Drive to Survive: How Netflix Ignited the Love for Formula 1 in the United States
by Kinga Kliszcz.
Americans have typically preferred NASCAR or the NTT IndyCar Series to Formula 1. However, from March 2019, when Netflix’s Formula 1: Drive to Survive hit the platform, we’ve noticed a visible preference shift. How big are the Drive to Survive viewership numbers? We combed through our Netflix data to find out. Lights out, and away we go!
Over the years, Formula One had seen its share of controversies and endured long stretches without any scheduled races in the United States. Devoted fans will probably never forget watching the season finale that was shot in the parking lot of Caesars Palace or the Indianapolis 2005 scandal, where only six cars out of twenty participated.
It wasn’t until the Liberty Media takeover at the end of 2016 that the Formula 1 brand started to change. The new management refreshed the logo and graphics, introduced a new theme song composed by Brian Tyler, and built up a strong presence on social media — all to bring in more spectators. Then they decided to collaborate with Netflix.
Season 1 of Formula 1: Drive to Survive premiered on March 8, 2019, and covered the events of the 2018 World Championship. The docudrama format gave fans an exciting, exclusive, behind-the-scenes look at the drivers and races — and by doing so, made the show a global Netflix hit.
By the time Season 4 was released on March 11, 2022, Drive to Survive’s global audience was big enough that it became the most popular show in 33 countries during its first three weeks. Netflix has already signed on for Seasons 5 and 6.
But how was Drive to Survive received among American audiences? Let’s start by looking at the performance of the series from its release date until the end of September 2022.
Formula 1: Drive to Survive
Performance Over Time, March 2019 — September 2022
United States
During its first days on the platform, Drive to Survive was 27th on the Netflix top series ranking for the week of March 4, 2019, and 24th the following week — capturing 1.1 million and 1.3 million Unique Viewers (UVs), respectively. For a Netflix docuseries outside of the “True Crime” genre, this was a spectacular achievement.
We can also see a slightly unusual pattern compared to the performance of typical multi-season series. While peak viewership for Drive to Survive declines during the release of the second season, as expected around the week of April 6, 2020 — during the release of Season 3, it’s back at the starting level with 1.2 million UVs.
This is unusual because, after a weaker season, series tend to lose viewership for the next one. In this case, we instead see growth from Season 2 to Season 3 and then again from Season 3 to Season 4.
With the release of Season 4, Drive to Survive reached its all-time peak with 1.5 million UVs during the week of March 14, 2022. During this time, fans spent 4.7 million hours watching the epic title battle between seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton and Red Bull’s golden child, Max Verstappen (we won’t reveal who wins).
Speaking of release weeks, let’s now compare the performance of all four seasons during their first 120 days after release.
Formula 1: Drive to Survive
120-day Performance
United States
Season 4 had the strongest start, with over 400,000 UVs on its release day, and a peak of 622,000 UVs on day 2. Seasons 1 and 3 had very close starting numbers, with 264,000 and 266,000 UVs, respectively, and then both peaked by day 2 with 565,000 and 413,500 UVs. The typical audience decay set in for all four seasons around day 34, so that viewership levels roughly leveled out and remained consistent through day 120.
Let’s look at these numbers from another angle — aggregated during the first 7-, 28-, and 90-days after their releases:
Formula 1: Drive to Survive
7-, 28- and 90-day Unique Viewers (UV)
United States
Here, we can see that Season 1 was the clear champion across all three time periods, accumulating the most Unique Viewers. For instance, in just seven days after its release, Season 1 was watched by 1.8 million people, with another million following in the next three weeks. To put these numbers into perspective, we can quickly check the benchmark percentiles for all Netflix series:
Based on our data, all four seasons of Drive to Survive achieved better viewership results than 50% of all series on Netflix, and most of the seasons even performed in the top 25%. No wonder Netflix has already green-lit two additional seasons.
Now let’s dig deeper. Using our Showlabs Cross-Viewing report, we’re able to track what other content Drive to Survive audiences were consuming in the release month of March during each of the last four years:
Formula 1: Drive to Survive
Netflix Cross-Viewing, Top 5 Series and Movies
United States, March 2019–2022
As we can see, Drive to Survive fans are not just motorsport-focused, but also consuming many of the other trending productions on Netflix, such as Tiger King, The Umbrella Academy, and even Bridgerton. In fact, the majority of the cross-viewed titles come from the monthly Top 10 ranker for both movies and series.
Since Liberty Media’s acquisition of Formula 1, they’ve taken strategic steps to expand F1’s fan base, with very impressive results.
Their build-out of Formula 1’s social media presence grew the digital fanbase, and newcomers can now easily access a wealth of videos, podcasts, and even memes created by F1 itself, by the teams, or by the fans.
But it’s Liberty Media’s successful collaboration with Netflix that finally pushed the motorsport into the national spotlight, expanding the F1 community not just digitally but also impacting ticket sales to the live events.
In the table below, we can see the change in the weekend attendance data for the United States Grand Prix after Liberty Media took charge:
Due to the pandemic, the US Grand Prix was canceled in 2020. But even without that year, the influence of the Netflix series is clear, with the 2021 US Grand Prix becoming one of F1’s biggest races of all time — with an almost 50% increase in spectators.
We can see a similar trend in the broadcast viewership data:
While the average viewership looks impressive to date, this year could be even bigger. The season opener in Bahrain was watched by 1.353 million viewers on average, and the Miami Grand Prix noted 2.6 million viewers on average, which was the US’s largest audience for a live F1 broadcast ever.
From 2023 onward, the Las Vegas Grand Prix will join the list, meaning that the United States will see a record-breaking three races in a single year. The American driver Logan Sargeant will make his F1 debut during the United States Grand Prix weekend, driving for Williams in Free Practice. There are even rumors of the Formula 1 World Champion Mario Andretti wanting to start his own American team.
What comes next? We’ll just have to wait and see. One thing is for sure — the love for Formula 1 continues to grow in the United States and both sides of this relationship, Netflix and F1, seem equally invested to make this motorsport the next great American pastime.
The audience measurement data in this article is from Showlabs.tv, developed by PlumResearch.
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