I don’t think I can ever miss an F1 Grand Prix now.
If you’ve followed my articles, you know that pop culture & marketing tactics are 2 things that live in my mind rent-free. I sit at home to cope with events that take place in the pop-cultural stratosphere. One thing I can swear though was that I never expected to stay up till 3:30 AM to just watch qualifiers of the Mexican Grand Prix. So how did I become a part of this cult? (let’s face it, all sports fan clubs are borderline cult-y)
I’m going to be very honest — most of the sports I have ever watched was because I wanted to fit in with the guys by following their favourite sports. Well, it was the same case for F1. My boyfriend started watching “Drive to Survive” and I was one day sitting next to him, seeing myself wildly engrossed by how 100s of people dedicate their year into building cars and systems for these 2 racers per team with the hopes of winning the World Championship.
My first thoughts about the show after the first season was..damn I’m not sleeping let’s start season 2. And then I found myself on Wikipedia pages? That’s when I knew that F1 had struck a gold mine in terms of marketing to a whole new audience.
To give you a bit of background of this hit Netflix Docuseries, Drive to Survive allows the viewers of this show to go into the inner workings of an F1 team. While superficial, it does cover the basics it seems. The smart thing is that they show just enough to make you want to go into that YouTube rabbit hole to understand the F1 fandom more and more.
Liberty Media bought the F1 league in 2016 after seeing how much it struggled to make its mark in the digital world with the previous ownership. “Sean Bratches wanted to do something that was bigger, that focused on as many of the teams as possible, that was going to show Formula 1 in a completely different light and introduce it to a completely different fan.” says Paul Martin, EP of Drive To Survive. Enter Netflix.
And as a converted fan, I can attest to the fact, it worked.
The reason DTS attracted audiences is that they dumbed the sport down when they needed to so that this new audience can understand it. I always thought that to really watch & love this sport you need to understand those technical facts about aerodynamics etc. and I’m honestly, still learning about how that works like how the 2022 car will be different from 2021, but I do understand how, for example, “tows” work (I love you Will Buxton).
That’s more than I can ever say about football, I don’t think I’m ever going to understand how off-side works at this point….
Drive to Survive in my opinion is unlike any other docuseries because not only does it show interviews with drivers or the team principals, it goes into how this all actually comes together every season. In terms of engineers, pit crews, the financial situations, how they use data to actually analyze the performance of cars to continue making it the best race in, race out. These are things that only hard-core fans really end up understanding after being that crazy fanatic for years.
What DTS did was take us on a journey to be able to understand why in fact each team is driving to survive. You get emotionally invested when a player loses a seat, a race, or sometimes even people. You see the effort that goes into trying to get that pole position or trying to just stay in the top 10 to get some points for their team.
Now, this is an insanely difficult thing to do for an established sport with established teams. I feel the reason why I could never have that “undying love” that people usually get for football clubs is that that’s not something I’ve followed as a child. In many cases, that one thing you intensely follow as a child shapes you as you grow. And you see that with these die-hard fans. DTS almost fast-tracked that for me and got me to stay up till 3 AM to support the underdog and to get a glimpse of my love Toto Wolff.
With every new age fan, I would say there is an enraged F1 long-time fan. Of course, many of them feel that these newer converted fans do not have the “right love” for it because it's fueled by the extensive drama they show on DTS. I’m not going to lie, that’s definitely one of the factors that kept me hooked but honestly? Sports rivalries are a tale as old as time, it’s not new. I stayed for the dedication of these players. The way their life is impacted when they lose a seat and how it drives them to become an absolute monster? (here’s looking at you, Gasly). What it is like to always feel like the Number 2..(oof, Bottas) or how your mental health can be impacted by the pressures and crashes you might endure in these races.
The fact of the matter is, the teams themselves were pretty uneasy about the need for this docuseries. Toto Wolff, the team principal for Mercedez in fact felt that it might take away from their on-track performance, but here’s what he had to say -
“It’s clearly a big success. Everywhere in the world, it was the number one documentary on Netflix for quite a while and it’s become part of Formula 1 and you can clearly see it’s beneficial. We’re a sport and we need to stay true to the values of the sport and have no gimmicks — but sport is entertainment, and I think these guys have brought us a new angle, a new dimension.”
Zak Brown, CEO of McLaren Racing said — “People are going from ‘I’ve never watched a Formula 1 race in my life’ to ‘I’ll never miss a Formula 1 race again.’”
Yes, the rivalries are over-the-top— in fact, Verstappen has refused to be a part of DTS again after they dramatised his rivalry with Ricciardo. Eh, it’s okay, I’m sure we’ll hear him call his opponents “stupid idiots” enough times on the team radio…
But you see these fandoms being formed thanks to this show like the Lando Norris fandom, the Riccardo craze and for me, it’s the Toto phenomena. Apparently, after season 1 Guenther Steiner (petition to make him a Netflix ambassador) and Carlos Sainz’s cousin got mobbed for autographs, I mean that’s absolutely BRILLIANT.
It’s not just the qualitative facts, you also see an impact on numbers too. Formula 1’s TV audience in the United States has jumped since “Drive to Survive” was released. ESPN said its average viewers per race had risen to about 928,000 so far in 2021 from about 547,000 in 2018. The show has also boosted female attendance at races by 30 percent, according to the president of an F1 promoter organization. The sudden burst of viewers in the US has led to another GP being added to the fixture next year in Miami and the pre-sale tickets for it sold out in less than one hour? WHAT.
There are no robust data sets on the impact of the Netflix series on the F1 League, the correlation between the audience for DTS and the audience for F1 appears to be significant from the numbers available outside of F1 and Netflix’s internal systems, as per Road and Track. F1 has drawn more significant digital interest than any point prior to 2021 in 13 separate weeks this season. The Google Trends Data in the US shows that there is in fact a 29% increase at its peak this year than in both 2020 and 2019.
I’m not saying DTS is the only docuseries ever to have captured the audience to start getting into a sport. It’s just that when you usually end up seeing the sports documentaries, they’re based on the past like the critically acclaimed The Last Dance. I don’t think there’s ever been a show that’s filming it in real-time for an audience to be able to relate to its current scenarios. Well, till now. There are talks happening to create a tennis version in a similar format too. (petition to name it True Love LOL)
Even with me now following these races in real-time, I think I’ll continue to watch the series because I love understanding the “Drive” to survive. I want to see what Guenther will have to say for their “shit” season with the 2 rookies, how Ricciardo is fitting in with Norris & McLaren, what went on in Bottas’ mind to make the switch to Alfa, and of course, the rivalry of Wolff and Horner.
For years I’ve been someone who has only gotten invested in the lives of fictional characters but Drive to Survive not only got me involved in the lives of these talented individuals but also got me riled up about this beautiful sport.
