'F1: Drive to Survive' season 3, episode 4 review: Ferrari's absentee prancing horse

There are not many ways to say it, Scuderia Ferrari was a complete and utter disaster in 2020. "F1: Drive to Survive" season 3, episode 4 tackles the legendary team's history and how embarrassing they were last season.

Followers of the sport know that Ferrari is the oldest and longest standing team in Formula 1. In fact, even casual followers or even those who aren't interested in motorsports can easily identify a Ferrari race car. Such is the status of the team, that the tractor that they fielded last season turned all of them into clowns. Unfortunately for them, their 1000th GP was not the massive celebration they had hoped for, as it was thrown into shadows by their poor performance and the coronavirus pandemic.

Any driver dreams of driving for Ferrari, but for Sebastian Vettel, it turned into a nightmare. After a successful run with Red Bull racing that brought him four world championship titles, he thought he was moving to the dream team when he joined the Scuderia. Boy, was he mistaken.

Needless to say, the car was not as competitive as Vettel had hoped, and not only was his former team better, Mercedes has been walking all over everyone. Last season, things got even worse. If Ferrari was previously jostling for position in the top 3, they found themselves just battling to get out of the bottom 3 (and out of Q1) in 2020.

The episode tried to dig up some dirt on the "deal" the FIA made with Ferrari after they were investigated in the latter half of the 2019 season following a sudden and questionable boost in performance after the summer break.

Unfortunately, we are left just as confused as we had been before, with the Netflix team being unable to uncover any additional information on the penalties if any, that Ferrari were serving after the investigation.

What is clear though, is how much team principal Mattia Binotto favours Charles Leclerc over Vettel. When he spoke about Vettel, he brought up experience but also said that being in F1 is a continuous learning process. However, he described Leclerc as a young, fast and consistent driver.

The fact is, Leclerc outdrove Vettel in 2019. This much was very clear regardless of how much Vettel's fans want to deny it. The team made a decision to let him go after the young rookie glaringly outperformed him in 2019.

Vettel was surprised by the decision, and so were his fans. Unfortunately, four world championships mean nothing several years later if your teammate is outperforming you consistently all season.

The outrage was immense when the news came out, but the team actually gave Vettel a full season to figure out his future. Fans are quick to forget that many drivers often have merely a few weeks in between seasons to find employment after they are dropped.

As seen in the episode, Red Bull's Christian Horner spoke to Vettel about "coming home." Toto Wolff also spoke up about the temptation of going after the multiple world champion. In the end, Vettel signed a deal with Racing Point, which was to become the Aston Martin team. Based on last season's disaster for Ferrari, Vettel may have actually been given a blessing in disguise.