The X-rated F1 era starring Bernie Ecclestone, Ron Dennis and Flavio Briatore

Michelle Foster

Don’t for a moment think the Netflix cameras bring out the inner diva in the F1 team bosses, Christian Horner saying it’s always been there, fans just didn’t see it.

From Guenther Steiner’s foking rants to Horner and his Mercedes counterpart Toto Wolff squaring off in a team principal meeting, Netflix has caught some of the best behind-the-scenes moments in recent times for the Drive to Survive docuseries.

In the latter instance, Wolff had a go at his rival team bosses for putting drivers’ lives at risk because they wouldn’t budge on the porpoising issue, Horner actually told the Austrian: “Are we playing to the cameras here? I think this is probably better off camera.”

Wolff hit back: “I don’t care. If you think this is a little game on performance, I’ll tell you, you are very, very wrong.”

Horner later said he believes there was “an element of theatre going on in that meeting” which begs the question do the team bosses’ inner divas come out when the cameras are rolling.

“I think people were like that, you just didn’t see it,” Horner told the Financial Times.

“Now you’re starting to see the dynamics in teams with the drivers, the team principals, the engineers, the way they’re working with the drivers, some of the rivalries.

“Of course that was always there.

“I mean when I started in sport there was Bernie Eccleston running it there with Max Mosley, you had Ron Dennis running McLaren, you had Flavio Briatore at Renault, you had Jean Todt Ferrari.

“If there’d been a Netflix camera around in those days that would have definitely been X rated but yeah it’s always been there.”

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The Red Bull team boss also weighed in on Drive to Survive as a docuseries, one that his lead driver Max Verstappen boycotted as he felt they were twisting the truth.

“Remember,” he said, “that it is a TV show. They capture hours and hours of content and the problem is they put a microphone on you at the beginning of the day and their cameras are embedded with the team – there are so many cameras around in F1 you don’t know which one is Netflix, somebody else or whatever – and you forget that they’re there.

“And then you get to the end of the season, the end of the year, and they tend to send you through the clips of just you and your team and they don’t show you how in context to the others.

“And you say, did I really say that? Did I really call someone and ‘see you next Tuesday’?

“You say you can’t put that in there, there’s part of the car in there, there’s technical, and that’s the only get out of jail card that we’ve got is that there’s some technical IP that we don’t want them to see.”

Granted a bit of creative leeway, Horner concedes some days he’ll be the good guy, others the bad, and in some episodes he’ll be both.

He added: “Of course they’re making a TV show so they’ll create a narrative that they’ll portray you – sometimes you’re the baddie, sometimes you’re the hero, sometimes you’re both in one episode.

“But the effect that it’s had on the sport has just been insane. I mean it’s been an absolute game changer for Formula One in bringing in an entirely new audience to watching Formula One racing.”