Formula 1 Gains Traction In the U.S. with Netflix’s Drive to Survive

On February 24th, season five of the Netflix documentary series Formula 1: Drive to Survive was released, providing an inside-look at the 2022 Formula One (F1) world championship.

F1 is the highest category of motor racing in the world. The fastest drivers are given the best cars to race in a year-long championship, traveling to racetracks in twenty nations across five continents. Since the series was bought by the American company Liberty Media in 2017, viewership in the United States has skyrocketed. In 2023, F1 will be racing at three separate American venues, including a temporary track that will be constructed on the streets of Las Vegas. Additionally, this is the first year since 2007 that an American driver is participating in the sport full time, with Logan Sargeant from Florida racing for the Williams F1 Team.

Much of F1’s recent success in America can be attributed to the Netflix show Formula One: Drive to Survive, which released its first season in 2019. The show has primarily served the marketing purpose of exposing an American audience for the first time to the complexities of F1, successfully drawing viewers in the United States to ESPN’s recently-acquired broadcasting rights for F1 races. And for those already interested in the sport, Netflix provides rare footage of the inner-workings of the teams, often not available anywhere else.

However, the show has also garnered criticism for the liberties it frequently takes when constructing storylines. Drive to Survive is marketed as a documentary, but it plays more like reality television. In the past, the show’s producers have opted to make up rivalries between drivers, who in reality are good friends, and splice audio to make in-race radio messages sound far more malicious than they usually are. Choices like these are part of what led some drivers to opt out of the show altogether, including two-time reigning champion Max Verstappen.

In 2023, Netflix seems to have realized that they went too far to manufacture drama in recent seasons, and it is believed that they made promises of improvement to the drivers, seeing that Verstappen agreed to take part in the series this year.

Personally, I have found the 2023 season of Drive to Survive to be much like the others, although I must commend a certain decrease in unnecessary dramatization. The show is entertaining and intriguing to die-hard fans as well those who know nothing about the sport. The episodes explore many dimensions of F1: from the cars to the race strategy, and from intra-team relations to the politics of contract negotiations. I would certainly recommend it to anyone who would like to learn more about the sport. Maybe it’ll give you a sense of why anybody would want to spend their weekends watching twenty cars drive around in circles.