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 a series of 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.
