Drive To Survive is back: are you a Toto or a Christian boss?

Monday distraction time

Drive To Survive is back and it raises the big question: are you a Toto manager or a Christian manager? It’s Monday and I should be writing this week's story right now. But there’s nothing like a deadline to focus me on something off-brief.

I’m not a big sports guy, but I’ve loved F1 for decades for it’s brutal hybrid of sport and mega-budget business. I’m there as much for the behind-the scenes skullduggery as the racing itself. Finally Netflix made those antics into a TV show, and it exploded F1’s popularity worldwide. Every major sport is rushing out their own copy version.

Lots of friends have become massive F1 enthusiasts after watching DTS. Many of them women, which is great and a remarkable achievement for motorsport. Netflix have developed it into a kind of Marvel Universe of characters. The pantomime villain Fernando Alonso. The philosophical Kontiki tour-bus driver that was late-career Seb Vettel. The Shakespearean grievances of Max and Lewis after the bend-the-rules, title-deciding antics of Abu Dhabi 2021. The fire-proof superpowers of Romain Grosjean.

A big, Daniel-shaped hole

The 2023 racing season is a grim viewing prospect with the loss of everyone’s favourite lovable Australian. Daniel Ricciardo had more screen presence than all the other drivers put together. His presence in DTS was the single largest factor in driving F1’s renaissance in the US. The show was originally pitched in as a Red Bull behind the scenes show, with Daniel as the main character. Ferrari and Mercedes refused to co-operate with that, so the show evolved into what we see today.?

But don’t worry, there’s a new funny, lovable Australian star for us to get behind. Not Oscar Piastri. I speak of our adopted hero Valtteri Bottas. Valtteri spent his summer hols in Adelaide with his partner, pro cyclist Tiffany Cromwell. If you haven’t seen the video of him getting a sick Aussie mullet/moustache combo, then doing the beach walk in thongs and a VB singlet, stop reading now and watch it. The man’s character has blossomed since leaving the deadly serious Mercedes Benz team, and the love for him in Australia is deep.

Formula 1 has done more than any other sport to introduce us to the tundra-dry genius humour of Finns. Kimi Raikkonnen’s DGAF media personality was funnier than anything Ricky Gervais ever did, and the world loved him for it. His “leave me alone I know what I’m doing” radio responses to his pit crew were more entertaining than the actual races, and the whole thing makes me want to go drinking with Finns. Except two hours in I would be in a coma and the Finns would barely be breaking a sweat.

The Guenther Steiner Show

Then there’s the other breakout DTS star, Guenther Steiner, the sweary, endlessly-frustrated team manager of low-budget minnow team Haas. A few F1 journalists took to calling DTS The Guenther Steiner Show, and he is worthy of that.

Who can’t relate to someone trying their best on a shoestring budget, winning a Russian fertilizer oligarch as title sponsor, who then strong-arms the team into hiring his piggy-eyed idiot son as a driver? If the horrors of the Ukraine invasion and the ensuing trade blockades can have any silver lining, it is that no members of the Mazepin family will be seen in the Formula One paddock ever again.

I fucking love Guenther Steiner and everything he stands for. Plenty of us have been in a Haas-style business, and he handles the endless setbacks with the right mixture of good humour and salty language. He has plenty of bad news to break to people, and he does it in honest, no-bullshit style. And on the rare occasion Haas has a race result up there with the mega-teams, the whole world is cheering Guenther on.

Are you a Toto or a Christian boss?

So here’s your cats vs dogs, Mickey vs Donald question that runs right through DTS: who’s your management role model? Are you a Toto or a Christian kind of boss, or aspire to be?

I’m on Team Toto. Superficially, Red Bull stands for adventure and fun times. Yet Christian Horner is a smug weasel, and his word cannot be trusted. Plus he leaves all the dirty work to Red Bull super-villain Dr Helmut Marko, a Dr Strangelove figure lurking at the back of the garage, always read to snuff out a promising driver career mid-season.

You could never accuse Mercedes-Benz of standing for fun times. It’s a serious, Germanic team. Yet Toto seems more honourable in an old-school way. He’s calm and thoughtful, yet clearly cares a lot. I do enjoy watching him reduce a Beyer comms headset to shrapnel when the team makes a big clanging error.

But it’s a subjective call. What’s yours? Let me know, so I can get distracted in the comments for the rest of the day when I should be doing something else.