The notion of prime time is not what it was, but 9pm Friday on ITV1 is still an impressively prominent slot in the schedule for Champions – Full Gallop, an access-all-areas, fly-on-the-wall attempt to give jump racing at least a fraction of the boost Formula One received from the Netflix docu-series, Drive To Survive.
When Drive To Survive launched in March 2019, F1 was suffering from declining revenues and ratings and struggling to expand or diversify an ageing audience. Similar problems to those facing racing, in other words, but six seasons of Drive To Survive later, F1 is one of the world’s fastest-growing sports with many millions of new fans and a rosier outlook than it has enjoyed for decades.
