F1 fans rage over manipulated Drive to Survive clip

F1 fans online appear to have found a new thing to be angry about. Good for them.

Small bits of the latest Season 8 of Drive to Survive have begun to make their way online through various teaser clips and trailers, and some keen observers have noticed that some of the audio doesn't quite match up to what happened in real life.

A five-second clip showing Lando Norris tucked up behind Oscar Piastri at the Canadian Grand Prix, with the audio featuring what appears to be a radio call saying 'Lando, you’re the fastest car on track. Let’s use the pace'.

That message, however, came from two different voices – the first seemingly Norris' race engineer Will Joseph, and the second Piastri's engineer Tom Stallard.

Fans have been reposting the clip with various comments of their own, ranging from 'this is why I hate DTS' to calling the show an 'abomination'.

(If you look closely, you'll also see that the wide overhead shot and the in-car shot are from completely different sections of the Canadian Grand Prix, with the barriers changing colour, river completely disappearing, grandstands appearing, etc., because this isn't exactly a high level conspiracy cover-up situation here).

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Is Drive to Survive edit a betrayal of fans?

Does the fact that a couple of clips were edited together for a narrative effect matter a great deal? It's hard to say for certain without the context surrounding the clip, but almost certainly not. After all, Norris being told 'you have a fast car, make the most of that' is not a bombshell in almost any situation.

Is it an example of dishonest editing from the DTS producers? In the most technical sense, yes. In a practical sense...no, not really.

It's important to remember that Drive to Survive is barely a documentary in the traditional sense. This is a series which F1 absolutely sign off on, which everyone featured has agreed to be a part of. This is not some Bowling for Columbine style exposé. This is an F1 sanctioned advert with the veneer of documentary stylings laid over it.

Drive to Survive's job is to tell eight bite-sized stories over the course of an F1 season. That means editing. That means taking a little bit from Audio A and a little bit from Audio B and splicing them together to make things run a little bit more smoothly for the viewer.

That means telling stories slightly out of order, to give them a better flow to the people who are finding out about them for the first time. It means leaving out things that might've been important for the context of the actual F1 season, because they aren't important for the micro-story that's being explored. You want to see all the twists and turns of the title race? That's what 'watching the actual races' is for.

If anything, DTS interweaving a couple of clips together for the sake of expedience is probably the most documentary-like thing about the whole process. Pointing out this edit isn't a gotcha, it's just a sign that they're doing their jobs. And maybe that you can differentiate between very similar English accents at an above-average level. Give yourself a pat on the back.

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