Magnussen: Netflix left the worst out of Haas episode

2020 F1 season

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A sensational episode on Haas which appears in the new series of Netflix’s Drive to Survive only part of last year’s disastrous season for the team, according to Kevin Magnussen.

The feature includes behind-the scenes footage of a furious team principal Guenther Steiner berating Magnussen and team mate Romain Grosjean after the pair collided in the British Grand Prix at Silverstone.

However there is even more to the story than, according to Magnussen. “I have seen that one that I’m in,” he said, “and they didn’t even put the bad things in.”

The Haas pair made contact at turn five on the first lap of the race. Both drivers picked up damage and the team retired shortly afterwards.

The collision marked a brutal low point for the team after a series of poor races. Prior to the weekend Haas’s title sponsor Rich Energy announced on Twitter they would terminate their sponsorship of the team, leading to a protracted and public falling-out between the two.

“I think it’s a very exciting story,” said Magnussen. “There was a very, very big episode for when it happened.”

Guenther Steiner, Drive to Survive season two, 2019
Steiner berated his drivers for their race-ending clash
He described how the growing tensions at the team led to the confrontation between Steiner and his drivers.

“We were in such a low point with everything. That’s where we really were getting depressed about the season not going right, and, you know, there was a lot of shit going on in the background with sponsors, et cetera.

“It all sort of just came together that weekend and we all lost it a little bit. But it truly made us stronger and it’s gotten us closer together. And you would all be surprised to see how it is in real life between us.”

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2019 F1 season

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38 comments on “Magnussen: Netflix left the worst out of Haas episode”

  1. Wait, I thought they only showed the worst of Haas painting them in a very poor light.

  2. Did you buy Gunther a new door Kevin?

  3. Yawn. It’s literally tiresome how the Netflix producers devote so much time to such an uninspiring team. It was interesting to watch the episodes about Haas in 2018 but not this time around. They were virtually invisible on the track and no pathetic drama makes it seem more interesting.

    1. Agree. I had to break that episode into watching it in three parts to get through it.

      1. I’m guessing its because of the American interest with HAAS.

  4. The part that confused me was the lack of control by steiner on the team.
    A lot of f@#€& but no direction and little leadership.
    Dissapointing.

    1. I agree with you. It seems like the team needed a strong capable leader when things were going sour, but Steiner only put more preassure on the team and the drivers, which, as Kevin mentions in this article, came together at Silverstone. As team principle he has the overall responsibility for managing and motivating the team and drivers.

    2. Complete garbage “leadership” by Steiner. No wonder the team is in shambles at the first sign of hardship.

      Also, Grosjean was fully ar fault for the collision in Silverstone. Put the blame where it properly lays and hold him accountable, nothing difficult or controversial about that.

      I know that I would never be a haas fan.

    3. Magnus Rubensson (@)
      4th March 2020, 12:43

      Steiner reminded me a bit of the scene in “Trains, Planes and Automobiles” when Steve Martin is being denied a rental car.

  5. After watching the Neflix episodes im fairly confident they will never get back on top with Steiner in charge. He seems to create the worst working climate possible in the group, If I had a boss like that I would quit my job on the spot. Although it creates good TV, thats for sure.

    1. @maisch I quite like him, though. I don’t really find him as someone who seems to create the worst working climate possible in a group.

    2. I really like Steiner for his forthright attitude, but I have to agree. Comparing that episode to the one focusing on Merc and how they dealt with everything going wrong at Hockenheim just makes it seem like Toto is a vastly superior leader. Then again, what can we really tell from a Netflix episode?

      1. Merc had a bad day in the middle of a great season, whereas Haas were having an atrocious time over a protracted period. I don’t think you can glean much about their relative strengths off the back of those two episodes.

        1. matt90, wasn’t Steiner’s behaviour largely the same during the 2018 season as well, where Haas seemed to start the season off strongly, but did seem to fade a bit towards the latter part of the year?

          I suppose one question worth asking comes from the fact that, in all four of their seasons in the sport so far, they’ve tended to score fewer points in the latter half of the year and tended to become less competitive. So far, they generally haven’t been able to match the development rate of other teams in the midfield pack – resources may play some part in that, but equally it does beg the question of whether the team is fully utilising their resources.

  6. I don’t know, the second season of the project is, in my eyes, rather clumsy. Netflix is rellying on the same tricks too much, Ricciardo has been depicted solidly in the first season but the second simply lacks something exciting. The structure of the episode between him and Sainz brings hardly anything new, the rivalry being pratically non-existant in reality. The very first episode was a mish-mash of everything (covering Red Bull, Haas, Ricciardo and bits and pieces of Ferrari and Mercedes), it simply lacks the knack and excitement of the first season.

    1. The very first episode was a mish-mash of everything

      @pironitheprovocateur I just watched the first episode on my commute into work and my overriding thought was “this is ok, but where is it going?” There was a definite lack of direction in the first episode, it felt like the Netflix people were reintroducing the key characters to the audience assuming they hadn’t watched any F1 since the first series came out.

      Also, making out that Verstappen passed Vettel on the last lap of the race in Australia was very very poor in my book. I don;t think they should resort to downright lies just for the sake of making things seem exciting…

      1. I think people misunderstand the first episode.

        It’s for people that don’t follow F1, or do so casually. It introduces all the major players for the rest of the season. It’s meant to be an introduction to the rest of the season.

      2. Agree to the last point, first I found it little baffling and actually had to check whether Verstappen really made his pass earlier, I didn’t expect something so obviously untrue to enter the episode.

      3. They do this later on in the season when they imply that Max’s lunge on Lewis in Monaco was also on the last lap.

    2. not sure it was actually clumsy, I guess this was intended because it’s made for people who don’t really follow F1 like we do. What ruined it for me was the style: too often they looked for something sensationalist or gossipy, with artificial rivalry being introduced from time to time.

      The best parts for me were seeing the short glimpses of fun and banter between team principals, which makes them more human than their usual interviews portray them – like the ones with Gunther and Toto or Christian and Cyril. I wish that they showed more of that… Also liked the fact that both Hamilton and Toto, when they presented themselves in the 1st episode, forgot the complete name of “Mercedes AMG Petronas F1” team while Valterii didn’t :))

    3. Yeah the Sainz vs Ricciardo episode was really weird for me. I guess they created a rivalry bc Ricciardo chose Renault over McLaren, which then put Sainz into the McLaren, which was then the quicker car. But I never felt like there was any sort of rivalry between the 2 drivers. The Netflix team definitely got them to mention each others names a few times and they stuck it all together, but the whole episode was just kind of weird. I feel like a better structure would’ve been Renault vs McLaren, 2 teams who should be better than they are, aiming for 4th, one team succeeding and the other not so. I haven’t watched the whole season yet so maybe they do mention it, but there was no mention in that episode of Renault losing so many points so close to the end after running 5th and 6th in Bahrain and then both cars retiring within a lap.

  7. I was seriously confused as well how in the episode showcasing the rivalry between Vettel and Leclerc, they completely left out their Brazil incident, which was really the climax of the rivalry. And the episode didn’t really add a lot more insight to their relationship that we as fans didn’t already know.

    1. Was SO disappointed by that. Could have spent half an episode at least on the build-up and fallout from that incident.

  8. Bruno Franca
    2nd March 2020, 9:15

    The only reason I imagine to Haas maintain it’s drivers is respecting contracts and not racing in 2021

  9. I binged the series this weekend, but why was S2E1 almost the same as S1E1? As if every show reintroduces everything again at the first episode of a new season. Episodes were short luckily, but I won’t rewatch them.

    Alfa and RP were not covered.
    Almost nothing on the Ferrari rivalry.
    Almost no Verstappen or Hamilton.
    Very odd chronology in the season and the stories with it.
    Haas misery became tiresome. With almost two eps on that, it was too much.

  10. I liked steiner in the first series but having seen ep02 all I saw was a shouty, sweaty boss. I had head chefs like that, doesn’t inspire anyone, just makes the team hate you.

    1. And I meant sweary, not sweaty

      1. @broke1984 I think you got it right the first time, if HAAS F1 don’t improve Steiner will be sweaty with worry about his job I’d think.

        1. To me it looked a lot like Gene Haas wasn’t saying what he was really thinking because of the cameras, but that maybe he wasn’t too impressed with Steiner. I wonder if this season is just as bad, he’ll start making changes.

          1. Ricky Erickson
            26th March 2021, 1:46

            That team will always struggle while Steiner is at the helm.

  11. I think the series should be renamed “Ricciardo Haas to survive”

  12. The show is not really created for the hardcore fans of F1. It’s purely a show to try and bring in new fans to the sport and give the more causal viewer an overview of the previous season. I actually quite like a lot of the show and sure you sometimes have to ignore how fake the stories are but the point is they do highlight there is so much more that goes on in the sport than 20 cars circling a circuit.

    I’m sure they can make further improvements in the future but this is new territory for all involved including the teams so everyone is still cautious about how to proceed and how much they should share.

    On the Haas front, I think it highlights just how much pressure there is on people like Steiner to deliver results. When you consider the WCC standings, there are 5 teams who expect they should be in the top 5 Mercedes, Ferrari, Red Bull, McLaren and Renault. Of the remaining spots 6-10, nobody wants to finish less than 6th so that is 4 teams who will be under immense pressure. Obviously sometimes a top team will underperform and that opens up rare opportunities that everyone else hopes to grab. The sport can be very cut throat in the midfield and I think they captured that well.

    1. The first season showed some nice views behind normally closed doors. This year, they exaggerate and manipulate shots trying to create an atmosphere. I do not think I am interested in a third season this way.

  13. It was interesting that: No Lando Norris, no Canada drama, and a few other things. I think Lando was a good story, but they didn’t show any sort of thing that would put F1 in a bad light.

  14. I’ve just watched the second episode, and I’m full up on Steiner for the foreseeable future.

  15. I think they handled the spa tragedy well.

  16. I think Steiner is doing a really good job under difficult circumstances, basically a small budget team. That’s a high pressure job. I think the British crash was more Romain’s fault but I can’t say conclusively without a compete and thorough analysis.

    The problem with F1 is that it has become a completely caste system based on budget.

  17. Ricky Erickson
    26th March 2021, 1:30

    The biggest problem HAAS has is their absolutely horrible leader, Stein. He never speaks unless he has something negative to say about something or someone. Pure negative energy, thinking that a good strategy to motivate people is to berate them and walk around throwing a fit like a pedantic child. It’s the main reason it’s so hard to watch them….Stein just has everyone so depressed. HAAS needs to get rid of him.

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