{"id":217104,"date":"2025-10-16T06:23:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T06:23:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/217104\/"},"modified":"2025-10-16T06:23:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T06:23:11","slug":"toto-wolff-slams-drive-to-survive-mercedes-team-boss-interview-on-netflix-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/217104\/","title":{"rendered":"Toto Wolff slams Drive to Survive, Mercedes team boss interview on Netflix show"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mercedes<\/a> team principal Toto Wolff<\/a> has admitted that he “hated” hit Netflix show Drive to Survive when it first aired due to the over-dramatisation of Formula 1<\/a> rivalries.<\/p>\n

Wolff and his Silver Arrows team were not filmed in the first season of the show as the team declined to participate in concern that filming would distract the team during race weekends.<\/p>\n

He explained that the second episode of the TV show, titled ‘King of Spain’, the episode focused on an overdramatised rivalry between Carlos Sainz and Fernando Alonso, made the team principal “switch it off”.<\/p>\n

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“I started to watch and I hated it,” admitted Wolff in New York City at the Autosport Business Exchange.<\/p>\n

“It was Fernando Alonso<\/a> against Carlos Sainz<\/a>, and it was made up.<\/p>\n

\"Carlos<\/p>\n

Carlos Sainz and Fernando Alonso on the drivers parade prior to the F1 Grand Prix of Spain.\u00a0LAT Images<\/p>\n

“[Treating it] like this is the competition for the world championship and it was [over tenth in the driver standings]…I thought, that’s not for me.<\/p>\n

“Switched it off. Didn’t even watch the second one.”<\/p>\n

But the 53-year-old eventually saw the value of the docuseries as the show created unprecedented audience numbers stateside, bringing in an entire new audience to Formula 1.<\/p>\n

After its release in March 2019, the sport saw an immediate 18 per cent increase in viewership, according to Audiense.<\/p>\n

“I got back to Europe [in 2019] and a friend of mine called me, and said that she would really like to come with her sons to the Austrian Grand Prix,” added Wolff.<\/p>\n

\"Toto<\/p>\n

Toto Wolff speaks during a press conference.\u00a0Jared C. Tilton via Getty Images<\/p>\n

“And I said, how come? You’ve never been interested in Formula 1, and she said my sons love Drive to Survive.”<\/p>\n

“What happened was, because we didn’t feature, it gave Netflix the opportunity to show smaller teams and drivers that were not so much in the spotlight,” said Wolff.<\/p>\n

“I think that captured the audiences.<\/p>\n

“In a way, what we did was right, but it wasn’t the reason we did it.”<\/p>\n

Mercedes decided to join the line-up of featured teams on Drive to Survive from season two onwards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff has admitted that he “hated” hit Netflix show Drive to Survive when it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":217105,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-217104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217104\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/217105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}