Hundreds of thousands of converts, if you believe the Netflix publicity hype.

Motor racing has a polarising effect on the community and none more so than the hyper-tech, world-tripping series that is Formula One.

Even those who understand it and "get" it, find two hours of F1 racing - brightly painted mega-buck slot cars circulating on a far distant Euro tapestry - soporific and hard to analyse.

Up close and personal, it's fascinating (and trust me, hah, I'm a former motorsport journalist).

But when watched at 2am from your couch on a Monday morning, it's the camomile tea of television.

And the smart people - well, let's face it, the money splashed around the sport buys plenty of smarts - inside F1 know it, too.

A few years back, they decided to do something about it.

Motor racing provides ready-made drama and there are some great Formula One movies around, the 2013 film Rush being the most recent. Rush was loosely based around two hugely talented and influential champion drivers, Niki Lauda and James Hunt, and the chemistry between them.

Rush's secret to success was: show more of the people and somewhat less of the racing to make it more palatable for mainstream audiences.

Because while the racing is the reason why everyone is there at the track or watching it on TV in the first place, the complex relationships and dynamics behind the scenes have just as much viewer "hook".

The Netflix series Drive to Survive, now about to shoot its third and potentially most interesting season given the whole stalled-on-the-grid pandemic hiatus, is a case in point.

Formula One is a megabuck international circus-cum-business and a hugely elitist form of motor racing. It's steeped in extraordinary history and characters, fast, dangerous, innovative, technically sophisticated and these days capable of swallowing tens of millions of dollars in a way only rivalled by space programs.

Consider, for instance, that each Formula One car is made up of some 20,000 parts. Almost every one of those parts is hand made and, as the F1 in-joke goes, from a material called unobtainium.

Every one of the 10 teams in Formula One builds their cars from scratch. They employ hundreds of people at their various headquarters to design and build these machines and only 20 people on the planet get to slide behind the Playstation-type handgrip wheel and race them at over 300km/h.

As a tiny example of how wholly arcane and secret the F1 world is, there was the controversy some years back about the use of a hugely rare and expensive material called beryllium by one team.

It is an exotic and highly carcinogenic chemical element with an atomic number of 4. Brittle at room temperature, it has exceptional stiffness, dissipates heat very quicky, yet is more elastic than steel which made it ideal for high-revving Formula One engine internals, such as pistons.

One F1 team decided this element would yield a minor technical advantage and spent millions of dollars and tens of thousands of man hours - dangerously so, because the oxide produced kills people - to make it work.

The substance was eventually banned but not before races were won using that very slim and dangerously implemented technical advantage. In grand prix racing, personal risk at every level - whether in the workshop machining the parts or at the racetrack - is always part of the game.

The idea behind Drive to Survive came from within Formula One because while the sport has a fanbase numbering in the tens of millions worldwide, the feedback provided was that this popularity creates a fishbowl effect; the public never get to see more than the racing veneer.

The race cars are mobile billboards and the drivers sunk low down in their cockpits, wrapped in their flameproof suits, balaclavas and helmets. Reading any sort of driver emotion is well-nigh impossible.

But these chaps - and sadly, they are all chaps - are as fit, competitive and motivated as any elite sportspeople. Most have interesting stories to tell about their climb to the top, as Queanbeyan's Mark Webber, who for a time raced wheel to wheel in this company, will attest.

Now there is a medium which tells these stories in a compelling way, following different teams in their machinations and tribulations, from the strugglers at the rear of the grid and why they are there, to those up the front, and what it takes to reach there.

A UK company called Box to Box Films, which produces "high-end, narrative-driven sports content" was engaged. To make it work, the deal had to include unprecedented levels of access to the teams, the managers and the drivers.

The significant advantage for Australian viewers is that one of our own elite drivers - Daniel Ricciardo - features heavily. The West Australian is good-humoured, effervescent and great TV talent. His smile lights up the room so it's little wonder he gets so much time on screen.

Then it needed strong story lines, together with very tight editing.

In some episodes, practice, qualifying and racing - which usually takes place over three days - is condensed into just ten intense minutes.

The result is F1 without all the boring bits. Dive in and try Drive to Survive: you may never view a Formula One race the same way again.

Or you may try, but you may also still fall asleep on the couch at 3am.