I very much doubt that Ayn Rand ever was much of a sports fan. But if she were alive today, I suspect she would follow Formula One racing on the Netflix series Drive to Survive. Of course, documentaries aren’t strictly nonfiction. Reality television is very much staged and edited. But the way the sport is depicted might very well have hooked the famous novelist and philosopher with its striking emphasis on individualism, competition, and frankly, selfishness.

Formula One (F1) differs from the various motorsports we have in the US. American “open wheel” racing, with cars that bear a resemblance to F1 cars but run on oval tracks, features the world’s biggest single-day sporting event, the Indy 500. NASCAR, so-called “stock car” racing with its roots in the liquor bootleggers of the American South, surged to national popularity in the 1990s. However, both American racing circuits remain niche domestic pastimes. Neither NASCAR nor Indy Car racing can compare with the global reach of F1, and now this international invader seems poised to conquer America. Perhaps an enterprising politician could make protecting American racing from foreign competition a campaign plank.

F1 cars are far more advanced than American Indy cars. Their drivers run on tracks and circuits—including the streets of Monaco—that requires far more skill and precision than any of the American oval tracks. The money in F1 is enormous but has actually been slightly curtailed. In 2020 the governing body of the sport imposed a spending cap. Prior to the cap, the top three teams, Mercedes, Red Bull, and Ferrari each had annual budgets of close to half a billion dollars. Now the caps place spending at somewhere closer to just 200 million per year. Both living and racing in Monaco require a lot more cash than Indianapolis.

There are exactly 10 “teams” in F1 and only 20 “seats” available to participate. Each team fields two cars and therefore two full-time drivers for the 23 races scheduled for 2023. Most of the teams are affiliated with “manufacturers” of cars, most notably Ferrari, Aston Martin, and Mercedes. Renault also participates and Audi should be joining at some point. Billionaires and celebrities stroll the track during race day and time trials. Fans watch from around the globe as the grand circus show that is F1 jumps from Melbourne to Bahrain, Baku to Italy, and Singapore to England.

The money, prestige, and international fame of F1 are what drew Netflix to produce the show, no doubt with some nudging from the league itself. The impact of Drive to Survive on the surging global popularity of F1, particularly in the US, is undeniable. The show seems to have what is called a “halo effect” for the sport in which impressions are formed not by a holistic or rational assessment, but rather a single example. Many new converts to F1 were drawn to the sport by the show alone. In a recent poll of 1,900 self-identified F1 American fans, 53% cited the show as the main reason they followed the sport. And that has led to the circuit including several new races on American soil, including ones in Miami and Las Vegas.

So what would have drawn Rand to the whining noise of high-performance engines, the smell of oil and rubber, and the inherent danger of racing frequently at speeds of over 200 mph? The stark, radical individualism of the sport, which is heavily emphasized in the show. Galt’s Gulch wouldn’t have publicly funded an NFL stadium, but they would have proudly accepted a privately owned F1 track

The ten groups that field cars are called teams, but this is a misnomer. Think of them as sports corporations that lower transaction costs like firms. In team sports, multiple players must coordinate their actions to ensure individual and group success. In F1, the level of cooperation is curtailed by the individual incentives drivers face that often conflict with “team” goals. Both drivers and teams compete for positions and ultimately championships each season. However, teams are grouped by their relative competitiveness, so while Mercedes, Red Bull, and Ferrari expect to win races and hopefully championships, most teams are in the middle.

Why would Rand have been drawn to F1? In addition to the hotly contested team competition and the race to win the overall individual driver championship, every single driver faces fierce competition from their own teammates. Each driver is measured most directly by comparison to their teammates because both drivers are given the same equipment. Cars are “set up” the same way on the same “team” and thus F1 drivers make it one of their main focuses to beat their teammates because that is the one-level playing field. Even if you are in a mid-field team and you can’t compete with Mercedes, you can battle your teammate and show others you are faster through your skill and nerve. A good showing on a mid-level team can lead to promotions to wealthier teams. The competition is constant and fierce.

And just as the skilled writing and storytelling of Rand’s novels helped shape many young libertarians, Drive to Survive has helped draw fans to the sport through the craftsmanship of the cinematography and episode construction. Each season follows an F1 season and the ten episodes jump around following drivers and the team “principals” who probably equate closest to head coaches. Unsurprisingly there is a lot of rich material to work with.

Also, much like Rand’s work, the show is completely devoid of any examination of family and personal lives of the drivers, in particular children. As a rough surrogate for families, drivers are always paired with their performance coaches alone, training in isolated settings. As Valtteri Bottas is about to betray his team and teammate Lewis Hamilton prior to the Russian Grand Prix, we are shown scenes of Bottas and his trainer sitting alone, silently staring out over a tranquil Finnish lakeside. In the same episode, we see Hamilton leaving the track in the late evening darkness with his performance coach talking about the long days they put in to succeed. The characteristics needed to succeed are immense at this level and make for antisocial behavior and what the drivers frequently admit is “selfishness.” Even good-natured joking between competitors is ruthless and frequently cutting.

Bottas wins the Russian Grand Prix essentially by disobeying his team’s wishes during qualifying for the race, compromising Mercedes’ ability to “lock” the front row and protect his teammate Hamilton. The starting grid for F1 has 10 rows of two cars each. Locking a row means the team has both of its drivers in one row. This allows the drivers to block and spot attacks from behind. Based on Bottas’ initial qualifying time, he should be second on the grid allowing Mercedes to lock the front row. Instead, during qualifying, Bottas provided a “tow” for Red Bull’s top driver and current reigning champion Max Verstappen. With that help, Verstappen gained the second position to start with Bottas dropping to third. The stage was set for Bottas to undermine Hamilton and win because of the track’s characteristics, which is better for the driver starting third than second. Bottas sacrificed the team to gain an advantage individually. There may be no “I” in team, but there certainly are lots of incentives for “I’s” to pursue goals outside of team objectives. Bottas, like every driver, is used to winning and is extremely competitive. That spirit can’t be suppressed consistently even as Mercedes is battling to win another Constructors Championship. Both the drivers and the teams are ranked by points at the end of the season.

Perhaps the most moving moment of the entire series happens in season 3 and revolves around the star-crossed career and life of Pierre Gasly. Like most drivers, Gasly has been racing since he was a small child supported by his parents who paid for his participation and enabled it. Like many other drivers, his family has been in racing for years. He has won at every level and made “friendships” with many of his fellow racers.

But Gasly is slightly different from other drivers in terms of personality and demeanor. He seems less programmed and robotic. He obviously wants to win, but there are glimpses that he may not be quite as maniacal, borderline psychopathic about winning as some of his competitors. After winning the F2, the main prep league for F1, he began driving for Red Bull’s second team and had a successful season. When he is promoted to Red Bull’s main team in 2019, he struggles with the pressure and expectations of driving for a top team and his performance suffers as does his psyche.

Red Bull demoted him back to the second team and that same week a fellow young French driver and good friend of Gasly’s was tragically killed in a race prior to the Belgian Grand Prix. Gasly performs well despite the adversity and is retained by the team for the following season, but his career and life seem to be at a crossroads.

As season three begins, the pandemic season of 2020, we learn of Lewis Hamilton’s first Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg, born in Monaco to a privileged family and previous champion of F1 who had surprisingly retired after winning the title in 2006. He and Hamilton had been friends when they raced together in the lower divisions, and Netflix provides the obligatory photos of them together as teenagers smiling and naive. By the time they were together at Mercedes, they had stopped speaking and were openly in conflict as they battled each other to win the title. The pressure and expectations of performing at the highest level of the sport had laid bare to viewers what it takes to get ahead in F1—uncompromising self-interest and a willingness to turn former friends into enemies in the name of winning. Remember, this isn’t a market or any other positive sum game. One person wins in racing and everyone else does not. It’s zero-sum and brutal. It is interesting to ponder that Rand herself once wrote in The Fountainhead that “To say ‘I love you’ one must first know how to say ‘I.’” Clearly by the time they had reached F1 both Rosberg and Hamilton understood what Rand meant here and knew, very clearly how to say I.

Gasly has another successful season despite the pandemic, but Red Bull refuses to promote him even though he is outperforming his replacement who seems to be wilting under the same pressure that had affected Gasly the season before. At his return to Belgium, the site of his friend’s death, we see Gasly putting flowers at the site of the accident and looking skyward briefly. He’s still mourning and values that relationship, even as his fellow competitors are willing to throw teammates and friendships aside to win.

As the season is winding down at the Italian Grand Prix, chaos ensues. A red flag brings the field together after an accident and Gasly, who has just pitted prior to it, gains an enormous advantage moving up to second after the leaders are forced to the pits after. The leader, Hamilton, is unsurprisingly penalized for pitting while the pits were closed. Gasly is suddenly, shockingly, in the lead of the race and manages to hold off several cars for his first and only victory. He is redeemed and joyous as he enters the pits and jumps in the arms of his delirious crew, most of whom understand that their role is to train young drivers, not win. It’s borderline miraculous and honestly moving.

And yet, one can’t shake the sense that had Gasly’s friend survived the crash and ascended to F1, their friendship would have eventually perished like most amicable social relationships seem to do in F1. Gasly seems cosmically rewarded for his humanity, but ultimately he is not promoted to the Red Bull top team despite the victory and his considerable improvement in performance. This season he has moved to a different team and is still firmly a mid-level driver. Rand gave us ideal figures like John Galt or Hank Reardon, but they live alone like the Hamiltons of the world. Gasly is somewhat fuller and more human than many of the other drivers in this unrelentingly atomistic world of self-interest. But he’s still not winning. And what it takes to win becomes clearer and darker for viewers. The distance between one of the 20 best and one of the rest is larger than we tend to realize. And perhaps scarier than we can fully comprehend.