Hi there,

I'm a sucker for sports documentaries. 30 for 30, The Last Dance, you name it and I've probably binged it. But Drive to Survive did something different. Something that's got every other sport scrambling to copy it.

Growing up in Colombia in the early 2000s, we had exactly one motorsport hero: Juan Pablo Montoya. Not exactly what you'd call a racing powerhouse country, but Montoya was different.

If you were a kid in Colombia, you wanted to be him.

Montoya wasn't just fas, he was electric. Unapologetically intense and completely unhinged in the best possible way. In a country built on politeness, Montoya was a glitch in the matrix. He was sharp, aggressive, competitive to the point of seeming psychotic.

Some said he was arrogant. They were absolutely right. He was also relentless.

And in an era when Schumacher dominated everything, Montoya wasn't just there to participate — he was actively trying to ruin everyone's weekend. Third place twice (2001 and 2003), wins in Monza, Interlagos, Hockenheim. He made beautiful, chaotic noise.

Montoya had what makes any story stick: personality, friction, and the kind of stakes that make you forget you're watching millionaires drive in circles.

That energy disappeared from F1 for decades. The sport became polished, corporate, sanitized. All the rough edges got media-trained away.

Then Netflix cracked a code that even the best sports documentaries hadn't quite figured out: they turned an entire season into a soap opera, not just a retrospective. Now every sport wants in. Golf, tennis, cycling, basketball—they're all chasing the Drive to Survive formula.

The problem? They're copying the format, not understanding the magic. They’re missing the one thing Montoya had in spades:

Unfiltered energy you can’t script.

The Metrics Are F**king Insane

When Drive to Survive launched in 2019, it looked like premium content for rich guys who own multiple Ferraris. Seven seasons later, it's cultural colonization disguised as sports documentary.

Season five hit 16.9 million views. The demographic breakdown reads like a marketing team's fever dream: 31% aged 18-29, 46% women. These aren't traditional motorsport fans. These are people who discovered F1 exists because Netflix told them it was basically The Real Housewives with better production values and occasional death.

Here's the number that should terrify every other sport: 28% of American adults now consider themselves F1 fans, with more than half crediting Drive to Survive. That's potentially 72 million F1 fans in the U.S. alone.

But here's where it gets beautiful and random.

This is basically what every startup dreams of — manufacturing massive demand for something people didn't know they wanted, then scrambling to monetize the gap between interest and action later.

The show drove the average F1 viewer age from 44 to 32, which in sports marketing terms is like discovering a fountain of youth made of pure advertising revenue.

Meet Your New Favorite Villain: Max Verstappen (Who hates the show)

No prestige drama is complete without a perfect villain. Enter Max Verstappen, who has managed to become simultaneously the most dominant driver in F1 history and the guy everyone loves to hate.

Here's what makes Max a generational character study: he's won 44 of the last 66 races since 2021. That level of success should make him boring. Instead, it makes him the kind of antagonist that screenwriters spend years trying to create.

The beautiful irony? Max refused to participate in Drive to Survive seasons 3 and 4 because he thought the show was manipulative bullshit designed to manufacture fake drama.

He was completely right. It worked anyway.

"The series is all about excitement and it needs to be exciting, so they position you and whatever fits to the episode," he explained, with the tone of someone who just discovered that reality TV producers might not have his best interests at heart.

How Netflix Accidentally Reinvented Sports Marketing

Drive to Survive did something genuinely revolutionary: it figured out that people don't actually want to watch sports. They want to watch people under pressure making increasingly unhinged decisions.

Before this show, F1 felt like watching rich people's hobby through bulletproof glass. Glossy, expensive, completely inaccessible. You saw the champagne, the crashes, the podium celebrations — all the greatest hits with none of the human mess.

Drive to Survive said stuff that, let's see what happens at 3am in the garage when someone's career is imploding in real time.

They gave us access to the silences, the panic, the brutal honesty when everything goes sideways. It didn't just show F1 — it made people feel the psychological warfare disguised as professional motorsport.

The editing is pure thriller: tight cuts, climactic build-ups, cliffhangers that somehow make a mid-table battle feel like life or death. Because emotionally, it absolutely is.

This is what every brand trying to "humanize" their content should study obsessively. Netflix took the most inhuman sport imaginable — millionaires piloting technological marvels that cost more than small countries' GDP — and made it feel intimate.

The Dominance Problem (Or: Why Being Too Good Ruins Everything)

But success creates its own problems, and Drive to Survive is learning this the hard way.

Viewership plummeted 23.2% in season six. Season seven continues the decline. The culprit? Max's very dominance that once made him compelling.

When one driver wins everything, narrative possibilities collapse. Drama demands uncertainty. Stakes require the possibility of failure. Max Verstappen claiming his fourth consecutive championship is objectively impressive and dramatically devastating.

This is the curse of market leaders everywhere: the better you get, the more boring you become. Challenger brands capture all the narrative attention because they have something to fight for. Dominant players just have something to lose.

Netflix tried to solve this by manufacturing artificial drama around secondary characters, but it's like making a Marvel movie where everyone knows Iron Man wins in the first ten minutes.

Max understands this better than Netflix does: "Any 'access show' basically works on the basis of 20 to one, so for every 20 hours you shoot you can use one hour." They're desperately mining for conflict that doesn't exist because the real story — Max being impossibly good at his job — doesn't translate to television.

How Netflix Tried to Copy-Paste Their Formula and Failed

After Drive to Survive became a cultural phenomenon, Netflix made the obvious move: copy-paste the format onto other sports. Full Swing (golf), Break Point (tennis), Tour de France: Unchained (cycling).

The results were... not great.

Full Swing barely registered in global top 10s beyond its debut season. Viewership nearly halved between seasons one and two. Tour de France: Unchained got cancelled. Break Point exists but no one talks about it.

Why? Because Netflix fundamentally misunderstood what made Drive to Survive work.

In F1, drivers risk their lives at 300+ km/h while managing billion-dollar machines in real-time psychological warfare. In golf, the biggest risk is someone talking during your backswing.

F1 has always thrived on genuine animosity: Senna vs. Prost, Hamilton vs. Verstappen, teammates who smile for cameras then plot each other's downfall. Tennis and golf have ego, sure, but the hatred doesn't burn quite as hot.

Individual sports lack the team dynamics that breed internal conflict. In F1, even teammates wage silent war. In tennis, your biggest enemy is your own serve.

Netflix tried applying the same editing tricks without grasping that the raw material was fundamentally different. You can't manufacture the specific type of beautiful chaos that erupts when twenty guys who think they're the best driver alive get locked in metal cages and told to sort it out at terminal velocity.

What Your Brand Can Steal From This Beautiful Disaster

Here's what every marketing team should tattoo on their foreheads:

Stop selling features. Start selling anxiety. Drive to Survive doesn't waste time explaining DRS or tire compounds. It shows you what happens when someone's entire career hinges on making the right decision in 0.3 seconds. That emotional core makes people care.

Characters are your actual product. People don't connect with brands. They connect with the humans behind the brand who risked everything, failed spectacularly, or had the audacity to think they could outdo everyone else.

Conflict is content gold. Every compelling brand story has genuine tension. Not manufactured controversy, but real stakes. What are you actually fighting for? What happens if you lose? If the answer isn't genuinely terrifying, your story isn't ready.

Dominance creates a storytelling problem. Market leaders become boring the moment they stop having something to prove. Max Verstappen is learning this in real time. If you're the biggest player in your space, find new mountains to climb or watch everyone else capture the narrative attention.

Behind-the-scenes beats polished every time. People crave authenticity, which means showing the 3am panic calls, the decisions that nearly killed the company, the conversations when everything went sideways. The mess is the message.

Your villain might be your best character. Netflix accidentally discovered that Max Verstappen's refusal to play their game made him more compelling, not less. Sometimes the person who won't cooperate with your narrative becomes the most interesting part of it.

Story Is Always Behind the Engine

Like I said at the beginning, Montoya was the perfect character to defy the status quo: bold, unexpected, and willing to challenge the dominance of Schumacher.

He didn’t just race — he disrupted. That’s the power of a great story. And whether you’re a person or a brand, we all carry stories that can cut through the noise — if we choose to tell them right.

Because in a world flooded with flashy tactics and content-for-content’s-sake, storytelling is what makes the difference. It’s what makes people stop. Feel. Remember.

And maybe this should be something we learn early — not just in school, but in business too: Embrace your story. Own the tension, the rhythm, the flaws.

Use every tool the great storytellers use: character, pacing, conflict, emotional stakes. Because your brand won’t just be remembered for what it says — but how it says it. And more importantly, why.

In the end, story isn’t the thing you wrap around your message. It’s the thing that drives it. Find the emotion when your people's world could end. Make people feel that emotion in their chest.

Everything else is just rich guys driving fast.

Brand Wars: Toyota v Kia

The way car brands flex identity, emotion, and legacy in 60 seconds? It’s branding at its finest. This week’s showdown: Toyota vs Kia — two different vibes, both playing for trust in their own way.

Toyota

The global heavyweight. You don’t buy a Toyota to stand out — you buy it to never think twice. It’s the dependable one. The Hilux. The Corolla. The Prius.

And let’s be honest, if you haven’t been in the back seat of a Corolla doing something slightly illegal, have you even lived?

Toyota leans into what it’s always done best: reliability, resale value, and the kind of legacy that makes people say, “My family’s always driven one.” Its ads reflect that — safe, thoughtful, legacy-led. Less horsepower, more heart. It’s the brand equivalent of a deep breath and a solid night's sleep.

Kia

Kia isn’t playing catch-up anymore. It’s playing its own game. The new logo might look like the headline act at an EDM festival, but it works. Especially when you line it up next to the absolute shitshow over at Jaguar.

Their ads feel sharp, stylish, intentional. They know exactly who they’re speaking to — and it’s not your dad. It’s not trading on history. It’s going all-in on curiosity.

Never thought I’d say it, but my next car might just be a Kia.

Ad Vault: Volvo

"Moments" (2017)

I f**king love this ad.

Try not to cry… seriously.

It’s over three minutes long, but worth every second. A lifetime captured in a single drive — told with poetic scriptwriting, cinematic beauty, and emotion that sneaks up on you.

The final line nails exactly what Volvo stands for. Safety, yes. But also life. The kind of message that stays with you long after the screen fades.

Lento Vibes

A bit of random inspo from around the grounds:

• Big Arches, Bigger Appetite: McDonald’s is going full Americana with its new Big Arch Burger. Oversized, unapologetic, and built for serious cravings. See the full spot →

• Mustard Goes Mainstream: Kraft Heinz finally dropped its long-teased mustard merch. Yes — mustard, as fashion. Catch the drop →

• Instagram x Tyler, the Creator: Their biggest brand campaign ever. Raw, chaotic, and refreshingly unfiltered. Watch the campaign →

• AI in the NBA: Don’t Ask Coaches, scouts, and execs are all using AI — they just won’t tell you how. Read the breakdown →

• Claude Levels Up: Anthropic’s Claude can now build full AI apps. It’s not just a chatbot anymore. Check the upgrade →