The Winning Formula of Netflix’s Drive to Survive

It’s a busy time of year for Formula 1. The 2024 Season is up and running, as 20 drivers fight it out for podium finishes, race wins, fastest laps, and all of the drama that comes with it. But away from the track, Formula 1 celebrates perhaps a more significant milestone: the five year anniversary of Drive to Survive debuting on Netflix, way back on March 8, 2019. 

It’s hard to overstate the impact Netflix’s all-access look at Formula 1 has had for the global success of the sport. While its popularity was hardly in the toilet, years of Mercedes dominance and a perceived “lack of racing” had pushed casual fans away, leaving the grandstands at the tracks, and the sofas at home, dominated solely by the hardcore motorsport fans who’ll guzzle down any race weekend like a cold pint of Castor oil. Not only did Drive to Survive pull those casual fans back in, but it also created a whole new market for the sport: America. Since the show’s inception, F1 has added two additional races to the calendar (Miami and Las Vegas) to capitalize on that market and the seemingly ever-growing popularity it enjoys within it. But what is it about Drive to Survive that has driven such resounding success? We’ve seen all-access docuseries before, from HBO’s Hard Knocks to Prime Video’s various iterations of All or Nothing, and there’s been no surge in fandom from those shows. So, what’s the difference? 

In a word: honesty. Those previously mentioned series presented a world to its audiences that very much feels like what the team wants you to see, or the league offering a tiny peek behind the curtain without ever throwing them wide open to air everything out. They’re always too sterile, too simple; populated by coaching platitudes and paint-by-numbers motivational speeches rather than any real behind-the-scenes grit. Drive to Survive, while dramatized in various points, offers a startling level of honesty from the drivers and team principles through its frames each season. You’re unlikely to see 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan calling his team “a bunch of f—ing wankers… a bunch of f—ing clowns,” in any official NFL-sanctioned video but, thankfully, Haas Team Principal Guenther Steiner was on hand to do just that during Season 1. Or in later years, we saw drivers label their own team as joke, criticizing every decision from race strategy to future driver line-ups. Even in-sport controversies like Red Bull’s breach of the Formula 1 spending cap are covered, something which easily could have been glossed over. 

Compare this frankness with the avalanche of coach-speak and player truisms we’re treated to, or rather, endure, on shows like Hard Knocks, and it isn’t hard to see why Drive to Survive felt (and still feels) like such a breath of fresh air. It’s surprising then that the sports docuseries which followed Drive to Survive on Netflix, like Break Point, Full Swing, and Six Nations: Full Contact—all executive produced by James Gay-Rees, Paul Martin, and Box to Box Films, the minds behind Drive to Survive—never permeated the collective consciousness in the same way. They all follow the drama and the controversy of the sport with a similar level of frankness, they’re all produced in a similar way with a blend of interviews and action. So why can’t these shows reignite their respective sports in the same way as Formula 1 and Drive to Survive?

None of those shows, and truthfully, none of those sports, come even remotely close to matching the opulent aesthetic of Formula 1. It’s a cliché, sure, but it’s a cliché for a reason. Formula 1 is glamor immortalized in a sport, something which Drive to Survive leans into wholeheartedly. The cars are a mix of engineering brilliance and delicate works of art, designed down to the millimeter to achieve peak performance. The locations are akin to something from a James Bond film, with yacht rides through the harbor of Monte Carlo, or jaunts to wine country in Southern Italy. And of course, there’s the drivers themselves, who vary between the “pulled from a Calvin Klein commercial” aesthetic to the “sculpted by a particularly benevolent deity” level of chiseled jaw and piercing eyes. There’s a sexiness to Formula 1, there’s no point denying it. However, limiting the success of the show and the renewed success of the sport down to the fact that Charles Leclerc is hot undersells the sporting aspect of Formula 1 and how well Drive to Survive sells it.

We all understand the sport of golf. You hit a ball across a course, trying to get it in a hole with as few shots as possible. The same goes for tennis, rugby, or the NFL—there’s a simplicity to the ultimate goal. There are technical details to it all, of course, but in layman’s terms, they’re still straightforward to follow. While the same could arguably be said about Formula 1—whoever crosses the finish line first after a requisite number of laps wins—it would be ignoring so much of what makes the pinnacle of motorsport so enticing to so many. It’s a sport that constantly shifts and evolves, from the figures involved within it to the technical developments of the cars themselves. Drive to Survive doesn’t shy away from this, working to ease fans into a world where “downforce,” “porpoising,” “diffuser,” and “DRS” are everyday phrases. Fully understanding Formula 1, true mastery of the sport as a fan and a viewer, is near impossible. But Drive to Survive pulls the curtain back just enough on the technical side for its audience to come away after each season with more knowledge about aerodynamics, tyre degradation, and sidepods than they had going into it.

None of this is to say that everything is perfect, and that the impact of Drive to Survive has been purely positive. For any fans of Formula 1, the words “Abu Dhabi, 2021” will likely elicit a Pavlovian response of frustration, fury, or despair, or more likely, a combination of all three. For the unaware, the World Championship had gone down to the final race, with whoever finished higher out of Lewis Hamilton or Max Verstappen claiming the prize. With Hamilton leading, and several lapped cars between him and Verstappen, the race was all but sewn up. That is, at least, until then-Race Director Michael Masi opted for a staggering interpretation of the rules to ensure the race itself went down to the wire, prioritizing drama above all else. Hamilton would lose the race to Verstappen in one of sport’s great miscarriages of justice. It seems doubtful that this would have taken place as described were it not for the success of Drive to Survive and the desire for a better television product.

Drive to Survive has done something special. Whether you view the series as a resounding success or a bastardization of the sport itself in its focus on off-track drama, its impact is undeniable. Whichever side you’re on, one thing is true: Drive to Survive has become an ingrained part of the sport, not just a docuseries on the side. No other access sports series, from Hard Knocks to All or Nothing, to any of Netflix’s other attempts, can claim they’ve become so inextricably linked to the sport itself. Drive to Survive found the perfect formula.

Jack Francis is a freelance TV, film and culture writer based in Nottingham. For more of his thoughts on TV and film, or his obsession with Star Wars, you can follow him @jackfrancis94

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