When a friend initially told me I should watch a Netflix docuseries about race cars a year ago, I said, decidedly, “Nah.”
“But the drivers are hot,” she responded. So, I pivoted to a solid, “Yah.”
Forty episodes and a handful of Honey Badger stalking sessions later, I am now the girl screaming at my colleagues that they must — MUST — watch the recently released fourth season of Formula 1: Drive to Survive. The drivers are indeed hot and worth salivating over.
While fashion magazines are subtly thirsting over them, employing Undertones and Photoshoots to cement the drivers as idols in some sort of speedy new paganism, they won’t give it to you straight like I’m gonna give it to you.
To preface, I do not know jackshit about an F1 car’s chassis or gearbox, but I do know that these men tap into my innermost Luddite sensibilities: the sort of dense attraction to those who carry large objects or operate heavy machinery. Better still, these F1 drivers don’t putz around the states like good ol’ American mommy’s boys. These guys are Brits, Europeans, and even the son of a suspected Russian oligarch; they hate playing by the rules and subsequently spend their time racing around extravagant landscapes at speeds of up to 250 miles per hour. They know how to rev their car’s engines, and I’m willing to bet that they’ll also know how to rev mine.
To the lovely humans of Formula 1, I am sorry to objectify you in this way. Yes, you are fashionable little sailors with unrivaled athleticism and an enduring spirit, but most importantly, you are Mustangs in-the-flesh with perhaps even bigger horse dicks than I had imagined. Time to plow my way through the Mercedes, McLaren, and Ferrari driver line-ups like a hungry, hungry hippo on a mission to munch as I explain the reasons why I’d bone my favorite F1 drivers of appropriate age.
