Redeem now - Red Bull Racing's Christian Horner said Taylor Swift would be "lucky" to attend a Formula 1 race.
- The Formula 1 team principal made the comment during an appearance on ESPN's "Unlapped" podcast.
- Horner said Swift would struggle to get a race pass because the sport was more popular than ever.
Red Bull Racing's team principal, Christian Horner, said Taylor Swift would have a tough time getting into a Formula 1 race because Netflix's "Drive to Survive" had made the sport more popular than ever.
Horner told Katie George, Laurence Edmondson, and Nate Saunders during a recent appearance on ESPN's Formula 1 podcast, "Unlapped," that the sport's rise in popularity meant high-profile stars like Swift would be "lucky" to attend races nowadays.
Horner said organizers at the Austin Grand Prix in 2016 hired Swift to perform because they were struggling to draw attention to the racing event.
"If you remember Austin a few years ago, we were having to get Taylor Swift there to get a crowd there," he said. "Now she's lucky if she's allowed in, if she can get a pass."
"It's changed so much," Horner said of the fandom surrounding Formula 1. He credited the sport's surging popularity to the Netflix reality-style documentary "Drive to Survive," which aired its fifth season in February.
"It's transformed the sport, it's taken it into households it would've never been in previously," he added. "It's now made drivers and some team principals household names."
Fans of "The Kardashians" and the British royal family are now equally invested in Formula 1, he said.
Horner said the US was a prime example of an unlikely hot spot where the sport had exploded in popularity because of the Netflix show. "It's been a game changer," he said.
One such race to be added to the Formula 1 calendar for the first time in the sport's history is the hotly anticipated Las Vegas Grand Prix, which is set to take place on the strip in November.
Horner said the Las Vegas Grand Prix would "be insane."
"I've never known so much hype around a sporting event," he said. "The whole world is going to be watching, and hopefully we can put on a great show."
Disclosure: Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Business Insider's parent company, Axel Springer, is a Netflix board member.
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