Formula One witnessed an awry end to the 2021 season as Michael Masi’s intervention cost Lewis Hamilton a record eighth world championship title. Two months later, most of the F1 community is still finding it hard to get over the Abu Dhabi GP incident, with many reckoning the crucial call on the penultimate lap to be extremely biased to the eventual world champion, Max Verstappen.

While a partial group of fans is accusing Masi, another group of fans has been firing the blame at Netflix. Many opined that Netflix’s arrival has somehow affected the sport’s primary goal, which has now allegedly moved from sporting integrity towards TV drama.

Well, the two executive producers of the world-renowned TV series, Formula 1: Drive to Survive, have contradicted such suggestions. Speaking to BBC, James Gay-Rees insisted that such fan-led theories are “a total red herring“. Furthermore, he clarified that Formula 1 doesn’t run on Netflix.

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“It’s just people under enormous pressure making decisions in the moment. There’s no way anybody was thinking: ‘Will this play well on Netflix?‘”

Gay-Rees contradicts the F1 DTS statement of Max Verstappen

Back in 2021, Verstappen reckoned that DTS provoked a lot of fake rivalries and hence affirmed that he wouldn’t be giving himself to any of the interviews with the filming crew.

“They faked a few rivalries which don’t really exist,” he said. However, Gay-Rees doesn’t seem too troubled by the Dutchman’s comment on the world-famous TV show.

“It’s a headline that everybody’s jumped on, but I think it’s a very subtle thing. Nobody could point to any misrepresentations or inaccuracies in the series,” he said. But, quite interestingly, Wolff, too, joined Verstappen to chorus his criticism for DTS.

“They create a spin to the narrative. They put scenes together that didn’t happen. I guess you’d say as an insider: ‘Well, that’s different than how it was.’ But we’re creating entertainment, and that is a new dimension of entertainment,” the Austrian said earlier this week.

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Overall, these are rather strong words from the leading F1 individuals and it wouldn’t be much of a surprise if the DTS team took note of the comments. Hence, are we in for a more realistic season 4 of DTS which could air anytime now on Netflix?