F1 champion Alain Prost DOUBTS passion of new fans

Fans near the podium at the 2023 Miami Grand Prix — Photo: © IMAGO

F1 Legends

F1 champion DOUBTS passion of new fans

Drive to Survive has attracted a new audience for the sport

Stuart Telford

Tuesday 23 April 2024 15:58 Updated: 17:40

The next generation of Formula 1 fans are more interested with stories away from the track, according to a former four-time world champion.

F1 content has surged on digital platforms in recent seasons - GPFans was the fastest growing sports publisher in the UK in 2023 - but that hasn't necessarily been due to fans watching the action itself.

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ESPN said last November that the 2023 F1 season was the second-most watched in the sport's US television history, with an average viewership of 1.11 million over 22 races.

Drive to Survive - a documentary series produced in a collaboration between Netflix and F1 - has been credited with attracting a whole new generation of followers to the sport.

F1 legend Alain Prost won three world titles with McLaren way before the days of Drive to Survive, in 1985, 1986 and 1989, and another with Williams in 1993, and was a great career rival of the sadly departed Ayrton Senna.

Drive to Survive gives fans an inside look

Prost's doubts about new F1 fans

Prost is glad to see new followers being attracted to the sport, but has questioned their interest in an interview with Sports Illustrated.

"I think it was one thing I really thought about very often because it's very simple in our generation. We only had fans of Formula 1 and obviously we were passionate, but mechanics, engineers, drivers obviously, but even the media, they were really passionate about our sports," said the Frenchman. "You know, let's say the old generation.

"And now slowly we came to the, let's say, Netflix story during the Covid time, which made Formula 1 very interesting because we had a lot of people and really young generation very interested about our sport. But, you can be a fan, but are they going to be traditional lovers of our sport?

"Are they going to be more and more interested about the human side? The technology? You [only] have a little bit of the whole part of this story."

F1 Drive to Survive Netflix UK