Mercedes F1 Boss Trumps Netflix’s Drive to Survive Efforts With Harsh Analogy: “We Added Keeping Up With the Kardashians”

Walking into a new race weekend, it has become a common sight to see the fans show up in record-breaking numbers. The Netflix show, Drive To Survive is one of the core reasons for this major spurt in popularity.

As a result of the recent traction, most of the personnel operating in the F1 paddock have become a celebrity off track, and one popular name is the Mercedes boss, Toto Wolff.

He is the one who makes the crucial decisions for the team’s success and has led them to 8-constructor titles. The Austrian summarized how the show broadened the appeal of the sport further. He said “It is athletes in high-performance machines… it is about life and death, and on top of that we added Keeping Up with the Kardashians,” 

The docuseries has received a lot of backlash for staging fake rivalries. Consequently, drivers like Max Verstappen have even shown dissent by refusing to interview for the Netflix crew. Even though the Mercedes boss is in awe of the markets the show has opened up, he remains critical of the misrepresentation.

He said, “The problem is they will always position you in a way they want, so whatever you say, they will try to make you look reckless or trying to make you… whatever fits the story of the series. So I never really liked that. I prefer to just have a one-on-one interview with the person who would like to know me.”

READ MORE: Are Female Drivers Allowed to Compete in F1?

Earlier this year, Netflix renewed its contract for 2 more years with F1. Do you think that the streaming service needs to work upon the quality of the show it’s producing?

Mercedes Boss opines on how Netflix and Liberty Media changed F1

Wolff is not only in charge of the Silver Arrows but is also an avid investor in the company as he owns a third of the pie. He has majorly benefited from the recent growth as the value of Mercedes F1 has more than doubled since Liberty took over. The F1 owner, Liberty Media, brought in media-savvy reforms which translated into tens of millions of new supporters for the pinnacle of motorsport.

The Mercedes CEO commented “In a way, we never accessed or excited the American audiences. Formula 1 is a niche sport – it’s a high-tech, high-income demographic, high-academic education.”

“I thought it must be easier to tap the audiences in the big cities, like New York, but we really never got there. Then Liberty took over, didn’t move the needle really. And then Netflix came, Covid came and people started to binge-watch. And then suddenly we have this huge momentum now in the US that nobody had expected.”

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As things stand, each party is benefiting from the mutual agreement and the content that is created around the sport. How long do you think the Netflix show will continue to air and produce the F1 docuseries?