Drive to Survive

 I was a Formula One enthusiast from the late 1950's-until the early 2000's. I followed the sport in magazines particularly Motor Sport magazine from the UK which I have subscribed to since the 1960s. I went to many grand prix in the UK, Germany, Italy, Belgium and of course Australia. I went to the first modern era Australian Grand Prix in Adelaide in 1984 and my last Australian GP was 2004.

That last race was the break point for me. I had become increasingly bored with the processional races and the Bernie Ecclestone show that F1 had become. The races in faraway places on new boring circuits where there was no public interest in F1 seemed to be on the calendar just to make El Supremo, Bernie, even richer. F1 had lost me and not just me - the worldwide TV audience was shrinking fast.

I went to the 2004 Grand Prix in Melbourne and that same year I flew to France for the weekend with my son  to the Le Mans 24 hour sports car race. Amazingly the weekend at Le Mans including accomodation, car hire, circuit admission and airfares to and from Paris from Sydney cost me less than the rip off weekend in Melbourne and the race was much more interesting. The F1 race weekend was supposed to be a 4 day event but really very little happened on the first two days but the hotels insisted you took a 4 night package regardless of the fact that the majority of interstate spectators flew home on the Sunday evening. 

Bernie had no interest in providing an entertaining package for the paying public at the races or on TV. Bernie's entertainment came only from one source- counting the shekels. His shekels.

The game changed in 2017 when the US entertainment company, Liberty Media, purchased the rights to F1 from Ecclestone. Wisely they immdiately took the geriatric Bernie out of the frame and started on the difficult task or reinventing F1. It took a little longer than they anticipated I suspect but one masterstoke changed the game for them-Drive to Survive- a documentary series on Netflix which follows F1 race by race starting with the 2018 season. The series really goes behind the scenes with very high production values. At the same time Liberty completely lifted the quality of the live TV coverage of the races with expert commentators who are also entertaining.

Drive to Survive pulled me and many others back into F1 but more importantly it also attracted millions of new fans to the sport. I am hooked again.The races this year have been superb-really edge of seat exciting. I am no longer nostalgically looking back at races such as the 1980 GP at Monza-photo above. The old F1 is gone but the new F1 is even more exciting. Yes, old dogs can learn new tricks.