookies on the grid for the 2025 season. Bearman is sure to capture viewers’ hearts and hopes due to his boyish charm and debut races in F1. His relationship with his father is also heartwarming to see in contrast to other drivers, such as Max Verstappen, who may not have the healthiest father-son dynamic. Bearman opens up the door to plotlines of what the future of F1 will look like with new blood coming in.
The other outstanding rookie is Franco Colapinto who replaced Logan Sargeant at Williams Racing. After Williams let Sargeant go, Colapinto stepped in and made quite the impression within his first two races, scoring points. He is the first Argentine in nearly two decades to drive in F1. In a sport that can always use diversity and where fans like underdog stories, Colapinto is set up for a Cinderella-type story based on his almost instant success in scoring points. He showcases the side of F1 that is hardly talked about, the potential of rookies and F2 drivers in a sport where seats opening up is rare.
The producers will most likely create a storyline to invoke emotions at the replacement of Sargeant, while framing Colapinto as a young new talent that is quickly becoming a fan favorite. Another way they could take Colapinto’s storyline is by introducing him as a sort of antagonist for Sargeant and show the pressure Sargeant was under to score points in races, yet was replaced by a young F2 driver who was immediately placing in the top ten after only his second race.
Kimi Antonelli was also announced as being Hamilton’s replacement for the 2025 season and managed to crash Russell’s car in a practice run. Russell was not impressed and that could set the scene for the next season’s plotline that DTS producers might want to explore and exaggerate between Antonelli and Russell. It could add some drama to a potential Mercedes storyline that would also deal with the fallout of Hamilton announcing he is leaving the team he’s been with for twelve years to go to Ferrari. Jack Doohan could also be featured in an Alpine episode as he raced in the last Grand Prix of the season, replacing Esteban Ocon.
There is potential for the producers to end season seven with the six new rookies in 2025 introducing themselves as a way to set up both the new season of F1 but also the next season of DTS. It can be a tease and a hint as to what the producers are hoping will happen in 2025 as the producers have done similar things in the past.
Let’s Talk About Ferrari:
Like every other season of Drive to Survive, this one will likely have an entire episode set aside for Ferrari. With Lewis Hamilton’s shocking move at the beginning of 2024, Ferrari has been a hot topic of the season. The pressure to perform well was instantly on, especially after a few years of disappointing engine failures and strategy calls. With a seven-time world championships winner signing a two-year contract, fans, drivers, and other teams have started to wonder what tricks they might have up their sleeve. Hamilton’s entrance to the team also means Carlos Sainz’s departure, which will spark lots of drama. Sainz spent four years with the team and was a crucial element for many of their big sponsors. When Sainz left for Williams, his sponsors went with him.
The Ferrari episode could also cover Charles Leclerc breaking the “Monaco curse” that followed him his whole racing career. Winning his home race in Monaco was a moment that brought tears to his eyes as the Monegasque driver spoke about how much it would mean to him. In the past, he had struggled at his home grand prix to turn pole positions into wins, but in 2024, his dreams came true. For a truly heartwarming moment, the DTS producers will talk about his family, his connection to the streets, and finally, his emotions about winning his home race, something every F1 driver aspires to do. In 2024, Lecerlc also won Monza for the second time in his career, which would be another emotion-filled moment in DTS that works to glorify Ferrari’s golden boy.
Your Biggest Enemy is Your Teammate:
Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri both had their first wins this season, though not without their share of struggles and controversies. Due to team orders, Norris had to give Piastri back the lead and first place in the Hungarian GP. Team orders were used once again during the Brazilian GP sprint race, with Piastri letting Norris through to take the podium. Both these moments open up potential storylines to pit the McLaren drivers against each other and explore the use of team orders in a race. DTS has been a fan of pitting teammates against each other to cause tension and drama in their storylines. The tension in whether Norris will follow team orders is ideally suited for a dramatic storyline that could tie into his championship hopes against Verstappen.
Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz are another teammate pair that has seemed to butt heads this season. There were many times that the drivers directly fought on track, either for a podium or a race win. In Las Vegas, the tension between the two of them boiled over when Leclerc took the radio to say: “Yeah, I did my job, but being nice f*cks me over all the f*cking time, all the f*cking time. It’s not even being nice, it’s just being respectful.” Tense moments like these fit perfectly in Netflix’s overarching themes of gossip and drama that comes with driver politics. Paired with Sainz’s unexpected departure from Ferrari, the team’s desire to prioritize Leclerc over Sainz could present a key moment of conflict for the series.
The Final Farewell:
Daniel Ricciardo has been the face of DTS since its start. The charismatic Australian driver quickly showed his personality and gained many new fans, including the DTS production team. His farewell episode will be sure to pull heartstrings and leave viewers a little misty-eyed.
After fourteen years in F1, racing for three different teams, and eight wins, Ricciardo said goodbye to the sport. Ricciardo’s career was full of “what if’s,” from having left Red Bull at the end of 2018 for Renault to then leaving the team for McLaren in 2021 and then being dropped and going back to AlphaTuari in 2023, Ricciardo seemed to have made choices that never panned out for his championship hopes.
Ricciardo’s last race was full of questions and rumours about whether he was really leaving the sport after the Singapore Grand Prix. His exit was only announced after the weekend was over. He was replaced by Liam Lawson for the last six races. Though it wasn’t confirmed until after the race, his team helped him push for the fastest lap as a final goodbye, a goal that he succeeded in doing. However, Ricciardo was not given a proper send-off or goodbye from the team he called a family. Instead, it was awkward and drawn-out, leaving Ricciardo alone to handle reporters constantly asking if this was going to be the end for him. After his exit was announced, F1 drivers took to Instagram to express their goodbyes and admiration for Ricciardo.
Though he has finished his time in F1, he has left his mark both on and off the track and won’t be forgotten. I’m sure DTS will acknowledge his long history in the sport by reminiscing on his past career highs and lows in a farewell episode. There is potential for other drivers and team principals to talk about Ricciardo’s legacy in the sport and the way his exit was handled.
The People Off-Track:
Will Buxton will most likely reprise his role as one of the resident journalists who explain terms, statements, and other aspects of the sport in a way that the average viewer could understand. Buxton has also provided many one-liners that have become memes in the F1 community.
It remains to be seen if Danica Patrick will return as well. Patrick is a former NASCAR and IndyCar driver, as well as a pundit for Sky Sports F1, remaining there despite many controversial comments she made about both the sport and women in motorsports. Skipping her scenes wouldn’t mean missing out on any crucial information as Patrick has admitted to not caring about the cars. Buxton, at least, provided humour and a way to speak to people in easy terms. Patrick seems to have provided nothing of substance as there are plenty of other women involved in various aspects of F1 including journalism that would make much better spokespeople, such as Ruth Buscombe, Naomi Schiff, and Natalie Pinkham who are all knowledgeable, well-spoken, and have made a career in F1 while supporting other women as well.
What We Won’t See:
Christian Horner was involved in a sexual misconduct controversy that most likely will not be featured in the show as it was not in favour of Horner. The allegations surrounded controlling text messages and behaviour towards an employee of Red Bull’s F1 team. The woman was suspended with pay as a result of a lengthy investigation, while Horner was cleared of any wrongdoing. Throughout the process, Horner remained in charge of the F1 team and faced no repercussions. It can be assumed that due to Horner being cleared and the appeal dismissed, Netflix will not want to acknowledge the allegations or other aspects of the investigation that could paint Horner in a bad light.
Another massive topic that will probably be ignored in this season is Verstappens’ quarrels with the FIA. After a press conference at the Singapore Grand Prix, Verstappen was ordered to complete community service for using offensive language in front of the media. A lot of the drivers did not take well to this and proceeded to write a letter to the FIA on behalf of their union. The order was also followed up by a silent protest by Max Verstappen himself, where he refused to answer journalists’ questions in the conference room. With the new highly restrictive and controversial FIA regulations that were recently put out, it is unlikely that these controversies will get any screen time to help the FIA maintain their public image. The sport has done all it can to ignore the driver’s opinions and beliefs, and DTS will reflect that too.
Netflix has their work cut out for them to try and narrow down the dramatic, action-filled 24 races into just 10 episodes! These are just predictions, so who knows what will and won’t be shown! Here at Her Campus UVic, we’re hoping that Netflix will address important issues such as Verstappen’s quarrels with the FIA and the allegations that Horner faced at the beginning of the season, though that is a long shot. There is no shortage of events that can be covered. The producers must have been salivating and dreaming about all their options due to the silly season that Hamilton kicked off early in the year. March 7 is coming fast, and we can’t wait to see which of our predictions will come true!