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Rory ChildCritiques (1)
A slick, faceless product that follows a comprehensive "formula junior" season (the first series of the 2019 season) with a round-robin recap of each episode's trifecta of qualifying-races-sprints, and an encore featurette of the winners and how badly they want to score points for a superlicence, a possible chance to sit in F1 or at least be a test driver. The races themselves are edited into often less than thirty seconds, so it's a confusing jumble of passing cars from which nothing can be read (not to mention the lack of context, momentum, dynamics and "story of the race"), and the featurettes about the young guns are of the "I have to work hard, I'll give it my all" variety in a hundred and one ways. Everything is conflict-free (ignoring the fact that out of 20 guys, at most one or two will have a chance to make it to F1 in a given season), ironed out, and basically without merit. The season "as the race weekend went by" could have been more entertaining, the material is undeniably there, F2 can be proper fodder on the track, in the garage and behind the scenes (especially there). After all, it is full of very ambitious guys with such big egos and no instinct for self-preservation, where the rivalry "against everyone, including teammates" is perhaps even more pronounced than in F1. And with essentially the same cars across the starting field, it's all about their skill. I wouldn't have expected the production values and overall quality of Netflix's "big brother" (it's clear that this was made in response to the interest in F1 generated by Drive to Survive, and it's an attempt to do the same on a smaller scale for F2) but not so little. It’s an impersonal product that would look dull and useless even on the official formula YouTube channel, where, by the way, you’ll find better content. Worst of all, since this is (or should be) about possible future hopes for F1 (teams as such are redundant here), you learn nothing about anyone, you’ll get more information from Wikipedia. And since nobody without at least a passing knowledge of F2 would watch it, it is a mystery who it is actually intended for. The second series learned a lot of lessons (read "copied working practices from the aforementioned F1 brother"), it's better conceived in terms of drama (covid, less "results"), editing (races suddenly have space and momentum), it's less rushed, it offers stories across the season, it's much (much! ) more about the drivers beyond the "I'm working, I have to, I'm up to it" and the backstage (behind the scenes, officials, driving academies, ties to big teams, life off the track, etc.), the emotions (the smoothness, and even the team's "fuck here, fuck there" radio sounds), and it's noticeably more interesting, informative, and overall better in every respect. | S1: 2/5 | S2: 3/5 |
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