It should all be looking rosy at Formula One HQ right now, but this long-time fan thinks the sport has got itself into a bit of a bind, and it may struggle to see a way out of it. The sport has done a Dorian Gray, only in this case, the devil is Netflix. Everyone involved in any commercial area of F1 cannot quite believe the shot in the arm Drive to Survive has given the sport. Just when it was struggling to reach more people and crucially, a younger audience, the whole soap opera ended up being a hit and suddenly an Austrian man saying “Vanker” was more popular than Lewis Hamilton. As an old fart, I was glad because it looked like F1 had a future. But I was also worried, because that new audience wouldn’t be as forgiving as the longstanding saddos of yesteryear.
The 2021 championship was probably the best in a generation – ascript written by the television gods – upstart precocious youngster with massive talent against multiple world champion. This was the perfect way to reward all those new eyeballs for tuning in to F1. Formula One was serving a masterclass in entertainment – Max and Lewis were at each other weekly, Toto and Christian added a dash of homoerotic handbags and we all loved it. Then came Abu Dhabi and F1 pulled out a revolver and aimed it directly at its own head. Whether or not you liked the outcome, none of us can deny that it damaged the sport. If I was new to watching F1, I think I’d have thought, “This is a fix, they’ve mugged me off, I’m not watching this again”.
“FORMULA ONE WAS SERVING A MASTERCLASS IN ENTERTAINMENT”