Drive to Survive and symbolic capital in Formula One

Abstract

This article examines how Netflix's Drive to Survive (DTS) redistributes symbolic capital in Formula One (F1) by reshaping visibility and recognition within the sport's elite field. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of field, capital, and habitus, alongside scholarship on mediatisation and sport stardom, it conceptualises DTS as a symbolic-capital-allocating institution within platform-era sport media. Historically, F1 stardom has been structured around competitive success, institutional affiliation, and tightly managed corporate communication within a masculinised, economically exclusive field. Through selective narrative access, confessional storytelling, and persona amplification, the series expands the criteria through which symbolic capital circulates, elevating particular drivers and team principals while reshaping expectations of emotional visibility. Analysing patterns of participation, institutional refusal, and editorial framing, the article shows how mediated persona performance and emotional labour have become central to recognition in F1. The capacity to engage with or resist documentary exposure is stratified by pre-existing capital and field position. While the series has broadened global audiences and intensified affective engagement, it operates within enduring gendered, racialised, and classed inequalities. The article argues that DTS demonstrates how platform-mediated sport reorganises field dynamics by restructuring symbolic hierarchies and redefining labour expectations attached to elite sporting identity.

Introduction

Motorsport has evolved since its inception in the late nineteenth century into a global spectacle that has become an established part of modern society and economy (Næss and Chadwick, 2023). There are multiple disciplines within motorsport based on vehicle type, format and racing terrain. Widely regarded as the pinnacle of motorsport is the FIA (Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile) Formula One World Championship (F1). F1 is an international racing series that consists of elite teams and drivers competing annually across a global calendar of Grands Prix using single-seater cars (Mourão, 2017). The championship has existed since 1950 and, due to its extreme speeds, technological innovation, intense physical demands, and global reach, it is often positioned within academic and industry literature as the most technologically advanced and commercially significant form of motorsport (Nichols and Savage, 2017; Sturm, 2023a).

F1 operates as a globally mobile spectacle embedded within urban place-marketing strategies (Bustad and Andrews, 2023; Chadwick, 2023; Dewhirst, 2023; Lowes, 2018). Broadcast globally, in 2025, F1's total cumulative viewing audience was 1.83bn (+6.8% on 2024), with the highest average viewership per Grand Prix (76.1 m) since 2020 (Reuters, 2026). The sport has experienced growth within its fanbase, which was reported to be 827 million in 2025, a 12% increase year-on-year and a 63% increase on 2018 (F1, 2025a). In recent years, since Liberty Media took over F1 in 2017, F1 has widened its media presence from a traditional television broadcast model to include a more diverse portfolio, including F1TV (its digital dedicated over-the-top (OTT) platform launched in 2018) and live streaming races on YouTube (Sturm, 2023a). Additionally, F1 has since developed strategic media partnerships with Netflix and Apple Original Films.

Entry into the sport is structured by extraordinary financial requirements and tightly regulated development pathways (Motorsport UK, 2024), reinforcing classed, gendered, racialised, and geographic concentration within its driver cohort (Campbell, 2023; Carrington, 2023; Farrington et al., 2012; Matthews and Pike, 2016; Nichols and Savage, 2017) and racing teams (Oster and Mastromartino, 2021). Despite there being no regulations to prevent women racing in F1, the sport is male-dominated with only five women having entered a Grand Prix – the last in 1992 (see Campbell, 2023; Howe, 2022; Matthews and Pike, 2016). The limited diversity within the series is also evident with British F1 driver Lewis Hamilton as the only black driver to compete in the sport's history (Carrington, 2023). Furthermore, F1 drivers are predominantly from European countries, and the majority of F1 teams are based in Europe (MotorSport, 2026a, 2026b).

F1's exclusivity is reinforced by a rule introduced in 1981 requiring teams to compete as constructors; in 2026, the grid consists of only 11 teams, each with two race seats, leaving just 22 driver positions available (F1, 2026). Competition is therefore intense: while racing performance and developmental pedigree remain central, economic capital can supplement sporting merit; drivers may secure seats through sponsorship and financial backing, illustrating the continuing entanglement of economic and sporting capital within the field (Mourão, 2017; Oster and Mastromartino, 2021).

Media visibility has historically been equally regulated. Drivers have typically been mediated through sporting performance, technical expertise, and corporate communication regimes that privilege composure and strategic neutrality (Campbell, 2023; Haynes and Boyle, 2025; Sturm, 2023a). Within this masculinised and predominantly white elite field (Sturm, 2021), symbolic capital has traditionally been accrued through driver championship status, team affiliation, and institutional legitimacy rather than emotional transparency or mediated intimacy. Public personas were carefully managed and curated by PR teams, backstage access was limited, and vulnerability was marginal within a sporting culture that privileged performance over personality (Campbell, 2023; Smart, 2005; Sturm, 2023b).

Against this historically regulated regime of visibility, Netflix's Drive to Survive (DTS) represents more than an expansion of media coverage; it constitutes a structural intervention into the field of F1 (Boyle and Haynes, 2024). Premiering in 2019, the series embedded cameras within garages, motorhomes, and private team spaces, foregrounding confessional interviews, interpersonal conflict, and emotional vulnerability in ways largely absent from traditional race broadcasts (Coles and Fenton, 2023; Sturm, 2023a). Unlike broadcast coverage organised around race calendars, technical analysis, and sporting results, DTS privileges relational drama, narrative continuity, and persona development (Boyle and Haynes, 2024). In doing so, it recalibrates the criteria through which recognition circulates within the sport. However, DTS should be understood as a prominent articulation of wider transformations in platform-era sport media, rather than the sole driver of change.

This article examines how DTS reconfigures symbolic capital accrual within F1 by redistributing visibility, legitimacy, and recognition across drivers and team principals. Drawing on a Bourdieusian conception of field, capital, and symbolic power, it analyses how mediated persona, emotional labour, and narrative centrality operate as emergent forms of capital within the sport's evolving hierarchy. The article first outlines the theoretical and methodological framework, then analyses how DTS reshapes regimes of visibility and symbolic capital within F1, before concluding by reflecting on the implications of these transformations for power, hierarchy, and inequality in platform-era elite sport.

These developments must be situated within broader processes of sport mediatisation, in which media logics increasingly shape institutional behaviour, athlete self-presentation, and fan engagement (Frandsen, 2020; Ličen et al., 2022). While F1 has long been intertwined with broadcast media and global sponsorship structures (Dewhirst and Lee, 2023), the integration of serialised streaming documentary production represents a qualitative shift in how visibility is organised. Rather than merely broadcasting competition, platform-era sport media construct sustained narrative universes centred on persona, affect, and interpersonal drama (Boyle and Haynes, 2024). In this context, DTS operates as a parallel arena of symbolic competition in which recognition is produced through editorial framing and affective storytelling alongside, and sometimes independently of, competitive success.

These dynamics must also be situated within longstanding inequalities in F1, including class-based barriers to entry, gender exclusion, and racial underrepresentation, which shape who is able to access and accumulate symbolic capital within the sport (Campbell, 2023; Carrington, 2023; Nichols and Savage, 2017). Existing scholarship has consistently demonstrated the marginalisation of women within motorsport, highlighting how gendered hierarchies are reproduced across participation, technical roles, and media representation (Bancroft and Sturm, 2025; Campbell, 2023), an issue that remains central to understanding the distribution of symbolic capital within F1.

Methodology

This paper adopts a qualitative, theoretically informed textual analysis (Kuckartz, 2014) of Netflix's DTS to examine how symbolic capital is constructed and redistributed within Formula One. Drawing upon the first seven seasons of DTS (2019–2024), the paper explores narrative arcs with particular attention to recurring figures and key themes including rivalry, emotional disclosure, and narrative centrality. These cases were selected as theoretically illustrative examples (Levy, 2008) that reveal how visibility and recognition are structured within the series. As such, this article does not seek to measure audience reception or production processes; the analysis focuses on how the series represents drivers, teams, and relationships, and how these representations align with broader transformations in sport media.

The analysis is guided by a Bourdieusian framework, examining how symbolic capital is produced, circulated, and contested within the F1 field. This is combined with mediatisation theory to account for how media logics shape athlete representation and professional expectations. Analytical attention is directed toward narrative framing, character construction, emotional representation, and patterns of inclusion and exclusion. This approach does not aim to provide an exhaustive account of DTS content, but instead offers a theoretically driven interpretation of how platform-mediated storytelling contributes to the reconfiguration of symbolic hierarchies in contemporary elite sport.

Theoretical framework

Bourdieu, symbolic capital, and the F1 field

Pierre Bourdieu conceptualised social life as organised across semi-autonomous fields, each structured by historically sedimented logics, which establish the power relations within it (Bourdieu, 1984; Jenkins, 1992). Power relations determine the social position of an individual or institution within the field, and this is determined by the ‘relationships of domination, subordination or equivalence to each other’ (p.85) of the capital that is valued within the field (Jenkins, 1992). Within each field, individuals struggle and manoeuvre over four different forms of capital – economic, cultural, social, and symbolic (Bourdieu, 1984, 1993). Symbolic capital refers to recognition, legitimacy, and prestige of other forms of capital that are acknowledged as valuable within a given field (Bourdieu, 1984; Bourdieu and Wacquant, 2013). Sporting performance operates as a primary generator of symbolic capital, which is subsequently recognised and legitimised within the field through institutional validation, media representation, and audience perception (Alexander and Rosen, 2022; Andrews and Jackson, 2001; Dixon et al., 2025). While performance generates symbolic capital, it is through recognition and validation that it becomes socially effective within the field.

In F1 specifically, symbolic capital has historically been anchored in championship titles, constructor dominance and historical association with the sport, technological mastery, and alignment with global sponsors (Nichols and Savage, 2017; Sturm, 2023b). The sport's elite economic barriers and corporate governance structures have shaped a field in which legitimacy is closely tied to measurable competitive outcomes and institutional affiliation. As such, F1 drivers operate within a tightly regulated hierarchy in which prestige circulates primarily through symbolic capital aligned with performance.

However, Bourdieu emphasises that capital is relational and convertible (Bourdieu, 1986). The media wields the symbolic power to influence, transform, and construct the legitimacy within a field, and allows individuals to gain cultural capital that can transcend their field to others (Bourdieu, 1991; Couldry, 2003). As media visibility intensifies, symbolic capital may increasingly derive from mediated recognition rather than the historically accepted forms of symbolic capital, notably competitive achievement. Therefore, those positioned lower in the symbolic capital hierarchy associated with sporting performance may accumulate alternative forms of symbolic capital through narrative centrality, while those already endowed with dominant capital in the field may possess the autonomy to refuse additional exposure. This relational logic is central to understanding how DTS interacts in the F1 field.

Mediatisation and the mediatised sporting habitus

Mediatisation research further illuminates how media logics shape institutional behaviour and athlete dispositions (Blain, 2002; Frandsen, 2020; Hepp, 2013; Hjarvard, 2008; Ličen et al., 2022). Frandsen (2020) argues that sport institutions increasingly internalise media logics as structuring principles rather than treating media as external observers, a shift that is particularly evident in F1's integration of serialised streaming production. Mediatisation theory, therefore, conceptualises media as structural forces that reorganise communication practices, organisational priorities, and professional identities. This perspective builds on Couldry's (2004) notion of the ‘mediated habitus’, which emphasises how media environments reshape actors’ dispositions by embedding expectations of visibility and performance within everyday practice.

As previously noted, F1 has historically been characterised by controlled PR regimes and corporate discipline (Haynes and Boyle, 2025; Sturm, 2023a). Against this backdrop, the integration of serialised streaming production represents a qualitative shift. Dixon et al. (2025) describe the emergence of a ‘mediatised sporting habitus’, in which athletes internalise expectations of visibility, narrative coherence, and emotional accessibility as components of professional legitimacy. Within this framework, participation in documentary storytelling becomes embedded in the everyday structure of elite sport.

DTS intensifies these dynamics by embedding cameras within garages, motorhomes, and team environments. The camera becomes a structural presence that reshapes communicative dispositions and normalises emotional expressiveness and persona management as routine professional labour. Mediatisation thus provides a framework for analysing how symbolic capital in F1 becomes increasingly tied to narrative and affective performance.

Documentary form, authenticity, and narrative construction

The contemporary sports docuseries should be understood not only as a representational genre but as a structural media form shaped by platform capitalism and promotional culture. Recent scholarship argues for recognising the docuseries as a distinct industrial and narrative form, rather than an extension of legacy documentary traditions (Hart, 2024). This perspective foregrounds the institutional conditions that underpin its rise and the commercial logics through which visibility is organised.

Documentary scholarship further cautions against assuming that nonfiction media provide unmediated access to reality. Nichols (2017) argues that documentary modes shape meaning through rhetorical framing, selection, and sequencing, while Bruzzi (2006) conceptualises authenticity as performative and negotiated rather than fixed. Streaming-era docuseries draw on hybrid conventions blending journalism, documentary, and entertainment, intensifying affective immersion and narrative emotionalisation (Buehler, 2020; Glaser, 2010).

Within DTS, narrative arcs, selective editing, and confessional interviews construct relational drama and emotional depth that frequently displace strict competitive chronology (Boyle and Haynes, 2024; Sturm, 2023a). Unlike traditional broadcast coverage structured around race calendars, technical analysis, and results, DTS privileges personality, relational drama, and narrative continuity over chronological sporting progression (Boyle and Haynes, 2024; Sturm, 2023a). The series does not merely reflect F1 but actively constructs and performs authenticity through selective narrative framing, privileging certain perspectives while marginalising others. As Bourdieu (1998) argues in his analysis of televised sport, visibility is structured rather than neutral.

Persona, celebrity, and symbolic conversion

Celebrity and branding research further clarifies how mediated persona becomes a site of symbolic production. Marshall (1997, 2013) conceptualises celebrity as a discursive construction shaped by media circulation, while Driessens (2013) describes celebritisation as a process embedded in institutional mediation. Athlete branding scholarship similarly demonstrates that authenticity and emotional visibility operate as symbolic resources convertible into commercial and cultural value (Arai et al., 2014; Cashmore, 2024; Jacobson, 2020). In the context of F1, where drivers have historically been mediated through performance metrics and corporate discipline (Haynes and Boyle, 2025; Sturm, 2023b), DTS amplifies persona construction as a parallel arena of competition. Therefore, emotional disclosure, narrative coherence, and relational visibility have become additional currencies through which symbolic capital circulates.

Bourdieu's field theory, mediatisation studies, documentary scholarship, and celebrity research provide the analytical framework through which DTS can be conceptualised as a symbolic-capital-allocating institution within F1. The series redistributes visibility through selective access and affective storytelling, expanding the criteria through which legitimacy circulates within the field.

The structure of F1 stardom

F1 stardom has historically operated within a distinctive nexus of sporting, economic, and media power. Unlike many team sports in which personality-driven promotion has long been central to commercial strategy, F1 has traditionally mediated drivers through machinery, performance metrics, and institutional branding (Haynes and Boyle, 2025; Wagg, 2023). As Sturm (2023b: 519) argued, the ‘star in the car’ is both hyper-visible and curiously inaccessible: drivers are globally recognised yet tightly controlled within corporate communication regimes. This stardom in F1 has historically tended to rest on sporting achievements (albeit directly associated with competitive performance of the car), salaries, team affiliation, and alignment with commercial partners rather than on sustained narrative intimacy (see Sturm, 2023b). However, it is important to note that a small number of F1 drivers throughout the sport's history have demonstrated charisma and personality that transcend the traditional model of stardom, achieving popularity beyond the sport itself (see Sturm, 2023b; Wagg, 2023).

Media exposure within F1 has often been filtered through team public relations infrastructures, sponsor obligations, and broadcast conventions that privilege technical analysis and race performance over intimate self-disclosure (Haynes and Boyle, 2025). This controlled media environment reinforced a communicative style often characterised by cautious, procedural language and strategic neutrality (Haynes and Boyle, 2025), resulting in historical media representations of F1 drivers tending to frame them as less charismatic personalities (Haynes and Boyle, 2025; Sturm, 2023b). As such, overt emotional expressiveness was atypical rather than normative. The relative absence of performative charisma in pre-streaming F1 media culture makes the affective intensity of DTS particularly consequential: the series does not simply reveal personality but incentivises its amplification.

This structure reflects broader dynamics of sport stardom identified in cultural analyses of celebrity. Smart (2005: 104) noted that sport stars trade on an ‘aura of authenticity’ derived from the perception that athletic performance unfolds in unscripted, competitive environments. In F1, this aura has historically been anchored to the technological spectacle of the car and the risk-laden nature of racing, reinforcing an image of drivers as disciplined, composed professionals operating within elite institutional structures. As Andrews and Jackson (2001) articulated, sport celebrity differs from other cultural fields in that legitimacy is tied to measurable sporting outcomes; success on the track confers symbolic capital that circulates across media, sponsorship, and fan cultures. Within F1, championship status and affiliation with dominant teams such as Ferrari or Mercedes have therefore functioned as primary markers of prestige.

At the same time, this stardom system has been shaped by exclusionary hierarchies. Entry into F1 requires extraordinary financial resources, reinforcing class stratification and limiting access to those embedded within elite development pipelines (Nichols and Savage, 2017). These hierarchies are embedded within a masculinised institutional culture that has historically marginalised women from elite competitive participation (Campbell, 2023; Howe, 2022; Matthews and Pike, 2016; Sturm, 2021). Racial and geographic concentration further shape who becomes visible and legitimate within the sport's global economy. These structural conditions mean that symbolic capital in F1 has historically circulated within a narrow constellation of actors (drivers and teams) positioned at the apex of competitive and institutional hierarchies.

These dynamics produced a pre-DTS stardom model characterised by controlled visibility, performance-centred legitimacy, and restricted emotional expressiveness (Smart, 2005; Sturm, 2023b). While drivers were globally recognised figures, their mediated personas were often disciplined, corporate, and strategically opaque, shaped by sponsor obligations and tightly managed team communication structures (Andrews and Jackson, 2001; Haynes and Boyle, 2025; Sturm, 2023b). As such, visible expressions of emotional vulnerability, backstage conflict, and interpersonal tensions were largely confined to press conferences and post-race interviews governed by broadcast and institutional protocols, reinforcing a culture of composure and competitive focus (Haynes and Boyle, 2025; Sturm, 2023a). It is against this historically structured field that the emergence of DTS must be understood: not merely as an expansion of audience reach, but as an intervention into the established logics through which symbolic capital is accumulated and displayed in F1.

Against this historically regulated system of visibility in F1, DTS introduces a different logic of recognition. Rather than privileging sporting performance alone, the series foregrounds narrative intimacy, interpersonal conflict, and emotional self-disclosure as central components of sporting value (Shah and Williams, 2024; Soble and Lowes, 2025). By embedding cameras within the garages, motorhomes, and selective private spaces, it has enabled backstage interactions previously hidden behind closed doors to be made visible, while confessional interviews invite drivers, team principals, team members, and selected journalists to articulate frustration, ambition, anxiety, and vulnerability (Coles and Fenton, 2023). As documentary scholarship has long emphasised, such techniques do not simply reveal reality but construct it through framing, selection, and affective sequencing (Bruzzi, 2006; Nichols, 2017). In doing so, the series expands the criteria through which symbolic capital can be accumulated within F1. Evidence of this shift in symbolic capital has been noted by several F1 drivers with limited performance-based capital, who report increased fan engagement as a result of their involvement in DTS (Coles and Fenton, 2023).

From a Bourdieusian perspective, this development signals not merely an increase in media exposure but a reconfiguration of the field's internal hierarchies (Bourdieu, 1993, 1998). Thus, symbolic capital, understood as recognition granted by relevant audiences within a structured field (Bourdieu, 1984; Bourdieu and Wacquant, 2013), becomes increasingly mediated through persona performance rather than exclusively through racing competitive success (sporting capital). In other words, the criteria of legitimacy within F1 have expanded beyond race results to include sustained narrative presence and affective resonance. Actors (racing drivers, teams and associates) who are positioned outside championship dominance may acquire symbolic capital, visibility, and legitimacy through narrative centrality, while those already endowed with sporting (embedded cultural) capital may exercise the autonomy to limit or refuse participation (Soble and Lowes, 2025; Sturm, 2023b). The capacity to participate in, negotiate, or decline mediated exposure, and its resulting symbolic capital, thus becomes itself stratified within the field.

This article, therefore, conceptualises DTS as a symbolic-capital-allocating institution embedded within platform-era sport media (Hutchins et al., 2019; Iordache et al., 2023). The series does not operate as a neutral mirror of F1 but as a structuring force that redistributes symbolic power and visibility through selective access, editorial framing, and affective storytelling (Bourdieu, 1998; Bruzzi, 2006). By examining patterns of participation and refusal, the elevation of particular personas, and the growing centrality of emotional labour to driver recognition (Dixon et al., 2025; Hochschild, 1983), the following sections analyse how DTS has reshaped the symbolic economy of F1 while simultaneously operating within its existing gendered, racialised, and classed constraints (Haynes and Boyle, 2025; Nichols and Savage, 2017; Sturm, 2021).

Participation, refusal, and stratified autonomy in F1

Participation in DTS has not been evenly distributed across the F1 grid (Soble and Lowes, 2025), and patterns of access reveal how symbolic autonomy operates within the sport's competitive hierarchy. During the first season of the series, both Ferrari and Mercedes, then the title-contending teams, declined full participation (ESPN, 2019). Their absence rendered their drivers narratively peripheral, not because of editorial oversight but because institutional (team) refusal limited access (Sports Staff, 2023; Sturm, 2023a). In a field where championship status already confers substantial symbolic capital, such refusal was possible without reputational risk. Sporting dominance provided insulation from the need for additional mediated visibility (Andrews and Jackson, 2001; Smart, 2005).

This dynamic became even more visible in the case of Max Verstappen, who publicly criticised the series for manufacturing rivalries and initially declined to participate fully in early seasons (Khorounzhiy, 2021; Sports Staff, 2023). As a multiple F1 Drivers’ Champion at the apex of the sport, Verstappen possessed the symbolic capital to resist editorial framing without jeopardising his legitimacy within the field. His refusal illustrates a form of stratified agency: the ability to opt out of mediated exposure is itself a function of pre-existing capital.

Other drivers illustrate how participation can reshape symbolic trajectories independently of sporting dominance (Coles and Fenton, 2023). Former F1 Racing driver Daniel Ricciardo, whose later racing seasons were marked by inconsistent performance and eventual team displacement, nonetheless emerged as a central narrative figure within DTS (Seymour, 2024). The series framed his career through arcs of optimism, decline, and attempted redemption, echoing Whannel's (1999) observation that sport media frequently construct cyclical narratives of rise and fall in which resilience and personality sustain symbolic value even amid competitive instability. Ricciardo's continued narrative prominence demonstrates how storytelling coherence may supplement, and at times partially offset, diminished sporting performance capital within the mediatised field.

Conversely, drivers such as Fernando Alonso, already established as a two-time F1 World Champion in 2005 and 2006, occupied a comparatively restrained position within the series’ affective framing. Alonso's established pedigree and emphasis on competitive authority rather than sustained confessional disclosure suggest an alternative model of legitimacy grounded in racing status rather than narrative performance. As with Verstappen, this selective engagement indicates that dominant actors may resist full incorporation into persona-driven storytelling without sacrificing symbolic standing within the field (Sturm, 2023b).

By contrast, actors located outside championship contention often treated participation as an opportunity for recognition. Guenther Steiner, Team Principal of Haas (at the time of filming), became one of the series’ most narratively central figures despite his team's limited competitive success (Richards, 2023). His prominence must be understood as strategically valuable for Haas, a team operating at the lower end of the competitive hierarchy. In a sport where sponsorship revenue and brand visibility are critical to survival, sustained narrative centrality within a globally streamed series functions as indirect commercial capital. Steiner's candid, emotionally expressive communication style contrasted sharply with the historically restrained, corporate public relations culture typical of F1 leadership (Sturm, 2023b). In doing so, he accumulated symbolic capital that exceeded his team's on-track performance, illustrating how platform-era storytelling can redistribute recognition across hierarchical roles within the paddock. Similarly, midfield drivers gained international visibility through storyline prominence rather than podium finishes, illustrating how narrative exposure can supplement sporting capital within a mediatised field (Coles and Fenton, 2023; Shah and Williams, 2024; Soble and Lowes, 2025).

These examples demonstrate that DTS does not democratise visibility but redistributes it within existing hierarchies. Those with dominant sporting capital may negotiate or decline participation, while those seeking advancement within the field face stronger incentives to comply with narrative and emotional expectations. The capacity to refuse becomes a marker of field position, while participation becomes entwined with professional labour. In this sense, mediated visibility operates as both opportunity and obligation within contemporary F1, reinforcing the argument that symbolic capital now circulates through persona performance as well as performance on the track (Soble and Lowes, 2025; Sturm, 2023b).

Emotional labour, vulnerability, and gendered recognition in F1

Emotional labour has become increasingly central to the contemporary configuration of F1 stardom, particularly in the wake of DTS. Hochschild (1983) conceptualises emotional labour as the management of feeling to produce publicly observable states aligned with institutional expectations. Within the historically corporate and performance-centred culture of F1, drivers have traditionally been expected to display composure, technical focus, and disciplined restraint (Sturm, 2023b). Emotional expression was tightly regulated through press conferences and broadcast protocols, reinforcing a model of masculinity grounded in control rather than vulnerability (Haynes and Boyle, 2025; Whannel, 2002). As such, the pre-DTS sporting habitus privileged emotional opacity and strategic neutrality over self-disclosure.

DTS disrupts these norms by foregrounding affect as narrative currency that can be converted into symbolic capital. Through confessional interviews, backstage access, and editorial sequencing, the series amplifies anxiety, interpersonal tension, frustration, and relational intimacy as components of sporting recognition (Shah and Williams, 2024; Soble and Lowes, 2025). In doing so, it reshapes the communicative expectations placed upon drivers, encouraging forms of emotional legibility not historically central to F1 stardom. This shift aligns with broader transformations in sport media toward personality-driven storytelling within platform environments (Boyle and Haynes, 2024; Hutchins et al., 2019).

The case of Lando Norris illustrates the uneven symbolic returns attached to emotional expressiveness. Prior to his first F1 World Championship title in 2025, Norris was frequently criticised within sections of the motorsport press and fan discourse for displaying anxiety, self-doubt, and visible frustration, behaviours read by some commentators as immaturity or weakness within a high-performance, masculinised field (Sturm, 2023b). Within DTS, however, such vulnerability is reframed as authenticity and psychological depth, contributing to a narrative arc that enhances fan identification and persona distinctiveness (Coles and Fenton, 2023; Soble and Lowes, 2025). This reframing reflects Smart's (2005: 104) observation that sport stardom trades on an ‘aura of authenticity’: emotional transparency can generate symbolic capital when aligned with prevailing narrative expectations. Yet such rewards are not evenly distributed across the field.

Gendered dynamics further complicate these processes. F1 remains institutionally male-dominated, structured by a longstanding culture of hegemonic masculinity that frames elite driving as a domain of technical mastery, risk, and controlled aggression (Campbell, 2023; Nichols and Savage, 2017; Sturm, 2021). Within this context, male emotional vulnerability may be framed as exceptional and therefore symbolically valuable, precisely because it disrupts established norms of masculine composure. By contrast, women athletes within sporting contexts are frequently positioned within narratives of relationality and sentimentality, limiting the novelty or symbolic distinctiveness of emotional disclosure (Bruce, 2016). Conversely, drivers whose emotional displays are framed as aggression rather than introspection may experience diminished symbolic returns, particularly within racialised media structures (Jackson et al., 2020).

These dynamics illustrate how DTS reconfigures the labour expectations of F1 stardom. Drivers are increasingly incentivised to perform emotional accessibility alongside sporting excellence, aligning with influencer-era logics in which mediated persona maintenance extends across platforms and audiences (Fujak et al., 2025). These persona performances extend beyond Netflix into media platforms including Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and X, where curated authenticity sustains engagement between race weekends (Coles and Fenton, 2023; Fujak et al., 2025).

Emotional labour becomes both opportunity and obligation: it offers alternative routes to recognition for those outside of championship dominance, while simultaneously introducing new risks of misrepresentation, narrative distortion, or reputational vulnerability. In Bourdieusian terms, the field's criteria for symbolic capital accumulation expand to include affective legibility, yet the capacity to convert emotional disclosure into prestige remains structured by existing hierarchies of gender, race, and competitive position (Bourdieu, 1993; Sturm, 2023b).

The redistributive effects of DTS have not been universally embraced within the F1 community. Critics, including drivers and fans, have raised concerns about the series’ tendency to manufacture or exaggerate rivalries through selective editing and decontextualised sequencing (Sturm, 2023a). Allegations that tensions between teammates were amplified beyond their competitive reality illustrate how narrative construction can reshape public perception independently of on-track performance (Richards, 2025). For example, within the series, Lando Norris's relationship with his former McLaren teammate Carlos Sainz, and close friend, was dramatically framed as archenemies, which the drivers denied and accused Netflix of exaggerating and creating rivalries for entertainment (Harden, 2024). The Norris–Sainz dynamic illustrates how relational intimacy and rivalry are narratively intensified to enhance dramatic coherence, even when drivers themselves contest such framings. These tensions demonstrate how persona construction may exceed the intentions of the actors involved, further underscoring the symbolic power of editorial mediation.

Such controversies reveal the constructed nature of documentary authenticity: as Bruzzi (2006) and Nichols (2017) argue, documentary forms produce rather than simply reflect reality. From a Bourdieusian perspective, these editorial interventions function as mechanisms of symbolic production, allocating visibility and affective weight in ways that may conflict with actors’ own understandings of their field position (Bourdieu, 1998). Complaints about distortion, therefore, underscore, rather than undermine, the argument advanced here: DTS operates as a structuring force within F1, actively shaping symbolic hierarchies through narrative emphasis, selective access, and affective framing (Boyle and Haynes, 2024; Sturm, 2023a).

Although sports docuseries are often framed as vehicles of transparency and access, visibility remains institutionally selective and shaped by platform logics and commercial incentives (Iordache et al., 2023; Lindholm, 2019). In practice, streaming-era docuseries tend to privilege contexts and actors that are already positioned as globally marketable and narratively legible, meaning that symbolic value is unevenly distributed through editorial focus, omission, and affective framing (Sheppard and Vogan, 2020; Vogan, 2014). In F1, these dynamics intersect with an already exclusionary field structure, making DTS a powerful case for examining how mediated visibility can redistribute recognition within an elite hierarchy without transforming the underlying conditions of access.

Inequalities in representation and access in F1

The redistributive dynamics introduced by DTS unfold within a field already structured by profound inequalities. F1 remains one of the most economically exclusive sporting environments globally, requiring substantial economic capital for entry into junior development pathways and elite teams (Nichols and Savage, 2017). This structural concentration of economic capital narrows the pool of potential entrants before symbolic capital becomes visible at the F1 level. As previously noted, the grid has historically been dominated by drivers emerging from elite European development systems, reinforcing patterns of classed, gendered, racialised and geographic concentration within the sport's global branding (Campbell, 2023; Carrington, 2023; Farrington et al., 2012; Nichols and Savage, 2017).

Gender inequality is particularly pronounced. F1 has not had a woman racing driver enter a F1 qualifying session since 1992 (Coleman, 2025). Historically, women have largely been positioned in peripheral or symbolic roles within F1's institutional structure (Bancroft and Sturm, 2025; Sturm, 2021). Although women now constitute 38% of the F1 workforce (F1, 2025b) across a wide range of roles, including, mechanics, engineering, leadership and technical, the masculinised culture of racing, rooted in technological mastery, risk, and endurance, has historically framed elite driving as a domain of hegemonic masculinity (Sturm, 2021; Williams, 2014). Moreover, recent research has identified that for women working within F1, there is a sexist culture within the sport that endures (Bancroft and Sturm, 2025). While DTS expands backstage access and amplifies emotional expression among male drivers, it does not fundamentally disrupt the structural absence of women from competitive participation or explore their wider roles in the sport. Research has identified that within the first six seasons of DTS women's speaking time was less than 3% of total run time (Roper, 2024). Furthermore, within DTS, women's speaking time remains minimal, meaning that increased mediated intimacy operates within rather than against gendered exclusions. This exclusion reflects broader structural patterns in sport media, where women's athletic labour has been rendered symbolically peripheral through sustained underrepresentation in broadcast coverage (Bruce, 2016; Campbell, 2023; Cooky et al., 2021).

Racial and cultural hierarchies similarly shape visibility. Although F1 markets itself as a global championship, representation remains concentrated among white European drivers, with limited structural pathways for racialised participation (Nichols and Savage, 2017). As scholarship in sport media has demonstrated, racialised athletes often encounter distinct interpretive frames that influence how emotion, aggression, or composure are read by audiences (Carrington, 2023; Jackson et al., 2020). Within DTS, the capacity to convert vulnerability into symbolic capital is therefore uneven, structured not only by competitive position but also by broader representational histories.

These inequalities clarify an important point: DTS redistributes symbolic capital within the boundaries of an already stratified field. The series may elevate midfield drivers, amplify team principals, or recalibrate fan allegiances, but it does not democratise access to the grid itself. Symbolic reallocation occurs among those already positioned within the elite constellation of F1 (Nichols and Savage, 2017), leaving structural entry barriers intact. The series reshapes hierarchies of persona and affect within the field, yet it operates inside and perpetuates enduring economic, gendered, and racialised constraints.

From a Bourdieusian perspective, these structural constraints shape not only who enters the field, but who can successfully convert mediated visibility into durable symbolic capital. Emotional disclosure, narrative centrality, and persona amplification do not operate in a vacuum; they are filtered through existing hierarchies of credibility, legitimacy, and institutional backing. Thus, while DTS redistributes recognition among actors already embedded within the elite grid, the capacity to transform that recognition into long-term prestige, sponsorship security, or institutional authority remains unevenly structured by the field's historical inequalities.

Implications: Labour, agency, and symbolic capital in F1 after DTS

The integration of DTS into F1's institutional media architecture has consequences that extend beyond representation. It alters how labour is organised, how agency is distributed, and how symbolic capital circulates within an already stratified field. The implications are best understood not as abstract transformations of sport media but as specific shifts within the historically corporate, elite, and tightly managed structure of F1.

Emotional and narrative labour in a historically corporate field

Prior to DTS, F1 drivers operated within a communication regime characterised by sponsor alignment, media discipline, and controlled affect (Sturm, 2023a). Public visibility was filtered through team PR infrastructures and broadcast conventions that prioritised technical analysis and sporting performance over interiority. Emotional expression was acceptable when aligned with victory or defeat, but sustained vulnerability was not central to stardom. DTS reorients this structure by institutionalising emotional and narrative labour as part of elite participation. Drivers and team principals are now routinely expected to articulate personal anxieties, rivalries, frustrations, and ambitions in confessional formats designed for global streaming audiences (Hochschild, 1983; Soble and Lowes, 2025). This does not replace performance-based legitimacy, but it supplements it. Emotional legibility becomes convertible symbolic capital: it enhances fan identification, strengthens persona differentiation, and potentially increases commercial value.

Importantly, this labour is unevenly rewarded. Drivers positioned outside championship dominance may benefit from narrative centrality, while dominant actors can treat such participation as optional. Emotional disclosure thus becomes both opportunity and obligation – an emerging expectation within the mediatised habitus of contemporary F1 (Dixon et al., 2025). In this sense, DTS reshapes not only visibility but the normative boundaries of professional conduct within the sport.

Platform capitalism, commercial strategy, and symbolic concentration

The partnership between Netflix and F1 reflects a broader commercial strategy aimed at expanding global audiences and deepening engagement through personality-driven storytelling (Boyle and Haynes, 2024; Hutchins et al., 2019). In this context, narrative visibility acquires economic significance. Screen time and storyline prominence are not merely representational; they shape global recognition and brand association. This shift aligns with wider transformations in sports media characterised by personalisation, OTT distribution, and convergent digital spectacle, through which fan engagement is increasingly organised around datafied attention, retention, and affective immersion (Billings, 2025; Hutchins et al., 2019; Krouglov, 2025). In F1, DTS becomes part of a broader strategy to convert episodic race spectators into continuous, cross-platform fans (Coles and Fenton, 2023).

F1's longstanding alignment with urban placemarketing and cosmopolitan branding strategies (Lowes, 2018) underscores that the championship has long functioned as a mobile spectacle tied to transnational capital flows. DTS extends these dynamics into the streaming economy, intensifying narrative personalisation within an already globally branded field.

The selective focus of DTS concentrates symbolic capital around narratively compelling figures. As such, midfield drivers, outspoken team principals, or emotionally expressive personalities may accrue disproportionate visibility relative to sporting performance. Conversely, actors who receive limited narrative emphasis risk diminished presence in new fan markets, even when their on-track results remain strong. F1 teams have responded strategically to these dynamics. Negotiations over access, selective participation, and reputation management reflect an awareness that mediated persona now forms part of the competitive environment (Coles and Fenton, 2023; Haynes and Boyle, 2025). Platform-era exposure becomes an additional arena in which value is produced and contested. Symbolic capital, once anchored primarily to championships and constructor dominance, now circulates through serialised storytelling aligned with platform logics of affect and retention.

Stratified agency and the politics of refusal

The uneven participation patterns in early seasons of DTS make visible the stratification of agency within the F1 field. Ferrari and Mercedes declined full participation in Season 1 without compromising their symbolic authority, demonstrating that dominant constructors possess the capital to resist mediated exposure (ESPN, 2019; Sturm, 2023a). Similarly, Max Verstappen's initial refusal to engage fully with the series illustrates how championship status enables actors to contest editorial framing while preserving legitimacy (Khorounzhiy, 2021).

For less dominant teams and drivers, refusal carries different stakes. Participation may enhance recognition, attract sponsors, and solidify fan attachment (Coles and Fenton, 2023). The capacity to opt out without reputational cost, therefore reflects accumulated symbolic capital. Agency in the platform era becomes conditional: while DTS opens opportunities for strategic self-presentation, it also embeds actors within commercial storytelling logics over which they possess limited editorial control. This stratification reinforces a recursive dynamic. Symbolic capital enables refusal, and refusal further signals symbolic autonomy. Conversely, dependency on mediated exposure may reinforce subordinate positioning within the field.

Field reconfiguration: from performance hierarchy to persona hierarchy

Historically, F1 stardom was structured around measurable sporting outcomes – championship titles, race wins, constructor dominance, and technical mastery. Drivers were visible yet institutionally contained: the ‘star in the car’ (Sturm, 2023b: 519) whose legitimacy derived primarily from race results. Albeit some F1 drivers with a ‘trace’ of charisma or personality were well regarded beyond the sport, such as James Hunt and Ayrton Senna (see Sturm, 2023b; Wagg, 2023). The platform era introduces a parallel hierarchy of persona competition. Recognition now circulates through sustained narrative presence, emotional resonance, and cross-platform adaptability. DTS also recalibrates the relative visibility of occupational roles within F1. Whereas drivers historically dominated broadcast attention and team principals operated within managerial frames, DTS elevates principals such as now former Haas F1 Team Principal Steiner to personality status, redistributing symbolic capital across hierarchical positions within the paddock. Whilst Steiner's representation in the series was positive, Christian Horner (now former RedBull Team Principal) had more challenging representation, often portrayed as an antagonist. While sporting performance remains foundational, it no longer monopolises symbolic value. Persona coherence, affective accessibility, and willingness to participate in documentary storytelling influence how prestige is accumulated and perceived.

This transformation does not democratise F1. Structural inequalities of class, gender, and race remain intact, and entry to the grid continues to require extraordinary economic capital (Nichols and Savage, 2017; Sturm, 2021). However, within the elite constellation of those already present, the criteria for recognition expand. The field becomes more densely mediated, and symbolic competition increasingly unfolds both on track and on screen.

Conclusion

This article has argued that Drive to Survive (DTS) represents a structural intervention in the symbolic economy of Formula One. While the analysis centres on DTS, these developments are better understood as part of broader transformations in platform-era sport media, including the expansion of social media, changing commercial strategies under Liberty Media, and the increasing visibility of athletes across digital platforms. In this context, DTS should be understood not as the sole driver of change, but as a particularly visible and influential articulation of these wider shifts. Drawing on Bourdieu's concepts of field and symbolic capital, and engaging scholarship on mediatisation, documentary construction, and sport stardom, the analysis has demonstrated how the series reshapes the circulation of recognition within an already stratified elite field.

Historically, F1 stardom was anchored in sporting success, constructor affiliation, and corporate media discipline. Drivers operated as highly visible yet institutionally controlled figures, with legitimacy derived primarily from measurable performance. The emergence of DTS introduces a parallel arena of symbolic competition in which narrative centrality, emotional labour, and persona coherence contribute to recognition alongside race results. Patterns of participation and refusal illustrate how this transformation remains stratified. Dominant actors retain the autonomy to negotiate or decline exposure, while others depend on mediated visibility to accumulate symbolic capital. Emotional vulnerability becomes both a resource and a risk, shaped by gendered and racialised structures embedded within the field. Platform logics further concentrate symbolic value around narratively resonant figures, reinforcing cycles of visibility aligned with commercial strategy.

The case of F1 demonstrates that platform-era sport media do more than popularise competitions; they reorganise the internal hierarchies through which prestige is allocated. DTS has not dismantled the structural exclusions that define entry into the sport, but it has reconfigured how symbolic capital is accumulated among those already positioned within it. In doing so, it reveals how contemporary elite sport increasingly operates as a dual arena of performance and mediated persona – a field in which competitive legitimacy and narrative visibility are intertwined.

The article advances a sociological account of DTS but does not systematically assess fan reception across markets, quantify sponsorship or contractual impacts, or capture behind-the-scenes negotiations over access and editorial control. Future research might examine the long-term consequences of this dual structure for athlete wellbeing, sponsorship valuation, and institutional governance within F1, as well as comparative analyses across other elite sporting contexts. As serialised documentary production becomes embedded within sporting infrastructures, the circulation of symbolic capital through mediated visibility will remain central to understanding how power operates within contemporary F1 and platform-era elite sport.