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Reality TV in the Social Media Economy / Going ‘round in circles: Drive to Survive shakes up the F1 fandom

By Hannah Link

Framed in TikTok’s now familiar 9:16 aspect ratio, a young women squints at her laptop while Beyoncé’s “Partition” plays.1 A text box on screen reads, “DTS fans are ruining F1.” Incredulous, she mouths “What?” and shuts her laptop. Cut to the same woman seen from a different angle, this time looking tired and fed up, as the text on screen reads, “Ive [sic] been watching F1 for decades, you’re not a real fan.” Again, she shuts the laptop. Final cut: her face buried in her hands, the woman shakes her head slightly. The text reads, “Girls only like F1 because of the great looking young drivers.” She slams the screen shut, gets up, and walks away. 

Jess Medland (also known professionally as Jessica McFadyen), who created and starred in this video on her personal TikTok account with 51.5k followers, is a Senior Producer at Sky Sport F1.2 “DTS” is a common inter-community acronym among F1 fans, used as shorthand for Formula 1: Drive to Survive, Netflix’s reality TV sensation. The unattributed quotations to which Jess reacts are familiar enough to women the world over, who remain accustomed to such pushback when they try to lay claim to a spot in a traditionally masculine fan community. That Jess has received such comments, even as a professional in the wider F1 industry, suggests that no woman is safe from this kind of derision. The requirements of being a real fan remain unstated—at the same time, it seems as if membership in the in-group of genuine fandom will remain just out of reach, no matter how much she attempts to prove herself. But could this be changing? According to some critics, the sports world is seeing a shift—a very fast, high-powered shift—with the new Formula 1 fandom.3

Formula 1 is an elite motorsport division that consists of a series of Grand Prix, or championships, taking place all over the world.4 Its name refers to the set of regulations to which competing teams must adhere as they design the engines and bodies of their high-performance vehicles. Its first event took place in 1950 at the Silverstone racetrack in the United Kingdom.5 This course is still one of the major events in the packed international calendar of F1. In total, 23 Grand Prix took place in F1’s 2023 season, which ran from March to November.6 With an average duration of one and a half to two hours, F1 races occupy a middle ground between high-speed and endurance events. Fans who attend F1 in person will spend anywhere from $370 up to $15,000 USD for a ticket to the full three-day race weekend.7 After factoring in travel costs including flights and accommodations in cities such as Monaco, Las Vegas, or Abu Dhabi, the total price tag of the F1 experience skyrockets. Cost alone explains why this sport has long been inaccessible to a majority of the population. 

And yet, F1 continues to attract viewers, in person and on television. “Formula One is an entrancing sport and it is quite easy to fall in love with it,” states “The Complete Beginners Guide to Formula 1.”8 Indeed, in recent years this conjecture has been borne out by the appearance on the scene of a host of new F1 fans. These viewers “are a lot younger and more female than five years ago.”9 They are also a lot more American. A Nielsen report from May 2022 suggested that the number of U.S. F1 fans grew 10% between 2019 and 2022.10

This influx of new female fans has been widely attributed to the creation of Drive to Survive in 2018. The same Nielsen report drew a direct link between the reality show and rising viewership of F1, suggesting that “Drive to Survivegenerated more than 360,000 new fans of F1” in the months leading up to the Miami Grand Prix.11 Suddenly, thanks to the melodrama and keyed-up intrigue depicted in the reality show, unlikely superstars were created, such as Guenther Steiner, Team Principle for Haas, the American-owned F1 team.12 Top drivers like Lewis Hamilton had long been in the public eye, but now a fanbase sprang up around younger and less accomplished drivers, such as Daniel Ricciardo, whose struggle to decide if he should keep his seat with Red Bull Racing or move to another team featured heavily in the first season of Drive to Survive.13

Delving deeper into this show and its social media following promises to reveal more than just a straightforward demographic shift. Su Holmes and Deborah Jermyn observed in 2004 that for some in the reality television industry, “national frontiers are envisaged as boundaries to be conquered in the ‘utopian’ vision of an expansive global arena.”14 In 2010, when David Grazian took stock of the reality TV landscape of the early 2000s, he observed that “reality television creators […] have increasingly taken advantage of the globalization of markets and flexibility of national borders that neoliberal policies make possible.”15 He linked this shift in material conditions to the increased individualism and opportunistic behaviours demonstrated by participants in early 2000’s reality shows like Survivor and The Apprentice.16 The astronomical rise of a show like Drive to Survive showcases the ongoing progression of this trend, as it depicts a global elite that engages in constant long-haul flights to exotic locales such as Monaco, Miami, and Jeddah, to take part in a transnational competition. 

Clearly, by virtue of its subject matter, Drive to Survive is distinct from Grazian’s examples, and from our current conception of reality TV. Typically, reality shows “depict common people engaging in both common (e.g., dating) and uncommon (e.g., wilderness survival) activities.”17 Admittedly, the racers, team principles, engineers, pit crews, and everyone involved in F1 are engaging in uncommon activities. However, they subvert this definition because they are not “common” people. Akin more to a program like Celebrity Big Brother, Drive to Survive purports to bring famous people to our level—or, put another way, to bring us to the level of famous people, so we feel that we can see eye to eye with them. 

The show produces new public personas for the drivers and team principles using the conventions of reality television such as confessional interviews, narrative voiceovers, and behind-the-scenes footage.18 These aspects of reality TV fuel parasocial interaction, defined in the mid 20th century as “a kind of psychological relationship experienced by members of an audience in their mediated encounters with certain performers in the mass media.”19 For instance, Ricciardo, an enthusiastic early participant in the show, is positioned from episode one as an affable, well-intentioned, and relatable character, shown laughing and joking around with his family when not racing or training.20 Once fans are connected to him, he is then cast as an underdog in episode three, when he is depicted vying to keep his spot as the younger driver for Red Bull, Max Verstappen, seems to rise up and steal his limelight. Verstappen, introduced by the series on a yacht in Monaco while discussing another yacht that he has also been on, does not receive the same down-to-earth characterization as Ricciardo.21 Perhaps this valorisation of Ricciardo at Verstappen’s expense is why Verstappen has since voiced his dissatisfaction and even declined to participate further in the series.22

Clearly, drivers like Ricciardo have benefited from Drive to Survive’s narrative interventions. Through the curation of clips selected specifically to demonstrate the vulnerability and struggles of chosen subjects, Netflix creates the illusion of reaching across class and geographical divides, as fans feel that the inaccessibility inherent to celebrity has fallen away in favour of an authentic connection to the people on screen. At the same time as we feel we are brought into the confidence of select F1 drivers, we are also taught to admire and set these drivers on pedestals—quite literally, as they are frequently filmed standing on rostrums, holding trophies.23 In this way, the F1 drivers are endowed with what Max Weber terms “charisma,” defined as “a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities.”24 Weber posits that charismatic leaders, a category that includes prophets, for example, both live among their disciples and are set apart from them by virtue of this charisma.25 This is the same paradoxically close and distant relationship created by Drive to Survive. Giving viewers a simultaneous sense of identification and adoration, the show creates charismatic leaders of F1 participants. 

Charisma is an inherently volatile force, for prophets as for race car drivers. Weber remarks that “[i]t cannot remain stable, but becomes either traditionalized or rationalized, or a combination of both.”26 This is where Instagram steps in, providing a meeting place for “a stable community of disciples.”27 On Instagram, we find an entire charisma-fuelled ecosystem of Formula 1 fandom, where the established parasocial relationship between fans and drivers asserts itself in inside jokes and playful mocking of the most admired—or reviled—drivers on the grid. Some of the most popular F1 accounts include “F1 MEMES (@f1troll),” “Daily F1 Memes (@theformulameme),” and “F1 memes and clips (@random_f1clips).” These and other accounts post a constant onslaught of content about F1 to millions of followers. 

An examination of Instagram fan accounts shows that much of this content centres around figures polarized by Drive to Survive, including those depicted as heroes, such as Ricciardo, and others cast as villains, like Verstappen. Another popular character on these pages is Charles Leclerc, whose status as a young, promising, and highly motivated driver was established in Drive to Survive season one, episode eight, as he tries to win a spot on the Ferrari team to honour the memory of his godfather, Jules Bianchi, an F1 driver who fatally crashed while racing in a 2014 Grand Prix.28 Much of the fan content created during the 2023 season of F1 showed sympathy or pity for Leclerc’s seeming inability to win races, and derision for Verstappen’s inability to lose them.29

Through recurring fandom-specific meme formats, the drivers’ charisma is traditionalized. Across these accounts, a handful of common clips of the drivers are circulated, cropped, re-edited, and placed into new contexts. The humour is referential, relying on the audience to be in the in-group of the fandom to fully grasp their meaning, as evidenced by a compilation post shared by Daily F1 Memes, where popular clips are played back-to-back with no explanation, and viewers are invited to comment their favourite one.30 Many of these videos depict drivers reacting humorously to mistakes that they or others have made, and their frustrations are pitched as relatable content. For instance, in one popular clip, Leclerc crashes his car into a wall at high speeds and repeats, “I am stupid. I am stupid.”31 Together, Instagram and Drive to Survive have created a new kind of fandom for F1, one far more widespread and accessible to a growing audience, predicated largely on the individual personalities and quirks of a handful of drivers. More specialized fan communities also contribute to the online ecosystem of F1 memes. For instance, the women behind the podcast Two Girls 1 Formula, maintain a popular Instagram account (@twogirls1formula) with 38k followers. They cater directly to “F1 fans who feel marginalized in male dominated spaces.”32 Clearly, Instagram has enabled viewers from all walks of life to connect and trade content about their shared interest in the triumphs and failures of individual F1 drivers.

At the conclusion of his discussion in 2010, Grazian speculated that “perhaps the increased progressive and populist yearnings of the times might not only counter our longstanding neoliberal consensus in American politics, but inspire new and innovative ways to produce entertainment media and popular culture as well.”33 While his political predictions have not yet come to pass, he is correct that methods of creating content have changed. Drive to Survive and the younger, more female fandom it has inspired produce content on a more personal, one-to-one level, communicating with one another directly on social media. This Instagram-based fandom also approaches its central subject differently. Concerns about car specs, engine power, tyre type, and qualifying position persist, of course. But the drivers have come to the fore more than ever. “I’m so invested because I follow their social media and I feel like I know them through the Netflix show,” one fan said to Vanity Fair in April 2022.34 By her own account, the interviewee experiences an emotional connection to the drivers because of the show, suggesting that Drive to Survive is effectively creating their charisma for viewers. At the same time, thanks to social media that traditionalizes this charisma, the fan  is “invested,” implying a consistent commitment in the drivers’ personas. 

In the Routledge International Handbook of Charisma, Eva Giloi distinguishes between celebrity status as “integration” on the one hand and charisma as “insurgency” on the other.35 She writes, “charisma was thus insurgent because it worked outside of and sought to replace established hierarchies.”36 Though Giloi is looking mainly at fin-de-siècle culture, the idea of insurgent charisma could be excavated and applied to the current case, precisely because of the new demographics reached by Netflix’s reality show. Drive to Survive and Instagram fandom appear to be insurgent in the sense that they are attracting new F1 fans—women, in particular. The drivers’ charisma in the show is challenging existing assumptions about who enjoys F1 and how they enjoy it.

However, one cannot claim that the charisma of the F1 drivers is entirely insurgent. As top athletes in a sport with astronomical cost barriers to entry, the drivers remain firmly integrated (to rely once more on Giloi’s dialectic) in the system of global capital. Indeed, Drive to Survive’s central premise is contradictory: to render accessible what is inherently inaccessible, the drivers’ world of luxury and excess. This paradox is not unique to Drive to Survive; in her study of shows like Crimewatch and their use of CCTV footage of actual crimes, Deborah Jermyn comments on the “spectacle of actuality” that “Reality TV explores and exploits with a renewed enthusiasm.”37 Jermyn draws on the Foucauldian notion of spectacle as she explores how true crime shows sensationalise the real events they discuss, distancing them from the viewer, while also giving us a sense of glimpsing the “real” via surveillance footage of actual people in the moments leading up to them experiencing or committing a crime.38 In this way, such shows instil empathy and identification with the victims while fuelling judgement and revulsion toward the criminals.

This simultaneous detachment from and proximity to the real subjects on screen calls to mind Guy Debord’s exploration of spectacle from the 1970s:  

In the spectacle, one part of the world represents itself to the world and is superior to it. […] What binds the spectators together is no more than an irreversible relation at the very center which maintains their isolation. The spectacle reunites the separate, but reunites it as separate.39

Debord’s definition is compatible with the way charisma functions by seeming to bring the leader to the people’s level while maintaining his power over them. However, if the spectacle reifies existing distinctions between viewers, “[maintaining] their isolation,” this then calls into question Giloi’s notion of charisma as an insurgent force. Here, rather than forge new relations and challenge existing hierarchies, charisma is absorbed into the spectacle of reality TV and social media, and serves it by reproducing the same unequal power dynamics under the guise of bringing people together. In other words, while Drive to Survive appears to bring together new fans into one community through a shared connection to charismatic personas, it in fact enforces the existing inequalities between spectators. 

We see this borne out in experiences of even the most established female members of the community, such as Jess Medland or the hosts of Two Girls 1 Formula, who have encountered “[t]he dismissal of women who love Formula 1.”40 Indeed, many are quick to point out that, although fan demographics are now shifting, there have still only been two female drivers in the sport’s history.41 And, of course, there is still a world of difference between the lived experiences of F1 drivers and fans of any gender. You probably know someone who plays football, or basketball, or any number of other popular sports. But you most likely don’t know someone who races cars. 

The gap between fans and drivers was never so stark as it was throughout 2020 and into 2021, and this divide is in many ways precisely part of Drive to Survive’s appeal. F1 commentator Toni Cowan-Brown makes explicit the link between the success of the show and COVID-19 lockdowns: “Then the pandemic happened (in March 2020), we all were lacking live sporting events, stuck at home, dying for good content and we discovered it [Drive to Survive] and we binge watched Seasons One and Two.”42 Cowan-Brown points directly to the feeling of being “stuck at home” as a key motivator for watching Drive to Survive. According to her analysis, Drive to Survive offered a panacea for pandemic restlessness. Rather than inspiring jealousy over the drivers’ continued travel while much of the world’s population experienced some level of confinement, the show instilled viewers with vicarious satisfaction in much the same way that travel influencers and digital nomads satiate our desire for a life of globetrotting while we sit, sedentary, in our offices or homes and scroll Instagram.

Following Grazian’s example, this analysis of Drive to Survive shows that F1 is a world of charisma, one which both attracts outsiders while still glorifying the insider status of elite athletes along gender and class lines. While the wider reach of the new F1 fandom through reality television and Instagram makes it appear more inviting, the spectacle of the sport ensures that the status quo remains intact—and will for the foreseeable future.

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Endnotes

  1. Jess Medland (@jessmcf1official), “If you love F1 you are welcome in this house…” TikTok video, 2 March 2022, https://www.tiktok.com/@jessmcf1official/video/7070442195572067589?q=dts%20f1&t=1707496917682.
  2. Name and job title found on Jess McFadyen’s LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicamcfadyen/?originalSubdomain=uk.
  3. Maria Sherman, “The Fangirlification of Formula 1,” The Cut, 13 November 2023, https://www.thecut.com/2023/11/formula-1-racing-fangirls.html.
  4. “Drivers, teams, cars, circuits and more – Everything you need to know about Formula 1,” Formula 1, accessed 5 December 2023, https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article.drivers-teams-cars-circuits-and-more-everything-you-need-to-know-about.7iQfL3Rivf1comzdqV5jwc.html.
  5. Formula 1, “Drivers, teams, cars, circuits and more.”
  6. “The beginner’s guide to… the Formula 1 calendar,” Formula 1, published 25 January 2023, https://formula1.com/en/latest/article.the-beginners-guide-to-the-formula-1-calendar.4pcHLMpa3t7mNcmtjGeUpM.html.
  7. “RANKED: How Much do F1 Tickets Cost in 2023?” F1 Destinations, published 6 June 2023, https://f1destinations.com/ranked-how-much-do-f1-tickets-cost-in-2023/#:~:text=Budget%20fans%20will%20spend%20on,will%20spend%20on%20average%20approx.
  8. “The Complete Beginners Guide to Formula 1,” F1 Chronicle, accessed 5 December 2023, https://f1chronicle.com/a-beginners-guide-to-formula-1/.
  9. James Allen, “Who are the new F1 fans and how does the sport make sure it keeps them?” Motorsport.com, 25 October 2023, https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/who-are-the-new-f1-fans-and-how-does-the-sport-make-sure-it-keeps-them/10537082/#:~:text=Research%20and%20audience%20data%20bear,is%20that%20the%20whole%20story%3F.
  10. “Driven to watch: How a sports docuseries drove U.S. fans to Formula 1,” Nielsen, published May 2022, https://www.nielsen.com/insights/2022/driven-to-watch-how-a-sports-docuseries-drove-u-s-fans-to-formula-1/.
  11. Nielsen, “Driven to watch.” 
  12. “The Guenther Steiner way – Drive to Survive’s ‘reality TV superstar’ and the show’s impact in the US,” Formula 1, published 20 October 2023, https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article.the-guenther-steiner-way-drive-to-survives-reality-tv-superstar-and-the.6Axm39jgAZR8b4hLB7J8fI.html.
  13. Formula 1, “The Guenther Steiner way.” 
  14. Su Holmes and Deborah Jermyn, “Introduction” in Understanding Reality Television, ed. Su Holmes and Deborah Jermyn (New York: Routledge, 2004), 1-32: 15.
  15. David Grazian, “Neoliberalism and the realities of reality television,” Contexts 9, no. 2 (2010): 69.
  16. Grazian, “Neoliberalism,” 69.
  17. “Reality TV,” from The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Cultural and Intellectual History, ed. Joan Shelley Rubin and Scott E. Casper (Oxford University Press, 2013), DOI: 10.1093/acref/9780199764358.001.0001.
  18. Formula 1: Drive to Survive, season 5, episode 1, “The New Dawn,” produced by James Gay-Rees, Rafa Pereira, and Tom Rogers, aired 24 February 2023, https://www.netflix.com/watch/81612707?trackId=200257859, 00:06:21.
  19. “parasocial interaction,” from A Dictionary of Media and Communication, (Oxford University Press, 2011, 1st ed.), accessed 5 December 2023, DOI: 10.1093/acref/9780199568758.001.0001.
  20. Formula 1: Drive to Survive, season 1, episode 1, “All to Play For,” directed by Nick Hardie, James Routh, Nonuk Walter, and Martin Webb, aired 8 March 2019, https://www.netflix.com/watch/80239920?trackId=14277283, 00:31:00.
  21. Formula 1: Drive to Survive, season 1, episode 3, “Redemption,” directed by Nick Hardie, James Routh, Nonuk Walter, and Martin Webb, aired 8 March 2019, https://www.netflix.com/watch/80239922?trackId=255824129, 00:29:44.
  22. Luke Smith, “Netflix Series Is a Hit, but Verstappen Has a Problem,” The New York Times, April 22, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/22/sports/autoracing/max-verstappen-netflix-drive-to-survive.html.
  23. “The New Dawn,” 00:00:37.
  24. Max Weber, “The Nature of Charismatic Authority and its Routinization” in On Charisma and Institution Building, ed. S.N. Eisenstadt (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 48-65: 48.
  25. Weber, “Charismatic Authority,” 50.
  26. Weber, “Charismatic Authority,” 54.
  27. Weber, “Charismatic Authority,” 54.
  28. Formula 1: Drive to Survive, season 1, episode 8, “The Next Generation,” directed by Nick Hardie, James Routh, Nonuk Walter, and Martin Webb, aired 8 March 2019, https://www.netflix.com/watch/80239926?trackId=14170289, 00:01:24.
  29. For Leclerc’s inability to win, see F1 MEMES (@f1troll), “He aged a decade in 4 years,” Instagram carrousel, 24 March 24 2023, https://www.instagram.com/p/CqLb9UaD7BN/?hl=en&img_index=1. For Verstappen’s inability to lose, see F1 MEMES (@f1troll), “Sad but true,” Instagram carrousel, September 27, 2022, https://www.instagram.com/p/CjA_FogD3__/?hl=en&img_index=1. 
  30. Daily F1 Memes (@theformulameme), “Whats your favorite one?” Instagram video, 14 June 2023, https://www.instagram.com/reel/CtfAagOAN9G/?igshid=YzZhZTZiNWI3Nw%3D%3D. 
  31. Daily F1 Memes, “Whats your favorite one?”
  32. “About Us,” Two Girls 1 Formula, accessed 21 December 2023, https://twogirls1formula.com/pages/about-us. 
  33. Grazian, 71.
  34. Dan Adler, “Drivers Wanted: Netflix, Drive to Survive, and the New Cult of F1 Fandom,” Vanity Fair, 14 March 2022, https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2022/03/netflix-drive-to-survive-and-the-new-cult-of-f1-fandom.
  35. Eva Giloi, “Celebrity and charisma; Integration and insurgency” from Routledge International Handbook of Charisma ed. José Pedro Zúquete, (London: Routledge, 30 November 2020), 375-386: 375.
  36. Giloi, “Celebrity and charisma,” 379.
  37. Deborah Jermyn, “Actuality and Affect in the Crime Appeal” in Understanding Reality Television, ed. Su Holmes and Deborah Jermyn (New York: Routledge, 2004), 71-90: 72.
  38. Jermyn, “Actuality and Affect,” 81-2.
  39. Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, trans. Fredy Perlman and John Supak (Black & Red, 1977), https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/debord/society.htm.
  40. Sherman, “Fangirlification.”
  41. Sherman, “Fangirlification.”
  42. Allen, “Who are the new F1 fans.”

  • Hannah Link

    Hannah Link is a graduate student at McGill University. Her research focus is theatre history and performance, and she is currently preparing a thesis on 20th century history plays and embodied historiography.