by Thinus Ferreira
Fans of Formula 1 racing in South Africa can finally watch live races with the F1 TV Pro official F1 subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service that now accepts South African subscribers with the second season of its reality show, Formula 1: Drive to Survive, that will make its debut on Friday on Netflix.
F1 TV Pro live streams all F1 races, as well as F2, F3 and the Porsche Supercup series as an on-demand service with a live stream of every track session for every Grand Prix. F1 TV has been available for a while since 2018 in South Africa but didn't offer local viewers the option to watch live racing.
The 2020 pre-season testing kicked off on 19 February with all 6 days of testing that was shown live on F1 TV Pro for the first time. F1 TV Pro has a daily Tech Talk show analysing the latest innovations the various teams are trialling for 2020 and also gives full coverage of various press conferences.
Besides South Africa, FI TV Pro has been made newly made available in several other African countries including Angola, Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
F1 TV Pro cost $4.99 (R75.51) monthly and $44.99 (R680.81) for an annual subscription and will compete with Netflix South Africa, MultiChoice's Showmax, Amazon Prime Video, Vodacom's Video Play, Apple TV+ and others for consumers' stream-watch rands.
Meanwhile the second season of F1's docu-series on Netflix, Formula 1: Drive to Survive will become available on 28 February globally.
For the second season all 10 teams agreed to be followed by the production company's cameras and include drivers Lewis Hamilton, Valtteri Bottas, Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen for the first time.
