Max Verstappen’s rocky relationship with “Drive to Survive” is well-documented. The three-time world champion offers very little when he’s mic’d up in front of the cameras, and even boycotted the series altogether for a time. So it might be surprising to learn that Verstappen has been getting candid on camera for years — just not for Netflix. Nick Hoedeman, who’s directed nearly a dozen documentaries about Verstappen since 2017, explained why he’s been able to paint such an intimate portrait of the Red Bull driver when other documentarians have failed.  

“We never stage anything,” Hoedeman told Motorsport. “It’s all authentic. If I don’t capture it, he’s never going to do it again. What you see is what you get.” The Dutch filmmaker, who admitted he wasn’t a fan of Formula 1 before he was tapped to work with a then-teenaged Verstappen, said it took years to build trust with him and his tight-knit inner circle. 

“It wasn’t the first day, it wasn’t even the first year, it took time for him to trust me,” Hoedeman explained. “And I think it’s a big plus that I wasn’t a fan because I really couldn’t do the job I did for the last few years if I was,” he went on. “Now Max knows that we’re not manipulating the story … and he knows that when I’m around, I’ll be there for him.” 

Max Verstappen in his early years

Photo by: ViaPlay

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The first season of “Drive to Survive” depicts an intensely-focused Verstappen in contrast with his laid-back, joke-telling Aussie teammate Daniel Ricciardo. Though their on-track rivalry was real, the two were, and remain, friends off-track. In contrast, Hoedeman said that his films only “broadcast what really happens.” 

“We’re not going to create stories,” he said. “We have a relationship that is based on trust and when I’m around he can speak freely. I’m never travelling with a big group with Max. It’s only me, or I have one DOP (director of photography) with me, so it always stays quite personal and private.” 

The collection of 11 documentaries, now available to stream in the US and the UK on ViaPlay, give fans a peek behind the scenes of his life, both at the track and at home. The 2023 release, “Anatomy of a Champion,” offers a particularly revealing portrait of a fractured family unit that eventually found its way back together, and explores the complexities of a childhood moulded by ambition. That three-part series features rare comments from Verstappen about the impact of his parents’ divorce when he was nine and his father Jos’ controversial parenting methods. He even addresses the family patriarch’s run-ins with the law and brief jail stint, along with an infamous incident where Jos left a young Max at a gas station alone, which has become baked into modern F1 folklore. 

“He’s quite open-minded [but we had to] find a way to talk about it, and find that right moment,” Hoedeman said. One such moment captured in the film was an impromptu family lunch with Max, his sister Victoria, and both parents. The touching scene, which happened naturally rather than being staged by the crew, became one of the film’s centerpieces.

“The most surprising thing about Max is that he’s just just a normal boy,” Hoedeman noted. “Everybody thinks he has the most extravagant life but he just likes being at home with his family and friends. Of course, he’s in a private jet travelling the world, but deep down inside, he’s still that five year old boy who just loves to be in a racing car.”

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Aprilia rider Aleix Espargaro says he “burned his hands” during a hot MotoGP race in Malaysia where he struggled to 13th place.

The Aprilia RS-GP is infamous for its overheating problems, with both Espargaro and team-mate Maverick Vinales having repeatedly expressed concerns about its adverse effects during some of the flyaway races in Asia.

According to Espargaro, the Noale brand has made no progress in this direction this year, which meant that he found it hard to even make it to the finish in last weekend’s Malaysian Grand Prix.

Withstanding the heat exuded from the bike for 19 laps in a crash-shortened race, the Spaniard came away with just three championship points as he benefited from incidents further up the pack.

Speaking afterwards, the 35-year-old revealed that the issues not only compromised his own performance at Sepang, but also meant that the bike was running down on power.

“It was very tough,” he described. “I knew that in these types of races [where] it is very very hot, it is extremely difficult for us. And even more if you start that far on the grid, it has been a real nightmare. 

“The engine was really slow, I couldn’t overtake anybody. The engine was very, very slow due to the heat. 

“I was [only] able to overtake Raul. Then I suffered a lot the last three laps where I almost couldn’t make it to the end, I couldn’t handle the handlebar. The heat was amazing.

“I burned my hands and had to open my visor. The heat is the Achilles heel of this bike.”

Espargaro wasn’t the only Aprilia rider to complain about heat issues on a hot and sunny day in Malaysia.

Raul Fernandez, Trackhouse Racing

Photo by: Asif Zubairi

Riding a 2024 RS-GP with last year’s engine, Trackhouse rider Raul Fernandez also felt the effects of the bike in Malaysia as he desperately tried to get some air blown onto him on Sepang’s long straights.

“Super difficult to manage with the temperature on the bike. The last four laps I was done. I tried to end the race [out of] respect to the team, respect for all my mechanics.

“The last four laps I couldn’t live on the bike. All the straight I had my head out of the bike to take some air. It is very difficult especially when you have slipstream you don’t take air.

“I don’t feel the hand, I don’t feel the foot. I couldn’t take the air. It is safe but it is really difficult.”

Vinales wasn’t impacted as severely by an overheating bike as Espargaro and Fernandez, finishing a relatively strong seventh between the Yamahas of Fabio Quartararo and Alex Rins.

But the 29-year-old spent most of the race in clean air, with Quartararo circulating several seconds ahead of him in sixth.

While the NASCAR playoff format has become a proverbial punching bag for people these days, and sometimes unfairly so, what happened last weekend at Martinsville is 100% a byproduct of it. The NASCAR playoffs are structured in a way so that title favorites like Kyle Larson can easily be knocked out of championship contention and drivers with so-so seasons like Joey Logano get to fight for the crown. And that’s not a knock against Logano, who has once again nailed this all or nothing format. Don’t hate the player, hate the game.

And the game deserved plenty of hate after Martinsville. This wasn’t a teammate pushing another to the win at Talladega, but a blatant attempt to bend the outcome to one manufacturer or another’s will. The drivers involved weren’t even on the same team as the drivers who benefitted from shenanigans, but manufacturers have so much sway over the sport now, Ross Chastain and Austin Dillon can’t even think about taking that position from William Byron, even though they’re racers — they want to finish as high as possible. Then there’s Bubba Wallace who claimed something was wrong with his car, but obviously, NASCAR saw that claim as race manipulation as well. 

These are two problems colliding at once — the ever-tightening alignment between teams of the same manufacturer, and NASCAR’s current championship format showing the uglier side of that.

None of what happened on that final lap was racing, and it was only happening because of this format. NASCAR’s latest format forces Game 7 moments leading to these situations where drivers are put in uncomfortable positions where they have to be more worried about the playoff drivers and what’s happening in their race than what’s happening in their own. And due to how tightly aligned teams are now through manufacturer loyalty, it’s like three super teams out there — Chevrolet, Ford, and Toyota — on the track at this point of the season. 

Hey, if it was the No. 48 HMS Chevy of Alex Bowman behind Byron, I feel like I’d be less frustrated with all of this. Of course a teammate is going to help, just like Ryan Blaney played blocker for Logano in the 2022 title-decider instead of going for the win himself. But why should Dillon and Chastain have to worry about Byron? Because they all drive for the same car make and that supersedes everything else in 2024. People are mad at these drivers, but what choice did they have? 

#24: William Byron, Hendrick Motorsports, Liberty University Chevrolet Camaro, #3: Austin Dillon, Richard Childress Racing, Bass Pro Shops Chevrolet Camaro

Photo by: John K Harrelson / NKP / Motorsport Images

Remember how Parker Retzlaff faced criticism because he tried to win at Daytona earlier this year? He had to publicly explain why a young driver in a car that rarely contends for race wins attempted to win a race. And why? Because his late-race push to Harrison Burton cost fellow Chevy driver Kyle Busch a win — and an automatic playoff berth. Even fans were mad!

This madness has now bled into the fanbase, who fully expect manufacturer allegiances to trump everything else in these critical races. And what what happened at Martinsville won’t stop unless NASCAR puts a stop to it. These points penalties and fines and one-race suspensions for the bad actors are not going to stop this.  Like in 2022, when NASCAR issued a penalty to Stewart-Haas Racing for the same thing. If they wanted to make a real statement, they would have thrown the No. 24 and the No. 20 out of the Championship 4 on Sunday night. SpinGate in 2013 did not end with Clint Bowyer’s penalty. NASCAR took Martin Truex Jr. — who benefitted from the interference but had nothing to do with it — and removed him from the playoffs. 

This is more about the format itself but people were shocked when Chastain chose to race for the win last year at Phoenix instead of bowing to the Championship 4 drivers. If drivers can’t race for the win, why are the non-contenders even out there “competing?” Might as well just race with the title contenders and no one else like the 2006 Cars movie. 

Bob Pockrass

FOX NASCAR Insider

Joey Logano has never talked to crew chief Paul Wolfe about winning a title in 2024 in order to accomplish something only nine other NASCAR Cup Series drivers have achieved.

For the two-time Cup champion Logano, it just goes without saying. The goal every year is to win a championship, so the fact he will vie for his third Cup title Sunday at Phoenix Raceway doesn’t include the additional incentive for him to join the elite three-time champion club. 

“He hasn’t mentioned anything about it, honestly,” Wolfe said. “It hasn’t been discussed. Some guys have two, but to get three, obviously would put him in an elite group.”

Logano will look back at his career one day and see where he ranks among the all-time greats, but the only time talk of winning a third title enters the conversation is when someone mentions the Team Penske driver already has two, not what it would do for his legacy nor the company he would join.

“I can’t say I really thought of it that way,” Logano said. “My goal every year is the same — whether we’ve won one, none, five, doesn’t matter. The goal is to win the championship.

“So the conversation between me and Paul doesn’t have to happen. We know that. That’s just the end goal.”

If Logano wins his third title on Sunday, it will rank as his most unlikely. Having finished 15th in the regular-season standings, a win in the chaotic five-overtime Nashville race vaulted him into the playoffs. He then won the opening playoff race at the drafting-style Atlanta event and then used a fuel mileage strategy to win at Vegas in the semifinal round.

The Vegas victory gave him an automatic bid to race for the title at Phoenix, where the best finisher among Logano, William Byron, Ryan Blaney and Tyler Reddick (the entire 40-car field competes in the race itself) captures the title.

So Logano should feel a little pride. No driver since the elimination-style format started in 2014 has gone from 15th in the regular season to having a shot at the championship in the final race.

Logano, whose six Champ 4 appearances rank as the most since the inception of the elimination-style format in 2014, is sort of impressed to have another shot at the title.

“Making the Championship 4 is an accomplishment of itself,” Logano said. “Getting here is not easy. You have to have a regular season that helps set you up to get through the playoffs. And if you don’t, then you have to have a hell of a run through the playoffs and win the best races, the most important races.

“We didn’t have the best regular season. We figured out how to have a solid playoff, winning a couple of them and put ourselves in the Championship 4.”

So this is a big deal just to have a shot, right?

“It’s an accomplishment to make it, but nobody remembers who finished second last year,” Logano said. “I don’t. I don’t know who I don’t know who it was

“And so it’s all about winning is what that means. It’s great to make it, but it’s really all about winning at this point.”

Logano has made a name for himself as the driver who seems to perform the best when it matters the most. He has won in two of his five previous Champ 4 appearances, including the most recent in 2022.

“It’s about a team that never gives up, and knows that you’re never out of it,” Wolfe said. “This format, more than ever, allows for that to happen, It keeps you motivated and working hard every week because even though we’ve had a pretty up and down year and had our fair struggles, there’s still an opportunity.

“And ultimately, everyone on the team has been able to rise to that occasion and make it happen.”

If Logano and the team make it happen Sunday, not only will Logano own three titles, he’ll be just the third driver to have won three titles in the 2000s (Jimmie Johnson and Tony Stewart the others) and the 34-year-old will be just the fifth to accomplish it when under the age of 35.

“So I’ve got some years [to win more],” Logano said. 

Right now, the focus is just on Sunday to see if he can join Johnson, Stewart, Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt, Richard Petty, Darrell Waltrip, Cale Yarborough, David Pearson and Lee Petty.

“There would pride in that absolutely,” Logano said. “I don’t know if that’s what drives me to do it, but it would be obviously a really cool piece of winning another championship.”

Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.

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In December 2022, Formula 1 reporter Jennie Gow’s life was turned upside down. Out of nowhere, the BBC 5 Live radio journalist suffered a stroke that left her unable to read, write or speak, with fears over whether she would ever be able to live a normal life again, never mind being her energetic and loquacious self on the BBC’s popular radio broadcasts and podcasts.

“It’s quite surreal going through a stroke, It’s not high up on the list of things you think you’re going to have to deal with in your 40s,” Gow told Motorsport.com.

“When you’ve spent most of your life reading, writing, speaking, and taking all of that kind of for granted – because we all do… When you lose that ability to do what I do as a job, to communicate, it’s a very abrupt, sudden change of your life. One minute you’re in control, and the next minute you have no control of anything.

“There were certainly moments when I doubted that I’d ever be able to speak again, or speak again well enough to be a broadcaster, and I was like: ‘What am I going to do?’ There’s nothing that you can really fall back on, because I always jokingly said: ‘Oh well, if I lose my job, that’s fine. I’ll just do something else.’ But what can you do if you can’t communicate? It’s really hard, and it gave me a real appreciation for another side of life.

“That day, I was very fortunate that the right things happened at the right time to enable me the best chance of a good recovery. We’re now 22 months down the line, and whilst I don’t feel 100% I do at least feel better than I did. Life is more normal now.”

Fast-forward 22 months and Gow has made a huge amount of progress during a tough recovery process, and has used her profile in the UK to work with stroke-related charities and raise awareness. In the UK 100,000 people have strokes each year (roughly one in 700). In the United States that figure stands at around 795,000 (approx. one in 400).

But Gow has now also written a book about Formula 1, which seemed inconceivable at the start. Titled How to Read F1, the book is a witty and light-hearted guide of often-used F1 terms, infused with anecdotes from Gow’s broadcasting career. But the title can also be read as a reflection on Gow’s recovery, as she has had to learn how to read again.

“Nine months after my stroke, one of my bosses at the BBC called me and asked how I felt about writing a book, and I said: ‘You do know I had a stroke, right?” 47-year-old Gow said. “I thought they were maybe joking at first, but then I had a lovely conversation with the publisher. We discussed the concept of an A-to-Z guide and immediately that felt slightly more manageable.

How to Read F1 Book Cover, Jennie Gow

Photo by: Penguin Random House

“I sent the first portions of the book back, and I thought there’s no way they’re going to want me to do this. I’m just not in a state where I’m ready. But then they came back to me and said: ‘Okay, let’s do it’.”

Gow hasn’t just attempted to teach fans about how F1 works. Writing the book has taught her a lot about herself too, and alongside untold hours of therapy, it became a valuable tool to speed up her recovery. Still suffering from dyslexia as a result of her stroke, she considered calling in the help of a ghostwriter but decided to carry on herself by writing the book in painstakingly small steps.

“It kept me motivated. I used it as a working therapy because it gave me a purpose and something to work towards,” she explained. “Some days I’d really struggle and couldn’t make any sense of what I was doing, but I just got more and more fluid and fluent. It helped me massively.”

Coming in at 224 pages, the book is an inviting collection of bite-sized facts about F1’s drivers past and present, and an explanation of some of the most important concepts and jargon from the F1 paddock. And while it is clearly catered more to the casual fan, there are also some interesting and revealing nuggets about some of F1’s most prominent drivers that die-hard fans may not know, which we won’t spoil for you here.

“The book reflects a lot on me,” Gow said. “I miss the travelling F1 family and the paddock is a special place to work. This was a way of being able to have that connection, but this was also my platform to share my experiences with the listeners or readers at home; those anecdotes, those stories, facts about F1.

“You do doubt yourself, and there are so many amazing journalists and people in that paddock who might have been better placed to write this book,” she added. “But I feel like I’m in a position where I can straddle the fans who have been there for decades and the newer fans who may be approaching the sport with a bit of nerves of how they’ll be received. Being able to bridge that gap is, I hope, what I can bring to that mix.”

Gow doesn’t need to worry, because How to Read F1 is a fine and warmly written book, good to have within arm’s reach while following the grand prix action or to gift to newer fans to bring them up to speed.

Jennie Gow, BBC Radio 5 Live reporter

Photo by: Jennie Gow

But just the fact the book exists is to be celebrated in itself. For any budding author, seeing your first book published is a milestone. For Gow, who covered her first flyaway since her stroke in Austin last month, it is another major marker as she works on her fully-fledged return to the F1 paddock.