Prior to 2020, if you knew anything about Formula 1—or even knew what it was—you were a tiny minority of the population. You were also likely to be a gearhead, a motorsports obsessive or a European—probably all three, really. 2020, however, was a year to remember, and not just because of a global health crisis. It was the year Formula 1 went mainstream, all thanks to a series called Drive to Survive on Netflix. Savvy editing and compelling figures of this fly-on-the-wall documentary/reality show combined with a nation stuck at home with little to watch made a previously somewhat niche sport into an overnight phenomenon, doubling viewership and fueling a serious surge in market value. It was a revolution, but it wasn’t the first to strike the series. In The Formula, Wall Street Journal writers Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg outline how Formula One has reinvented itself over and over throughout its history—and how this reinvention might be the most seismic shift yet.
Formula 1, as Robinson and Clegg write, is probably the only sport series to name itself after its rulebook. But the racing series has always defined itself as the premier one for automotive excellence—the fastest cars, the most demanding road courses (most definitely never oval racing), and thanks to storied names like Ferrari and the Monaco Grand Prix, the most glamor. And to get the wins, Formula 1 is often about finding the loopholes that made a fast car a dominant one. Robinson and Clegg choose defining moments where rule-bending—or outright breaking—shifted the sport closer to the behemoth of today. There are the purely technical revolutions—the genius of Colin Chapman’s aerodynamics or Brawn’s improbable 2009 championship run with a car that was probably legal under the rules. There are the revolutionary ways that drivers changed how to attack a racecourse, led by the likes of Ayrton Senna and Michael Schumacher. And unsurprisingly for a sport that includes scandals named ‘Spygate’ and ‘Crashgate’ within its history, there is the actual rule breaking. Also unsurprisingly, for a book penned by two guys from a financial newspaper, the most pivotal points are about the money. Since the first few logos started appearing on cars in the 60s, the competitive edge became more of a financial arms race, and the sponsorships more pervasive (and in some cases, problematic) until only a few teams could be competitive, nearly spelling the death of the series in the early 2000s. Robinson and Clegg properly devote much of the book to the impact Bernie Ecclestone, whose casual attitude towards contracts and tradition—and willing embrace of oil-rich despots--turned the sport from a Euro-centered one, to a more global presence. An entire book could be dedicated to Ecclestone, but Robinson and Clegg do a remarkable job of untangling the web he cast on the sport—no small feat.
The Formula isn’t a history of Formula One per se; there are other works that take a more focused approach on the sporting aspects and give more background to the names mentioned here. But The Formula is best for explaining the sport as it is now, with its spectacle and stratospheric costs for both participants and fans. It’s also a fascinating case study in the tensions between cash and tradition in modern sports.