Flavio Briatore made a return to the F1 paddock earlier this year, after spending more than a decade away from the sport. Everything changed since he had left, but it didn’t take long for him to realize what a good job the F1 bosses had done, to make F1 more exciting than ever.
Briatore feels that people care more about the spectacle aspect of F1 now than they did when he was in the sport. “I think the paddock is better,” he says on the Formula for Success podcast. “The mini race [Sprint Race] is good entertainment… Because you’re racing for something.”
2025 FIA Formula 1 Sprint Calendar
6 events: China – Miami – Belgium – United States – Brazil – Qatar. The Sprint calendar is set for 2025! @F1 #FIA pic.twitter.com/CR1TFleUTF
— FIA (@fia) July 11, 2024
Briatore’s most successful time in F1 came when he was in charge of Renault. With Fernando Alonso, he won two world championships (2005 and 2006), and as a result, got a taste of what it was like to be at the top of the sport. But the era was different. F1 changed a lot since Liberty Media took over in 2017 and Stefano Domenicali became CEO.
“Liberty has done an amazing job,” he adds. “Maybe Liberty was lucky to have a Netflix [documentary] for F1.”
What Briatore refers to is ‘Drive to Survive’ the docu-series on Netflix which changed the sport forever. It gave fans inside access to the lives of F1 drivers — both on and off the track.
Drive to Survive brought in a horde of fans from around the world, especially the US — a market F1 had previously been trying to venture into for years.
Liberty Media capitalized on F1’s growing popularity to add more races to the calendar, in countries where the sport had gotten more popular. The newly added Las Vegas GP, Miami GP, and Saudi Arabian GP have turned out to be huge commercial successes for F1. From an entertainment point of view, the sport is in a better place than ever before.
