Why F1 is still Netflix’s ‘perfect soap opera’ after eight seasons of ‘Drive to Survive’

When the producers from Box to Box Films first met with Formula 1 teams at the end of 2017 and outlined their plans for a new, fly-on-the-wall Netflix series to start the following year, they received a clear message.

You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into.

How would F1, a sport entrenched in secrecy, paranoia and political games, open its doors for cameras to film the teams’ every move? It seemed unthinkable, even with the encouragement of F1’s new American owner, Liberty Media. The two biggest teams, Mercedes and Ferrari, refused to take part.

Such skepticism soon aged incredibly badly. “Drive to Survive” has gone on to change F1 forever, fueling much of its subsequent growth in popularity and welcoming a new generation of fans to the sport. Its drivers — and even its team principals — have become megastars. Even Hollywood could not ignore the phenomenal evolution of F1, cashing in with a movie starring Brad Pitt last year.

On Friday, season eight of “Drive to Survive” debuts on Netflix. Tom Rogers, a co-executive producer of the show, admits, “It’s unusual, really, for Netflix shows to get to season eight.”

In the sports docuseries space, few shows have lasted as long or been as successful. Many leagues have tried to replicate the formula, but few have succeeded. But why?

“People haven’t said we need to create a documentary, they’ve said we need a ‘Drive to Survive,’” said Will Buxton, a F1 journalist and Fox Sport’s lead IndyCar commentator, who has featured on each season of “Drive to Survive. “I think the fact that it is now a byword for this particular type of storytelling and this personality-driven form of storytelling tells you everything you need to know.”

People loved to peek behind the curtain of F1 when the show debuted in 2019. A new wave of sports fans quickly became enamored with Red Bull driver Daniel Ricciardo’s charm, watching as he weighed up a career-defining move and battled Max Verstappen on the track. They came to love Haas team principal Günther Steiner’s potty mouth, adding a set of new words and phrases to F1’s lexicon.

And because this was a show about people and personalities, not setups and telemetry, the teams’ fears were never realized. Instead, they quickly felt the benefits. Ferrari and Mercedes, which had hesitated to participate from the start, immediately changed tack, opening their doors from season two onwards, to see what drivers are really like when the cameras aren’t supposed to be watching.

“It was always very difficult to connect with those drivers in those moments of high emotion,” Rogers said. “I think that’s what ‘Drive to Survive’ tapped into.”

It also struck the right tone. The series did not get bogged down in the technical minutiae that, while important in F1, could overwhelm a newcomer. Nor did it focus too heavily on what happened on the race track. The show focused on the human side, telling stories in a way that needed little prior working knowledge.

Rogers noted he is one of the very few lifelong F1 fans working on “Drive to Survive,” which is no accident. “We wanted fresh perspectives coming to the sport,” he explained. “We wanted people in the edit, people on the ground, who didn’t really know much about the world, so that they could look at it with a new sense of inquisitive kind of view.

“As long as we keep that fresh take on the paddock, I think it will continue to be successful.”

“Drive to Survive” was hardly the first major docuseries that went far behind the scenes of a sport. But Netflix’s foray into F1 was a turning point. Talk of “the ‘Drive to Survive’ effect” became rife, both within F1 as it comprehended its sudden boom, and outside of the sport as others tried to bottle the same potion. It helped that “Drive to Survive” was a massive as the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns began, quickly spreading through word of mouth as something to watch while cooped up at home.

Box to Box became the production company of choice for other sports looking for their own “Drive to Survive” magic. First came tennis with “Break Point,” debuting in January 2023. A month later, “Full Swing” explored golf during the LIV breakaway. In June, cycling’s “Tour de France: Unchained” was released, followed by “Full Contact” on the Six Nations rugby in January 2024.

Of those four series, only “Full Swing” is still in production as of 2026.

“If we knew the secret ingredients to replicate (“Drive to Survive”), then we would replicate it, and everybody else would do the same,” said Rogers. “Each sport is unique.”

But the more concentrated nature of the F1 paddock, the central tent of the traveling circus that pops up every other week, was a big reason why the sport was like catnip to Netflix.

“In essence, the paddock is a perfect soap opera set,” said Rogers. “It is the apartment in ‘Friends.’ It’s the pub in ‘Cheers.’ All of our characters descend on the same spot every week, every fortnight, and interact with each other. Some of the other sports, it’s slightly more difficult.”

Buxton also thought “Drive to Survive” benefitted from having a “limited cast of characters which changes every season,” referring to the drivers and team bosses that fans could connect with.

“Your focus can be on this pretty small group of individuals,” said Buxton. “They’re constantly fighting for their place, and they change every season. There will be new faces or people moving to new places, and so you start to become invested with their lives and with their careers.”

F1’s nature also lent itself to the kind of drama that played well to Netflix, according to Liam Parker, the sport’s chief communications and corporate relations officer. Competition between big brands, egos and wallets is easy fodder for clashes that would bring out people’s personalities.

“There are examples in Netflix of where people clearly hate each other or don’t like each other and can’t stand working with each other,” said Parker. “Then there are friendships as well. The personalities are just perfectly suited because of the environment we’re in.”

But where F1 has especially flourished is that its biggest names and stars have all bought in to help make the series a success.

That was a sticking point for “Break Point” in particular. Many players were happy to get involved, including Taylor Fritz and Nick Kyrgios. But there were none of the very top male players, such as Jannick Sinner, Novak Djokovic or Carlos Alcaraz, the latter being the subject of a separate Netflix series. From the women’s game, only Aryna Sabalenka was a regular among the highest seeds. After Netflix cancelled the series in early 2024, some of the top professionals explained their reservations had surrounded the filming demands and how the show was edited.

Cycling teams that took part in Netflix’s “Tour de France: Unchained” had concerns, too — about the final edit and the logistical headache of squeezing a camera crew into cars already packed with team equipment. Despite working with producers to address those concerns, their goodwill turned to disappointment when the show was cancelled last July, having failed to make a significant impact in France, its key target market.

F1 and cycling are perhaps the closest sports to compare — both have their stars hidden behind helmets, rely on technology and data, and serve as traveling circuses. But there are key differences.

One is the grander size of F1 operations, especially compared to cycling teams, which made it easier for them to integrate cameras into their garages, even as strict paddock rules were enforced through the 2020, as the pandemic forced the season start to be delayed until July.

Teams had to remain in their own ‘bubbles’ and couldn’t interact with media crews. The solution was to put the camera operators within a team bubble, complete with full kit, to ensure they could keep filming. “People literally travelled, lived with and breathed the existence of the team,” said Rogers. Out of necessity, “Drive to Survive” got even better access.

F1’s world is, in many other ways, small: only 22 drivers across 11 teams, most outfits headquartered in the UK and many drivers living in Monaco. As Rogers said, the fact that the ‘set’ — the paddock — also remains the same from race to race makes it an easy point of congregation. Cycling had a traveling circus, but F1 also had the village.

Max Verstappen, the four-time world champion, has been one of the most vocal members of the paddock and one of the show’s more consistent critics. He took no part in season four of the show — which covered his maiden title-winning season — as he was unhappy with his portrayal, before returning for sit-down interviews from season five onwards. But he said last year he was “not surprised” after a clip that showed him looking sad after Lando Norris had won the race in Miami was actually taken from the Dutch Grand Prix three months later.

Rogers said that was a “genuine error,” one that Netflix quickly fixed. “It becomes a big news story, inevitably, but there’s no conspiracy,” he added. “We’re not trying to stitch people up. It is human error. And we put more processes in place to try and mitigate that.”

The teams also get a chance to review the footage of themselves that is used in “Drive to Survive” and give the final sign-off, and there is a broad understanding in the paddock that the show is not a documentary. It must also entertain and be compelling, meaning the drivers and teams must tolerate some creative license.

The give-and-take with teams when discussing access is always a challenge. For some of the smaller teams, whose storylines may get sidelined or left out of the series completely, there’s an understandable frustration if they’ve gone to lengths to open their doors and give access.

Haas driver Ollie Bearman made reference to it in an interview on BBC Radio 1 earlier this week, which was being filmed by “Drive to Survive.” When the host, Greg James, got excited about the prospect of being on the show, Bearman told him: “Don’t get your hopes up. I’ve done about three or four days of filming with them, and I’ve never seen a single second of it (on the show).

“I was so excited the first time. I did a whole day of filming with them. Not a second — (it went) straight in the bin.”

But Parker felt there was a competitive element between the teams fighting for their presence on “Drive to Survive.”

“You get people who say, ‘Oh, I don’t have time (to film),’” said Parker. “But it’s always interesting at the end when someone has got more screen time than someone else, and how all the teams and the drivers end up coming forwards and saying, ‘I want more! Why am I not in this more?’ So they see the value in it.”

That’s a dollar value, too. F1 team revenues have surged in recent years as big-name sponsors seek to capitalize on its growing popularity. The chance to get their logos not only in front of the hundreds of millions of fans who watch the races, but also the wider audience that tunes in via Netflix, only adds to the sport’s appeal.

The success of “Drive to Survive” will always be dictated by its viewership, which has remained strong.

But the viewership of “Drive to Survive” has been gradually decreasing in recent seasons, according to data from Netflix. Netflix only started to release these figures in 2022, and Netflix’s figures for July to December 2025 have not been released.

Even accounting for that decline, the numbers will still satisfy both F1 and Netflix. Both parties are now past the point of officially announcing that another season is in production, with it accepted that the cameras will turn up again once testing is underway.

“We’re not planning for an end,” said Rogers. “Things naturally have a finite duration, I would argue. But yeah, there’s nothing on the horizon that we know about.”

Parker said F1 would never get to a situation where it was pushing Box to Box and Netflix to keep making “Drive to Survive” if they felt the show had run its course. But he said that one in three new F1 fans surveyed by the sport still cite the show as a key driver of their initial fandom.

“It’s been transformative in the U.S. but it’s also been transformative elsewhere,” said Parker. “So while it continues to have that resonating effect, why would you do anything other than continue the partnership?”

That impact in the United States, especially off the back of the success of the F1 movie and at the start of a new partnership with Apple as its American broadcaster, is something Rogers thought could continue to fuel the success of “Drive to Survive.”

“As much as we’ve grown the American market, I would argue there’s still a long way to go in the American market,” said Rogers. “It feels like F1 is continuing to go from strength to strength. So hopefully, ‘Drive to Survive’ will continue alongside F1 in that respect.”

The response to season eight’s release will give both Netflix and F1 another sign of how the show is faring and, in many ways, the sport’s wider reach and popularity.

But so long as the numbers remain this strong, and teams are willing to open their doors, there’s little reason why the cameras won’t be waiting at the paddock gates at the start of each new season.

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