Race to Perfection

I have been working in racing during more than 49 years, among other as commentator/speaker both live and for direct media.

This TV-serie is a fantastic production. Probably the best ever.

Great thanks to the superpros that made it! 👍

OK, it's a vast subject to cover with just 7 episodes, so maybe I was expecting too much, but I was a bit disappointed with the first episode. I'd think this series would be mostly of interest to 'beginners to F1' wanting to learn more about its history, but alas I think it would confuse rather than educate. It was somewhat disjointed, with some important events shown out of sequence. Important characters featured (such as Bernie Ecclestone) should have been better 'explained' to the viewer. So it's really going to appeal mostly to those who already know the majority of the history, which kind of defeats the object. Maybe later episodes will get better?

A collection of archival film and video, with some more or less related interviews interspersed. There is no real narrative structure underlaying the series, no sense that it has a director or a production vision.

Watching the first episode, viewers can think that a story - a narrative - is beginning to form, but then we're jolted into a completely other direction, with a different timeframe and different people involved. We scratch our heads wondering what happened. Did we fall asleep and miss something?

The subject is so rich in material, it's too bad that this is what F1 put out for its anniversary. But, maybe it's because Ecclestone still had a lot of sway at the time.

F1 still has a problem that it has not reckoned with, and that is its British bias. As it strains against these constraints, the Old Brit White Men (and other Old Men) work harder to maintain their power, their elitism, their misogyny and their prejudices.

This sloppy pseudo-documentary is a great display of that heritage.

Knowing a fair bit about F1 before viewing this series can help you enjoy the archives and, somewhat, the interviews. Know that you'll need to fill the many, many gaps. Also know that you're unlikely to learn anything new, and that there are much better resources for leaning about F1.

This is mostly a collection of archive materials. Nothing new, no fresh angles. And absolutely no sense of direction. Pointless.

I'm a casual fan of F1 but I don't know the history of the sport that well so I was very excited to watch this. What I got was a disjointed commercial break to commercial break series of vignettes with no structure or arc. Like another reviewer said, unless you already know the history, a lot of this material won't make much sense. For example, the fan car... I only know about that because of a YouTube video but if I hadn't seen that other video I'd have been like, what's a fan car and why did it matter? This desperately needed a narrator and some direction instead of whatever this is. What a shame.