Red Bull team boss Christian Horner says that Netflix’s docu-series Drive to Survive is serving an important purpose despite being “Kardashian on wheels”.
The series has been credited with helping Formula 1’s popularity burst, particularly in the USA.
However, it has drawn criticism for how it has presented certain scenarios and has been accused of over-dramatising situations.
In 2022, Lewis Hamilton stated that Red Bull’s cost cap controversy in addition to the team order debacle at the Brazilian Grand Prix felt like “a bit of a Kardashian show”.
Horner has now bought into the comparison, asserting that the drama extends beyond his Red Bull squad.
“I mean, we are now the Kardashians on wheels,” he told the Financial Times.
“I mean you’re just looking for Guenther Steiner [Haas team boss] to lose it, or for my friend Toto [Wolff, Mercedes CEO] and I to have a little bit of jousting.”
However, Horner says that the show has been positive for highlighting the going ons in the sport outside race weekends.
“It gets you behind the scenes to know the personalities of the drivers a little more and exposes the characters,” he said.
“And it’s not just about the front of the field. It’s about the trials and tribulations that go on down the grid, at the back of the grid, what they’re fighting for.
“So I think that’s the dynamic that it has completely changed, and F1, to a degree, it is a bit of a soap opera. I mean the way it operates, the characters involved, the money involved, the politics.
“There’s so much going on in the sport outside of the cars driving for two hours on a Sunday afternoon.”
