A few seasons after Netflix's Formula 1 documentary series “Drive to Survive,” the racing league's governing body, the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), presented the platform with a platform containing evidence of the “ Netflix effect.” Since the series premiered in 2019 as part of a concerted effort to expand the sport's footprint in the U.S., officials had seen social media engagement, marketing, attendance and broadcast ratings improve racing in its less penetrated core market.
“It's hard to completely disengage: Formula 1 was doing a lot of great new things, you had a broadcast partner at ESPN that prioritized it as well, and you had a partner at Netflix that promoted the sport through the docu-series,” Brandon recalls. Riegg, vice president of sports and nonfiction series at the streamer. “But they were probably very generous and said, 'We attribute a lot of this to Netflix.' And when I saw the strides they made in many categories, it was impressive and I felt like we could take credit for at least some of that.”
Now Formula 1 is ready to return the favor.
With the Friday premiere of “Senna,” a scripted miniseries about the life and career of Brazilian F1 legend Ayrton Senna, the championship's rich tradition, packed with archival footage and FIA authorization to reconstruct races, podiums , logos, uniforms and Senna track designs. apogee – becomes the source material for another evolution in one of the most innovative relationships in sports entertainment.
“It becomes almost like an origin story for F1,” says “Senna” showrunner Vicente Amorim. “Do you love 'Drive to Survive'? Are you a fan of F1? Maybe you're thinking about watching the 'F1' movie next year? Maybe take a look at how it all started.”
Yes Warner Bros.' The 2025 film, developed in collaboration with the FIA and starring Brad Pitt, represents the sport's promotional campaign on the scale of a Hollywood blockbuster; “Senna,” on the other hand, emerges from Netflix’s distinctive approach to international television. The six-part series, which follows its dashing hero from his karting days in São Paulo to his tragic death, at age 34, during the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix, was produced in Brazil, largely filmed in Portuguese and featured Latin American artisans. particularly in the creation of his amazing car replicas. It is the same regional model that created crossover hits like “Elite” and “La Casa de las Flores”, applied to one of the most successful drivers in F1 history.
“We really made those shows thinking they would be huge in Spain and Mexico, respectively, and I think it's precisely their authenticity and their very specific local value, culture, look and feel that made them unique to their own countries and then globally appealing.” . ”says Francisco Ramos, vice president of content at Netflix Latin America, who worked on both titles. “What we have discovered, throughout this almost 10-year journey creating local content outside of the US, is that the most accurate and authentic stories that adequately represent the cultures they come from are those that can find resonance outside the United States. their territory of origin.”
Conceived by the racer's family and Brazilian production company Gullane, “Senna” arrived on Netflix after plans for a feature film hit creative and financial obstacles, and soon found a devoted fan in Amorim, who vividly remembers Senna's heyday at late 80s and early 90s, when he won three world championships. “It becomes almost like a religion,” Amorim says of growing up in Brazil during this period. “Every Sunday you turn on the television to see how Senna probably wins.”
Although it focuses on the triumph and tragedy of Senna's career, as well as his relationships with his parents, Miltão (Marco Ricca) and Zaza (Susana Ribeiro), and his glamorous pop star girlfriend, Xuxa (Pâmela Tomé), “Senna” is also the story of a rapidly modernizing sport, which is on the verge of becoming the dazzling global giant it is today. In 1994, the year of Senna's death, the F1 world championship consisted of 16 races, 11 of them in Europe; 30 years later, the season spans 24 races across five continents, including three in the United States alone. And Senna himself – handsome, media-savvy and impatient with the old-world politics he found in F1 when he joined the circuit in 1984 – was instrumental in setting the transformation in motion. As Amorim says: “There is an F1 'Before Senna' and an F1 'After Senna'.”
Gabriel Leone as Ayrton Senna, right, with Matt Mella as Senna's teammate and rival Alain Prost.
(Alan Roskyn/Netflix)
The makeup of the “After Senna” F1 fan base is, in fact, a big part of why Netflix has invested so much in its partnership with the sport. Although the FIA first envisioned “Drive to Survive” as a way to reach American viewers, according to Riegg, Netflix saw the docuseries as a “covered bet”: If it failed to catch on in the United States, it still had potential elsewhere. countries. where Netflix operates and which had established a following in F1.
In the end, “Drive to Survive” boosted interest in F1 not only in the U.S. but globally: When the FIA presented Netflix with its presentation on the series’ impact, “They made profits in some of the markets that they thought were the most important.” mature, including Brazil, Italy and Spain,” says Riegg.
Although Ramos insists that “Senna,” which was first announced in 2020, was not expressly intended to “feed off” the success of “Drive to Survive,” in many ways it embodies the same effort to diversify production and audiences. that has defined Netflix production. business in recent years. The release of the promotional art and trailer for “Senna” attracted interest not only in Brazil but also in other F1 strongholds such as Mexico, Argentina, Italy and Japan, while the documentary series could be said to have primed the engine for potential viewers. in places like the United States, which have less established F1 fans.
“During the process of developing and making this, 'Drive to Survive' got bigger and bigger,” Ramos says. “This is not how we planned it. … But surely there is a benefit that I can't avoid.”
The benefit could also work the other way around, Riegg acknowledges, creating an opportunity “to broaden the funnel or entry point for people who will become fans of Formula 1 in general, whether it's the racing or something like our documentary series “.
It's an opportune time for Netflix's relationship with F1 to evolve, as “Drive to Survive” faces its first real hurdles after years of viewership growth.
“I think there's been a stabilization of viewership over the last two seasons,” Riegg says. “For the first few seasons it continued to grow steadily and (I guess 'plateau' is a word) then found its audience. There's a natural ebb and flow to all of these shows, especially sports shows, or even our dating shows, which are analogous in certain ways, where some seasons simply have stronger stories than others. I think part of what F1 addresses that is a bit different to other sports is that you've had a winner in Max. [Verstappen] and a team like Red Bull that has really dominated for many seasons in a row, so there has been less suspense and perhaps less drama throughout the season.”
What's not yet on the table for Netflix, Riegg emphasizes, is live Formula 1 racing, although the FIA's current US television deal with ESPN expires in 2025. And it's not because of the challenges it has faced the platform to expand its live programming capabilities, most recently during the boxing match between Jake Paul and Mike Tyson, which led to widespread complaints about freezing, buffering, and poor image quality. That's because Netflix's current focus on live TV is on one-off events, rather than a season-long commitment. “We're in the crawl, walk and run phase,” Riegg says. “We're definitely not in that business right now.”
And as “Senna” himself understands, it is commerce as much as horsepower that makes the wheels of this sport turn. “F1 is a business,” Amorim says, repeating a line from Senna's real-life rival Terry Fullerton that features in the series. “Except two hours on Sunday.”
