The sport of Formula One has taken off in the past decade, launching from an obscure, niche racing sport with more of an international focus into a full-fledged phenomenon, both globally and in the United States.
The additions of Miami and Las Vegas to the racing calendar, the strategic moves of owner Liberty Media, the rise of the F1 video game and the popularity of the Drive to Survive show on Netflix during the pandemic all contributed to the sport finding real, sustainable traction with American audiences. ESPN, the network that broadcasts Formula One races to American viewers, saw average television audiences jump from 554,000 in 2018 to 1.13 million in 2024, while average attendance at races has eclipsed 200,000 each of the past three years and peaked at just over 272,000 in 2023 and 2024. The trend was so significant that it served as a key focus of my master’s thesis at Northwestern University, which covered the sport’s rise ahead of the inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix in November 2023.
The 2025 F1 season itself has provided plenty of highlights to keep audiences engaged, including Lewis Hamilton switching to Ferrari and McLaren rocketing to the top of the standings. But the sport’s biggest summer splash has come at the box office with the release of Apple Studios’ movie F1, starring Brad Pitt and directed by Joseph Kosinski (Top Gun: Maverick). The blockbuster has earned more than $90 million in the United States and more than $230 million globally, while scoring stellar reviews from both critics and audiences. Anecdotally, I loved watching F1 and, a week later, view it as one of the best sports movies of the past decade, a thrilling and dynamic depiction of racing that hit all the right notes.
Having a well-crafted blockbuster hit that stars Brad Pitt, draws in both hardcore racing fans and casual audiences and gets so close to realism that scenes were filmed at actual Formula 1 races seems like a surefire way to further accelerate growth in the ultra-trendy sport. Are we headed for another surge in Formula One’s popularity? Not so fast.
My doubts about a movie-induced Formula One boom have nothing to do with the quality of F1 itself. F1 understood the assignment and executed masterfully, telling the story of Sonny Hayes (Pitt) returning to Formula One racing decades after a terrible crash and his attempts to lift a last-place Formula One team APX out of the cellar and into the spotlight. Along the way, Hayes clashes with the team’s other racer, Joshua Pearce (played by Damson Idris), 18 real-life Formula One drivers and the life-threatening dangers of the sport in one final shot at glory. I saw the movie in a 4DX theater that synchronized the driving with moving seats, sprayed water and added in additional real-life effects, and I’m still not past that high. In the words of Martin Scorcese, F1 was absolute cinema, and it captured what makes Formula One so thrilling.
Yet equating the critical and financial success of F1 with the Drive to Survive-era virality that lifted the sport to new heights is a faulty comparison, and the movie, while a stellar advertisement for the sport’s thrills, is a less sure driver of long-term audience growth.
Of all of the factors that I mentioned earlier, let’s narrow the scope down to the Netflix docuseries Drive to Survive, which is obviously, like the F1 movie, content focused on Formula One. The two forms of media share a great deal of the same appeals: the unpredictability and danger of Formula One races, the nasty drama between teams and even drivers within the same team and in-depth looks at building competitive Formula One vehicles that expands upon even the nuances of Formula One broadcasts. Drive to Survive’s accessibility as a Netflix streaming show proved a perfect storm during the pandemic and helped develop a new generation of Formula One fans, while F1’s star-studded cast and spared-no-expense marketing has drawn in casual moviegoers as well and is just as accessible.
The differences are considerable, though. Whereas F1 mimics the mechanics (literal and figurative) of a Formula One team and includes real-life drivers as cameos, Drive to Survive starred those real-life drivers and team executives as its main characters and drove emotional investment and interest in their careers, which in turn primed viewers for the actual races. From those docuseries episodes, new Formula One fans gravitated toward drivers and teams to cheer on in real life, rather than a fictional team and Brad Pitt as in the F1 movie. The sheer difference in content volume factors in, too — F1 runs for two hours and 35 minutes, while Drive to Survive has had seven 10-episode seasons already, with half-hour to hour-long durations for each episode.
Drive to Survive also had the benefit of reaching audiences ripe for conversion into Formula One fans, while F1 follows in the docuseries’ wake. Positioning F1 as the next Drive to Survive-level success means that the movie will have a similar impact on the growth of the sport and fan development, but what if the most likely would-be fans were already swept up in the Drive to Survive craze, leaving less room for F1 to convert them into diehards? Like a Formula One driver coasting off the coattails of a competitor, there are definite advantages to following up a smash hit and a property that already has serious momentum, but that dynamic can also render continued growth more difficult as a result.
As alluded to earlier, Drive to Survive wasn’t the only reason Formula One took off in American popularity in the late 2010s. Miami and Las Vegas have entrenched themselves in the racing calendar and featured iconic locales like the Dolphins’ Hard Rock Stadium and the Las Vegas Strip, giving American audiences up-close experiences in what was previously a Eurocentric sport. ESPN’s contract with Formula One has been a wildly successful partnership that has increased exposure and accessibility stateside and enabled Drive to Survive’s impact to convert show viewers into fans of the sport itself.
In comparison, F1 has fewer advantages in its corner. Aside from the movie, what are the factors that are driving Formula One’s growth? Increased parity, after years of ruthless domination by Red Bull driver Max Verstappen? Drama among the sport’s teams and from changes in team-driver pairings? An influx of younger drivers? Each potential reason pales in comparison to the perfect storm that was the Drive to Survive era.
F1 is a triumph of a sports movie and a best-case scenario for a movie about one of the world’s most exciting and trending sports. But asking that phenomenal movie to accelerate the next stage of growth for its source material, or even to emulate the media-driven frenzy that has defined Formula One’s recent rise, is extreme. Rather, F1 makes more sense as a byproduct of the Drive to Survive era. The sport’s ascension made Apple Studios’ lofty budget a justifiable investment, one with a built-in audience and a need for incredible realism and a top-tier cast. Thanks to that rise in popularity and framework, F1 came to the starting line ready to take off and cleared to create a transcendent movie theater experience.
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