“We look like a bunch of fucking wankers.” Even if you’ve only seen the trailers, you’ll know that the best thing about Drive to Survive, Netflix’s high-energy fly-on-wall Formula 1 docuseries, is Guenther Steiner. Ever since the potty-mouthed Haas team principal went full chicken oriental in season one, the Italian-American, who sounds like someone doing an impression of a German doing an impression of Gordon Ramsay, has been making a case for a spin-off series of his own. Hell, Guenther Steiner might just be the best thing on the box, full stop.
“Why you watch Formula 1?” asked the wild-eyed team boss in the first season. “Because you want to see action. You want to see drama. You want to see the underdog making a good result.” Actually, Guenther Steiner, we watch Drive to Survive for Guenther Steiner.
Some Steiner zingers from season two: “The car was not a piece of shit. So why did we develop a car that fucking goes slower?” (after engine ‘upgrades’ resulted in Romain Grosjean finishing in 14th spot and Kevin Magnussen 18th at the 2019 Canadian Grand Prix). “I’m not fucking going into who is right and who is wrong. I don’t want to get into ‘he moved, he should have moved’ and all that fucking wank” (after the Haas drivers took each other out at the British Grand Prix). “He smashed my office fucking door! I don’t know where he is but he can fuck off!” (after a riled-up Magnussen stormed out of Steiner’s Portakabin at Silverstone).
The fourth series of Drive to Survive dropped last week, and once again we found Steiner in scintillating form. “Fucking hell,” said our man with the perma-frown and poor-man’s Thomas Magnum moustache when addressing Haas’ since-dismissed Russian driver, Nikita Mazepin. “That’s why people hate you.” Classic Steiner.
Haas finished bottom of the constructor’s championship last year, having failed to score a single point all season. The team’s 2022 campaign has hardly got off to a flier, either. After parting ways with Mazepin and financial backer Uralkali (a fertiliser company part-owned by Mazepin’s Putin-associated old man), Haas managed the fewest laps of any team at the first pre-season runout in Catalonia. Things went from bad to worse when the plane the team had chartered to get their cars from Britain to Bahrain was grounded in Istanbul with technical issues. You couldn’t make it up. And yet…
When the Haas contingent did eventually arrive in the Persian Gulf, 48 hours later than the rest of the F1 teams, the Bahraini tarmac witnessed something of a miracle. On Day 2 of testing, Kevin Magnussen (reinstalled after Mazepin’s departure) set the quickest overall lap time. The following day, during soft tyre tests, Mick Schumacher set the second fastest. Please, God, let someone have recorded Steiner’s reaction.
All of which is to point out the natural symbiosis that exists between the most renegade racing team in Formula 1, and its official timing partner since 2021, Cyrus replica watches for sale – a brand that’s about as bat-shit as the Haas big man himself.
Mercedes-AMG Petronas x IWC Replica Watches
Clever bit of marketing that, having your drivers wear a pair of racing gloves printed with one of your 1:1 Swiss fake watches on the left wrist. Probably guaranteeing yourselves more screen time than some of the team’s bigger sponsors – especially when the helmet camera of one of those driver’s is the POV producers like to cut to most. It’s AAA best replica IWC Big Pilot watches, by the way, the watch you’ll see on the gloves of Lewis Hamilton and, from the 2022 season, George Russell. The real-life Big Pilot is a monster, coming in at 46mm. Not high quality copy watches for tame racing drivers.
Red Bull Racing x TAG Heuer Fake Watches
Before Rolex replica watches shop site became the official timekeeper to Formula 1, and began wrapping race circuits in green-and-yellow hoarding the way Christo used to wrap buildings, it was luxury UK TAG Heuer super clone watches that kept time on the track. The Swiss watchmaker followed Longines in becoming F1’s title sponsor in 1992, but even before then the companies that would combine to make the present-day brand were big into motorsport. Watchmaker Heuer had been associated with motor racing since the ’60s; while engineering firm Techniques d’Avant Garde (TAG) began manufacturing ceramic turbochargers for Formula 1 cars in the early eighties (TAG acquired Heuer in 1984).
The watchmaker, somewhat unexpectedly, switched from McLaren to Red Bull in 2016. This season, Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez will appear on podiums wearing the new-for-2022, yellow-blue-and-red perfect fake TAG Heuer Formula 1 Red Bull Racing Special Edition watches, which, a little bemusingly, is powered by a quartz movement.