Part 1 - The Scorecard - Drive To Survive: Is Your Favorite Motorsport Series Ready For the Global Spotlight?

Cost optimizationRevenue optimization
Written By David Vaucher

When people think of racing they think of Formula 1, and increasingly even casual viewers know the teams, the drivers, the rivalries.

That didn’t happen by accident.

It happened because of Drive to Survive, a Netflix series that didn’t just document Formula 1, it transformed it, from a niche European sport into a worldwide luxury media property.

Since then, every struggling series has echoed the same line:

“We need our own Drive to Survive.”

But here's the truth: a docuseries won't elevate, or even save you, if your series isn’t ready to be elevated or saved.

And most aren’t.

Of course, the act itself of producing engaging content is not a given, but it’s more straight-forward than being ready for the spotlight.

In other words, the real difficulty is having the structure in place to capitalize on that eventual good content.

“The real difficulty is having the structure in place to capitalize on that eventual good content.”
— David Vaucher, Vaucher Analytics

This 3-part series breaks down exactly what that readiness looks like.

  • Part 1 - The Scorecard: A framework to evaluate which motorsport series are ready for a Drive to Survive-style leap.

  • Part 2 - The Tradeoff: Why growing your audience means disappointing your purists.

  • Part 3- The Case Study: A deep-dive into the most viable candidate outside of F1, and what it would take to cross the threshold.

If you're an exec, sponsor, or rights holder, this is the blueprint.

Formula 1’s foundation for Drive to Survive

If you want the full play-by-play of F1’s transformation from an insular European championship to a global entertainment juggernaut, read The Formula by Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg.

But for the purposes of this analysis, here’s what you need to know:

Let’s address the obvious: yes, the pandemic helped.

People were trapped indoors, looking for new obsessions. Drive to Survive became one of them.

But to say F1 "got lucky" misses the point.

Luck rewards preparation, and Liberty Media came prepared. They were a media company, and they were chosen as buyers specifically because they had a blueprint to turn F1 into a content-first property, with America as the prize.

Drive to Survive was never the endgame, it was part of a much larger plan.

What followed (calendar expansion, celebrity engagement, luxury positioning) was all part of a deliberate, compound-growth strategy, and it wouldn’t have worked without the right foundations in place.

It is this foundation that we will now evaluate in other motorsports series, benchmarked against F1.

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In less than 500 words.

Benchmarking other series against Formula 1

You can’t copy the outcome without replicating the architecture, and that’s exactly why most other series fail when they try to “do a DTS.”

The process for determining a series’ readiness for a global, mass-market campaign spearheaded by a Drive to Survive-style show is as follows:

  1. Establish an objective rubric covering all the aspects of F1 leading to Drive to Survive’s success, and weight those dimensions according to importance (please see Appendix 1 at the end of the article)

  2. Assign a score for each dimension across series, and calculate the weighted average

  3. Set a target score under which series must still fill in certain gaps before being ready for broader exposure. For this analysis, I have a rubric that scores each dimension on a scale of 1-5, with F1 being perfect across the board at 5.0/5.0, and a cutoff selected at 4.0/5.0.

Why a 4.0/5.0 cutoff score?

The minimum viable score for a series to realistically benefit from a Drive to Survive-style treatment, meaning it can attract new audiences, elevate brand value, and unlock luxury positioning without embarrassing itself or the production team, is a 4.0/5.0 weighted average.

Below this level, there is a risk that your series, even well executed, will not reach “escape velocity”; in the best case it will be well-received by existing fans, but the infrastructure will not be there to allow for explosive growth amongst those not already watching a given racing series.

Here’s the detailed thinking:

  • At 4.0: you're saying the series scores an average of “good to excellent” across all key luxury and media-readiness metrics. That’s high enough for a global audience to latch onto and for sponsors/media companies to feel safe investing in.

  • Generally speaking, a score below 4.0 implies you have to fix the fundamentals first:

    • The calendar is too provincial, too unattractive, or too inaccessible

    • The brands aren’t sexy enough (people care more about Ferrari than Lada)

    • The global appeal isn’t there, so production costs won’t be justified

    • You lack hero drivers or anyone with personality

    • There’s too much friction to even film, much less get people to watch

  • Above 3.5 implies potential: This is a "maybe”. If gaps in the rubric are addressed, a series could punch above its weight if paired with a strong production partner and full openness from teams.

Only the WEC is a potential candidate for a major media series…but it still needs to close gaps

Leading into a case study: preparing the WEC for its major debut

According to the data, only one series clears the bar.

Out of five major motorsports series evaluated against F1, only the WEC lands in the “Emerging” tier with a weighted score of 3.6, putting it within striking distance of the 4.0 minimum required to justify a high-investment, Drive to Survive–style media product.

This means WEC isn’t ready yet…

But it could be.

In Part 2, we’ll explore the strategic compromises required to move from legacy mindset to luxury platform.

Then in Part 3, we’ll dive into a detailed gap analysis: what the WEC is already doing well, how close it actually is to being media-ready at the global scale, and how it can complete the whole puzzle.

If you’re a promoter, team principal, or manufacturer wondering if your series could make the leap: stay tuned.

Or better yet, get in touch.

Are you ready to optimize your series marketing potential?

At Vaucher Analytics, we help race teams and manufacturers turn racing budgets into brand capital.

If you’re serious about making your motorsport series matter beyond the podium, let’s talk.

Book your 30-minute discovery call by contacting us today:

Appendix 1: Scoring rubric for evaluating a series’ readiness relative to F1 for a televised show

Image credit: Ryan Haidel via Unsplash

David Vaucher
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