The 2021 finale prompted questions about the uneasy marriage between professional sport and its broadcast partners, including Netflix. Controversial decisions were made mid-race, live on television, creating tension that is still simmering now. At the time, not a few people wondered if those decisions had been made for the benefit of the drivers or the viewers, many of whom were new to the sport and expecting from live races similar levels of drama created by Netflix’s editors. Fans were right to ask: what is real, and what is constructed? Guenther, I don’t know about you,” he says. “But after a few years, it could be the stress, it could be expectations to manage…it’s hard.” I think Yuki has improved in his approach to racing, showed more respect to the sport and took it more seriously,” he later concludes on a job well done as he prepares to leave for Alpine. It is clear throughout that every thought and decision for Steiner is about what is best for Haas and its workforce.

Written like a dairy, Haas F1 Team’s principal Guenther Steiner takes us on a trip through the 2022 Formula 1 season. I am not a biography type of guy, but being a Formula 1 fan since young age this was a must read for me. The dairy style writing makes it so that it doesn’t feel like a biography but rather feels like an inside view of a team principals mind. Things always seem to be shit for poor Guenther and constantly threaten to get worse. “It never rains, it pours on me,” he moans at one point in the series, head in hands. The third season’s standout episode recounts an incident in which a Haas car, driven by Romain Grosjean, slams into a wall and explodes into a giant fireball during an active race. Grosjean narrowly survived the disaster, suffering burn wounds on his hands in the process. The accident happened during an already precarious moment for Haas, when Steiner was in the midst of determining whether to reboot the team with new talent. He decided to let go of both his drivers, including Grosjean. (Nowadays, the Swiss French Grosjean is racing in the IndyCar Series and seems to be having a great time touring the United States.) Some of the most interesting anecdotes relate to Niki Lauda, the three-time F1 world champion who died in 2019. Lauda first brought Steiner into F1, from rallying, in 2001, helping him to run the Jaguar team. Although the project would prove unsuccessful and be sold by Ford to Red Bull in 2004, it gave Steiner experience at F1’s top table and with Lauda’s forthright, honest approach.So to 2023 and after giving Schumacher ample opportunity to prove his worth, Steiner showed a ruthlessness not immediately associated with his character in axing the German, replacing him with the experienced Nico Hulkenberg. It makes for a formidable driver pairing as Haas look to cement a midfield spot. All this from a man who earlier that weekend had complained of a “pretty nasty” and “not fair” interview on German television in which his treatment of Schumacher was questioned. PlanetF1.com recommends How galling must it have been personally for Szafnauer to suddenly lose Alpine’s star attraction to his former employers, a team he had grown to despise? After Schumacher radios in with concerns about overheating brakes during the race, the team principal remarks to the rest of the pit wall: “He’s worried about overheating the brake. F***** hell. He’s going so slow, he doesn’t need to brake.” His honesty is refreshing given that almost all who work in F1 are generally subjected to toeing a PR line – but not Steiner. And although happy to criticise others, he's certainly not above berating himself or being the butt of a joke.

Once inside, Codling does a great job of catering to readers of all knowledge levels. If you've never caught a race, but want to be more knowledgeable for chats at the watercooler, then this book offers the key information you'll need to get up to speed on the world of F1 racing. The information is well laid out, with seven chapters focused on different aspects of the sport. Guenther Steiner–centric episodes are exercises in Sisyphean struggle, and season four’s Haas story line is no exception.I saw Toto reacting in a very emotional way,” he added. “Maybe he was under pressure for their performance at the time? Maybe he was under pressure because he promised something to someone? I don’t know. McLaren’s capture of Piastri – “the driver that gets us most excited,” Zak Brown says when targeting a Ricciardo replacement – drew envious glances from Horner, who reveals he once spurned the opportunity to sign the youngster managed by former Red Bull race winner Mark Webber. Haas had already instructed Steiner during one of their regular phone conversations to “have a little talk with Schumacher” following his first major crash in Jeddah, expressing his concern that Michael’s boy was “getting in over his head.”

Later, in Episode 7, Netflix do what Netflix do by imagining a storyline that Sergio Perez was somehow fighting to save his seat heading into Monaco, when in reality his excellent start to the season had already made a contract extension a forgone conclusion. Yuki is very much still Yuki – still as innocent, immature and occasionally vulgar as ever, farting away to his little heart’s content in the passenger seat of Pierre Gasly’s hire car.Anyone who tunes into Season 5 expecting a totally transformed Tsunoda from last year is going to be disappointed. You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here. Drive to Survive’s fourth season, which follows the ups and downs of 2021’s racing, was released on Netflix in the past couple of weeks, and has been eagerly anticipated, not least because this past season was a humdinger. At the time of writing, five days after it came out, viewers had already screened 28 million hours of the new series, according to Netflix, and within a week it had become one of service’s top 10 TV shows in 50 countries, including the UK and Ukraine. If it’s tennis players, they don’t get anything from Russia to play tennis so they should be able to play as they’re professional sportsmen,” he begins. “But most of the athletes at the Olympics are semi-amateur and they’re also employed by the army or police. Those close to the regime in that way shouldn’t participate.