"Drive to Survive" says its own awkward goodbye to Daniel Ricciardo

Daniel Ricciardo is the first person to talk to the camera on the first-ever episode of Drive to Survive, and from that moment on he would be framed as a world champion in-waiting by the docuseries. His goofball charm would captivate F1 agnostics as the show shot to relevance during the pandemic, and a whole new audience for the sport watched along as his career zigged and zagged from team to team, hopeful contender to F1 expat — and finally, last season, to a driver without options left, when he was unceremoniously (and awkwardly) dropped by the Racing Bulls before the U.S. GP last all.

And even though the soon-to-arrive seventh season of Drive to Survive (reaching Netflix on March 7) has had plenty of time to reckon with the loss of its favorite character, the show — like Red Bull last September, doesn't quite know what to do with the moment. 

“The Netflix story isn’t working,” Helmut Marko says during the eighth episode of the new season; an episode largely dedicated to the end of Ricciardo's run in F1. “Ricciardo will come out of his bad stretch and get back into Red Bull Racing — that’s the story Netflix had planned.” 

Through the episode, you can feel the producers hoping that Ricciardo gets what he so badly wanted last year: to replace a flailing Sergio Perez at Red Bull, to escape his junior team purgatory, to get one more shot at podiums.

“I would love to be teammates with Max [Verstappen] again and complete that fairytale story. But it’s not going to happen by thinking about it, I have to go and action it,” the 35-year-old Australian tells Netflix cameras at the start of the season. Christian Horner chimes in, “The range of options for him are so extreme: he could either find himself in a Red Bull Racing seat or back on the farm in Perth.”

At one point during the episode, while at the British Grand Prix, Ricciardo meets with Red Bull’s communications boss to discuss the possibility of him replacing Perez. “Christian’s taking his time to see what happens here. He needs success,” Paul Smith told Ricciardo. Meanwhile, Smith is heard instructing RB reserve driver Liam Lawson to describe himself as “respectfully” hungry for the seat.

In the episode, we get to see Lawson more than "respectfully" hungry — Drive to Survive seems to actively frame the young New Zealander's passion and drive as flaws compared to the affable Ricciardo. “It’s a frustrating thing when I’m watching drivers underperform, because I feel like I can do a better job,” Lawson says. “I never want someone to have their career turned upside down … but I’m not here to be friends. I need a seat.” In another part of the episode, he tells RB CEO Peter Bayer, “I can't do it much longer, just hanging around watching races. I’m losing my mind.”

Photo by: Netflix

Being pitted against a fan-favorite, eight-time Grand Prix winner isn't fair for Lawson — but equally, doesn’t serve Ricciardo’s DTS storyline either. (Spoiler alert: Lawson isn’t the reason he would be axed by RB mid-season.).“I think we’re better looking ahead than looking behind,” Horner at one point says of his decision to replace Ricciardo.

Unbeknownst to Horner, Ricciardo is shown in the episode quietly wrestling with similar thoughts.

“I guess I don’t want to admit it … maybe I ask the question now,” Ricciardo says, slyly alluding to his retirement. When producers ask him to reveal the question he has in mind, he’s reluctant. “It’s too vulnerable,” he says candidly.

The next time Ricciardo sits down in front of the DTS cameras, it’s for his final interview. “This is it,” he says with a finality that wasn’t present two years ago, when he briefly exited the sport. “My dream was to be world champion, and there were years along the way where I genuinely felt like it was going to happen,” he tells the camera. “I got close. But if I was a world champion sitting here today, does it change how I feel or how I view myself? I don’t think so.”

Photo by: Netflix

Drive to Survive Season 7

Photo by: Netflix

It's a poignant moment for the man whose dream drove so much of the show early on. Except now, instead of being the A-plot, it's inelegantly shoehorned into the middle of an episode.

It's possible that DTS didn't want to go through the motions twice; the show had already eulogized Ricciardo at the end of its fifth season, when he lost his seat at McLaren. Or maybe, in a season packed with no shortage of on-track excitement, producers opted not to make more out of the number two driver on a bottom-ranked team losing his seat. Whatever the thought process in the editing room, you wouldn't have thought this was the man without whom DTS may have never gotten past season one.

In true Ricciardo fashion, he ends the episode by writing on the clapperboard: "From S1 to S7. It’s been a ride. Arriverderci!" It marks 68 episodes and a long ways from the man who told the world, “I’m Daniel Ricciardo, and I’m a car mechanic.”