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    What to Watch This Weekend: TV’s Juiciest, Glitziest Sports Show

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    The new season of “Formula 1: Drive to Survive,” which has spawned a legion of imitators, is available now on Netflix.Lewis Hamilton, as seen in “Formula 1: Drive to Survive.”Dan Vojtech/NetflixSeason 6 of “Formula 1: Drive to Survive,” is now on Netflix, and in many ways it remains as fun and juicy as ever — full of petty immaturity, glamorous lifestyles and alluring European impishness. In the show’s hands, a race for 10th place is as compelling and high-stakes as the one for first — partly because that’s how the sport can work but also because Max Verstappen, the driver who came in first in 19 of the 22 races, didn’t participate in the show this season.The enormous success of “Drive to Survive” spawned, and continues to spawn, an entire league of imitators. “Tour de France: Unchained” and “Make or Break,” about surfing, come the closest to “Drive” in capturing athletic intensity, general charisma and dazzling locations. The raw brutality of cycling and the sanguine individuality of surfing are fascinating in their own rights, but the glitz factor, a pillar of “Drive,” is largely absent.“Break Point,” about tennis, is plenty exciting but more diffuse; because it includes both male and female pros and because of the nature of tennis tournaments, its athletes are not all in competition with one another. “Full Swing,” about golf, is an unlovable spectacle of cowardice and greed. “Six Nations: Full Contact,” about rugby, has plenty of scrappy charm, moment to moment, but doesn’t gel overall. The drivers on “NASCAR: Full Speed” all blend together.Series that follow a sport for a whole season are the clearest descendants of “Drive.” But other access shows like “Quarterback,” “Under Pressure: The U.S. Women’s World Cup Team,” “Angel City” and “Race: Bubba Wallace” are adjacent, too. All claim to offer an insider perspective but are too superficial and uncritical to have any real purchase — and they don’t compensate for that superficiality with sheer volume of story lines the way “Drive” does.“Drive” will not reign forever, particularly because it continues to list toward reality show. And not a nutritious reality show; a Bravo one. A big episode this season centers on Lewis Hamilton re-signing a contract with Mercedes, and it plays out as a tale of commitment and integrity for all parties. He would never race for Ferrari, we’re told. But the first few seasons of “Drive” got me motor-pilled enough that now I follow the sport’s comings and goings, and I know that Hamilton has indeed signed with Ferrari for the 2025 season, much in the way “Vanderpump Rules” fans all knew the ins and outs of Scandoval eons before it made its way into the show.“Drive” already has to contend with the fact that, like all sports shows, it is straightforwardly spoilable, so additional contrivances just add more drag. Luckily there’s still plenty of easy pleasure within the series, at least another few seasons of gas in its tank. More

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      Before Gran Turismo Inspired a Movie, It Drove Jann Mardenborough to Greatness

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      The PlayStation video game’s realistic cars and racetracks helped Jann Mardenborough find his calling as a professional driver.Jann Mardenborough can vividly recount the first time he ever played Gran Turismo, the popular racing video game that would completely alter his life.While seeking refuge on Bonfire Night, a British holiday full of firework celebrations, an 8-year-old Mardenborough stumbled upon the game at his neighbors’ house. He selected a violet Mitsubishi 3000GT and began racing on the Autumn Ring track. Mardenborough went on to play the game all night, and then every day after that, showing up at his neighbors’ door immediately after school.“They got so fed up with me turning up at their house, one day the wife came across the street, knocked on our door and had in hand the PlayStation and GT 1, and gave it to my parents,” the 31-year-old racecar driver recently recalled during an video interview.It’s the origin story to the other origin story: the true, improbable one depicted in the film “Gran Turismo,” which was directed by Neill Blomkamp and opens on Friday. The movie dramatizes Mardenborough’s journey, from gaming in his bedroom to winning the 2011 GT Academy — an annual competition that, from 2008 to 2016, put the game’s best players in real vehicles — to driving formula cars professionally.The eight main games in the Gran Turismo franchise, which debuted in Europe and North America in 1998, are known for their scrupulously reproduced cars and exacting racing simulations. In the months before he attended GT Academy, Mardenborough upgraded from a plastic PlayStation controller to a homemade wooden racing frame along with a steering wheel and pedal that he bought with money his parents gave him for good grades.The competition was a godsend for Mardenborough, who was trying to sell car parts on eBay after losing a retail job; he had dropped out of college after realizing that studying motor sport engineering did not mean he could actually drive the cars.Even so, Mardenborough said he was skeptical of his chances. He had played Gran Turismo no more than an average teenage gamer after his initial fixation, had never competed in a tournament and had barely any experience driving a normal car. The first time he brought his rickety 1991 laser blue BMW E30 onto a highway was on his way to the competition.Mardenborough’s perspective took a visceral turn when he qualified for racing camp — a stretch depicted in the film that follows the finalists training in actual cars — and was given his first taste of the track.“After my first few laps, when I got out the car, I remember thinking, ‘I don’t want to go through life never experiencing that again,’” said Mardenborough, who served as a producer on “Gran Turismo” and as the stunt double for his own character.The director Neill Blomkamp, center, and Mardenborough, right, on the set of “Gran Turismo.” Mardenborough was the stunt driver for his own character.Gordon Timpen/Columbia Pictures/Sony Entertainment, via Associated PressMardenborough can eagerly describe the technicalities that distinguish game from reality — the sensation, for instance, of the vibration through the car seat — but said that much of the real-world feeling and reactions mirrored Gran Turismo.“When you race against real people,” he said, “everything is real.”Mardenborough, who is played by Archie Madekwe in “Gran Turismo,” went line by line with Sony over early drafts of the script, which he noted is mostly true to his life. The characters played by David Harbour and Orlando Bloom are both fictionalized but loosely based on real people. And a crash involving Mardenborough in Germany that left a spectator dead really happened, although detractors have complained about how the tragic event was translated to the screen.In the film, the crash occurs right before Mardenborough returns to the track for a podium finish at Le Mans, the famous endurance race in France — back-to-back events that form an emotional arc of setback and triumph. In reality, Mardenborough’s crash in Germany came two years after that podium finish, leading to criticism that the film’s timeline was edited to serve a narratively pat movie ending.“The order is the order, but those events happened in my life,” Mardenborough, who avoided serious injuries, said in response. “This isn’t a documentary.” He did race in Le Mans one year after the crash, and Mardenborough said the emotional battle the film constructed was consistent with his feelings.“When you believe the reason why you’re put on earth is to race a racing car, and then you’re asking yourself, ‘Do I still want to do this?’” he said. “It’s not a pleasant question to ask.”Mardenborough last competed in May and is talking to teams about potentially racing in the United States next year. And occasionally, the driver who fidgeted with a gaming steering wheel during our interview will still play Gran Turismo.If he were to race against his 19-year-old self in the game right now, who would win? Mardenborough thought for a moment.“Me,” he said with a competitive smirk. “If I put in the amount of hours I did back then, considering my experience in real life, I would be quicker. But all it is is hours.” More

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      Pieces of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward’s Life Together Head to Auction

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      More than 300 items that belonged to Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward will be sold in June in a series of auctions run by Sotheby’s in New York.Shackles from the film “Cool Hand Luke”; a script from the 1963 comedy “A New Kind of Love”; the wedding dress that Joanne Woodward wore the day she married Paul Newman in 1958.These artifacts, along with some 300 others, tell the story of a union between two of Hollywood’s most enduring film stars that lasted more than a half century. It began in 1953 and lasted until Mr. Newman, a magnetic titan of the screen, died in 2008 at the age of 83. Ms. Woodward, 93, a formidable talent, has kept a private life since she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2007.The objects will also take on another kind of value later this year, when they are put up for sale in a series of auctions by Sotheby’s. If previous demand for Mr. Newman’s belongings is any measure, the events are likely to be lucrative: A Rolex he owned sold in 2017 for a record $17.8 million. Three years later, another of Mr. Newman’s watches sold for more than $5.4 million.The auctions, which will take place both online and in person in New York, follow the recent release of “The Last Movie Stars,” a six-part HBO Max documentary series directed by Ethan Hawke and based on audio transcripts of interviews with the couple’s friends, colleagues and family members.Mr. Newman’s posthumous memoir, “The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man,” was also published last year.Putting a Price Tag on ArtCard 1 of 6Hot commodities. More

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      in Television

      Why Max Verstappen Has a Problem With Netflix’s ‘Drive to Survive’

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      The champion says it’s exaggerating rivalries, and he now refuses to participate, the only driver to drop out.Last year’s heated title fight between Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen drew the focus of Season 4 of “Drive to Survive,” the Netflix series about Formula 1, which was released last month.The streaming series has been a hit for the sport, attracting droves of new fans by highlighting the personalities of the drivers inside the cockpit.But those watching “Drive to Survive” to get the inside story on the championship battle noticed a significant absence. Verstappen has become the only driver to refuse to be interviewed for the series because he thought it faked rivalries and exaggerated incidents.“I’m quite a down-to-earth guy, and I just want it to be facts, don’t hype it up,” Verstappen, of Red Bull, said.“I understand of course it needs to be like that for Netflix. It’s just not my thing.”While Verstappen still appeared in the series through use of Formula 1 footage, the story of his title fight was largely told through interviews with Christian Horner, the Red Bull team principal. Hamilton, of Mercedes, took an active part in the series, engaging in interviews throughout his battle with Verstappen.Driver rivalries are central to the narrative of the show. One example came in Season 3, when an episode featured the McLaren drivers Lando Norris and Carlos Sainz Jr. While they are known to be good friends who worked well together in the team, the episode sought to depict tension in their relationship that Sainz felt was “pushed a bit too far.”Zak Brown, McLaren Racing’s chief executive, at the Grand Prix of Austria in 2021. He said the Netflix series showed the relationship between two of his drivers “a little bit less friendly than it was.”Mark Thompson/Getty Images“I think that rivalry was there, but it was in a friendly way, and they maybe portrayed it a little bit less friendly than it was,” Zak Brown, the chief executive of McLaren Racing, said in an interview. “Deep down, the rivalry was there, but outwardly they never showed it.”Norris thought the editing of the show “can make you look like you said something in a time and place which is definitely not correct,” but was happy as long as the truth was not twisted completely.“As long as they don’t overdo it and literally make someone look like they’ve done something which they definitely haven’t done, it’s good,” he said.Verstappen was more direct about how Norris was portrayed, arguing it made it look like Norris was a bit of a jerk.Formula 1 has spoken with the producers of the show and the teams after Verstappen’s complaints. Ian Holmes, the director of media rights at Formula 1, said that the producers “need to be mindful of his concerns” and that it was important for teams and drivers to feel comfortable participating in the series.But he disagreed that the series had faked rivalries. “This notion that some things are made up, it’s just chatter,” Holmes said in an interview. “At the end of the day, it is authentic. The other thing to remember, as well, is the people that walk up and down the paddock, they’re a bit too close to the sport” to step back and see the bigger picture.The balance between authenticity and dramatizing events to appeal to the audience is a challenge that documentary series often face. But Horner, whose rivalry with his Mercedes counterpart, Toto Wolff, featured heavily in Season 4 with insults and personality clashes, felt the purpose of “Drive to Survive” had to be kept in mind.“At the end of the day, it is a television show,” Horner said. “They’re taking snippets from a season-long battle and turning that into a television program. One has to remember it is designed ultimately to entertain.”Brown felt that the makers of “Drive to Survive” were “at the limit” of ensuring the show was entertaining while pleasing Formula 1’s hard-core fans. But he also said it was “a TV show, intended first and foremost to be entertaining.”Toto Wolff, left, principal of the Mercedes team, and Christian Horner, principal of the Red Bull Racing Team, at a news conference before the Grand Prix of Russia in 2021. Their rivalry was a focus of Season 4 of “Drive to Survive.”Pool photo by XPB“The numbers say people love it,” Brown said. “It’s drawing a tremendous amount of people in the sport, and I don’t think they’re presenting it as a pure documentary. They’re bringing Formula 1 to you in an entertaining way.“A little bit of creative license, I don’t have an issue with it.”The show has been turning new viewers into fans of the sport, with record crowds attending races in the United States and Australia in the past six months.“We’re happy to report, and I think our Netflix friends would be happy to report, that it was the No. 1 show in 33 countries around the world already,” said Greg Maffei, the chief executive of the Liberty Media Corporation, which owns Formula 1.“The Season 4 audience is already larger than the Season 3 audience. So it’s a huge success.”Brown found firsthand just how the show has helped increase the popularity of Formula 1 when he stayed in the same hotel as the Los Angeles Lakers last year.“Some fans were asking for autographs, and two players turned around and say, ‘Sorry, we’re not signing’. The fans went, ‘No, no, not you.’” They were asking Brown. “‘We’re Formula 1 fans.’” he recalled them saying.“You saw the players look at them and go, ‘Who is this guy?’ I can’t go through an airport now without being recognized, and it’s all because of Netflix.”Filming for Season 5 is already underway. With the exception of Verstappen, all drivers are continuing to participate, aware of the good it has done for Formula 1.“People have been very vocal about it being dramatized a little bit, but at the end of the day, you always want to show the best light of your sport,” George Russell, of Mercedes, said.“As long as it’s having a positive impact on Formula 1, I think there’s no real issue.”Sainz, who now drives for Ferrari, said Netflix was good for the sport. “It is a good thing for myself, for the brand of F1, and I will still take part if they want me to be in it.”But Verstappen said his mind would not be changed. “I’ll probably watch it and see how over the top it is, and just continue with my life.” More

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      Bob Bondurant, Car Racer Who Tutored Actors on the Track, Dies at 88

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      After a racetrack accident put him in the hospital, he pivoted to open a driving school, where his students included Paul Newman, Tom Cruise and Christian Bale.Bob Bondurant, a master racecar driver who was better known for his driving school in California and later Arizona, where he tutored actors like Paul Newman, Tom Cruise and Christian Bale for their onscreen racing roles, died on Nov. 12 in Paradise Valley, Ariz. He was 88. A death certificate provided by his wife, Pat Bondurant, said he had a “suspected immune reaction related to vaccinations.” It cited cerebrovascular disease and cerebral arterial stenosis as underlying conditions. He died at an assisted living facility.Mr. Bondurant began attracting attention in the racing world in 1959, when he won 18 of the 20 races he entered behind the wheel of a Corvette.“I am an original California hot rodder turned white hot when I started winning everything in my Corvettes,” he was quoted as saying by the National Corvette Museum, which inducted him into its Hall of Fame in 2016.He continued to win races regularly in Corvettes in the 1960s, but he also began to race successfully in other sports cars and open-wheeled Formula 1 machines, including for the elite Ferrari team from 1965 to ’66.“He was top of the line,” said Peter Brock, who designed the Shelby Daytona Cobra Coupe that Mr. Bondurant raced with Dan Gurney to first place in the GT, or Grand Touring, class at the 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race in 1964.But in 1967, Mr. Bondurant crashed during a race at what is now the Watkins Glen International in upstate New York, suffering multiple injuries, including fractures of both feet and a broken right ankle. It was a turning point.In the hospital he came up with the idea of opening a school that would teach safe, defensive driving to auto enthusiasts.The Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving opened in early 1968 at the Orange County International Raceway in Irvine, Calif. “We want to make a better driver, rather than make a faster driver,” he told The Los Angeles Times at the time. He also offered instruction in racecar driving, motorcycling and drag racing.Even before opening the school, Mr. Bondurant had some well-known students. He had coached James Garner and Yves Montand in driving Formula 1 cars for John Frankenheimer’s 1966 film, “Grand Prix.” Mr. Bondurant, who was a stunt man and technical adviser to the film, wore 16-millimeter cameras on the sides of his helmet to record racing action on the track while moving at 150 miles per hour.Mr. Bondurant, in the car, with Paul Newman on the set of the 1969 movie “Winning.” Mr. Newman was one of his first big-name students.Universal, via Everett CollectionSoon after Mr. Bondurant opened the school, Mr. Newman and Robert Wagner signed up as students. They had been cast as racecar drivers in the film “Winning” (1969), in which Mr. Newman’s character dreams of winning the Indianapolis 500.“Paul has a knack of knowing how to learn,” Mr. Bondurant told The St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1988. “He’s like most actors — they know how to listen. He would move at his own pace, and wouldn’t go too quick. He took it step by step, and it came naturally to him.”He tested Mr. Newman on three tracks before he handed him off to another instructor, who familiarized him with the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Mr. Newman’s experience on the film led him to take up racecar driving as a sideline, as a both successful professional driver and a team owner.As Mr. Bondurant’s school grew, it moved from Irvine to Ontario Speedway, near Los Angeles, then to Sonoma Raceway, in Northern California, and in 1989 to its most recent location, Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park, in Chandler, Ariz.“I love teaching and I love driving,” he told The Post-Dispatch. “I hope I never grow up. It would be a disaster.”Robert Lewis Bondurant was born on April 27, 1933, in Chicago to John and Ruth (Williams) Bondurant. His mother was a homemaker, and his father was a luxury car dealer who sold his business during the Depression and moved the family from Evanston, Ill., to the Westwood Village neighborhood of Los Angeles, making his living selling surgical instruments.His parents divorced when Bob was 12; four years later his mother died.“My dad took me to Gilmore Stadium when I was 7 to watch the races, and that got me interested in racing,” Mr. Bondurant told Motor Trend magazine in 2012.He drag-raced, began racing motorcycles at 18, moved on to sports cars — a British Morgan Plus 4, a Triumph TR2 — then drove a 1957 fuel-injected Corvette in his stunningly successful 1959 season, which earned him the title of Best Corvette Driver of the year. He kept winning in Corvettes into 1963.After studying business, he graduated from Woodbury College in Los Angeles in the early 1960s.Driving for the Shelby American team, Mr. Bondurant raced Cobras in the United States and Europe; in addition to the Le Mans triumph in 1964, he helped Shelby and Ford win the prestigious World Manufacturers’ GT Championships the next year.After his interlude with Ferrari, Mr. Bondurant leaped to the Canadian-American Challenge Cup circuit — better known as Can-Am — in cars that went even faster than those in Formula 1. His 1967 accident came at the Can-Am race at Watkins Glen. He was driving his McLaren Mark II at 150 m.p.h. when his steering arm broke, causing the car to flip multiple times.After recovering, he continued to race occasionally, the last time in 2012. But his focus was on his school, which his wife said had taught more than 500,000 people over 50 years, including professional racecar drivers, celebrities, military officers, F.B.I. and C.I.A. agents, Navy Seals, and teenagers learning safe-driving skills, usually at the request of their parents.In recent years, after Mr. Bondurant became less involved in it, the school was beset by financial problems and filed for Chapter 11 protection in 2018. An investment group purchased its assets the next year and renamed it the Radford Racing School. Ms. Bondurant said she was working to start another school that would use the Bondurant name.Mr. Bondurant in 2016 behind the wheel of an Alfa Romeo Giulia.“I love teaching and I love driving,” he said. “I hope I never grow up.”Kelly Sullivan/Getty Images Mr. Bondurant married Pat Chase at the Monaco Grand Prix racetrack in 2010. In addition to his wife, he is survived by her son, Jason Bondurant, whom he adopted and was a vice president of the racing school; his stepdaughter, Meagan Radigan; and two step-grandsons. His previous marriages ended in divorce.In 1990, Mr. Bondurant trained Tom Cruise for his role as a stock-car driver in Tony Scott’s “Days of Thunder,” and in 2000 Nicolas Cage trained at the Bondurant school for his role as a car thief in “Gone in 60 Seconds.”Mr. Bondurant worked with Christian Bale in the summer of 2018 as the actor trained to play the British racecar driver Ken Miles in “Ford v Ferrari” (2019), James Mangold’s account of the cutthroat competition in Formula 1 between the two automakers at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1966.“Bob spent hours with Christian in his GT40, talking to him about how to play Miles,” Ms. Bondurant said in a phone interview. “Bob had great reverence for Christian because both were motorcycle racers. With Christian’s motorcycle racing experience, Bob said: ‘I’d do anything to get him to quit acting. I could get him to win Le Mans.’” More