Amid the howling exhausts, mega-buck glam and enormous global success of the Netflix show Drive to Survive, the series wouldn't have the same impact without great human talent.
The biggest surprise to many of those who didn't have much of an idea about Formula One motor racing until the Netflix show dropped - welcome, newbies! - is that aside from the razor-sharp driving skills involved, there's some equally sharp decisions being made up and down pit lane on a minute-by-minute basis.
And to manage just one of those 10 nomadic F1 teams - along with the massive human and technical resources which sit behind them but rarely seen on the small screen - demands a business acumen, resilience and sheer bloody-mindedness that would challenge the intestinal fortitude of a BHP Billiton chairman.
One such talent is Haas Formula One team boss Guenther Steiner.
From the moment he first hit the small screen, the intensely passionate, expletive-laden Italian-born engineer cum team principal was always going to galvanise the audience.
To suggest Steiner would readily call a spade a "f*&#ing shovel" is perhaps understating his salty on-screen candour. He's a human quote machine who flies 80-90,000 air miles a year around the world, shepherding, organising, cajoling and motivating the smallest team in Formula One.
"People talk about football managers being under pressure," Steiner says.
"That's nothing.
"Pressure is watching one of your drivers hit a barrier at 190 miles per hour and exploding before your every eyes."
It's appropriate that Stefano Domenicali, the chief executive of Formula One, provided the foreword for Steiner's new blow-by-blow book about the sport, Driving to Survive.
The former head of the Ferrari team, Domenicali is also an Italian and met Steiner while he was around international rallying some 23 years ago, when Steiner ran the works Ford rally team.
And here's a tip for those new to high-level international motorsports: each one is different, and rally people generally are more pragmatic and forthcoming than in other forms of the sport. Perhaps it's from hanging around covered in dust, soaked with rain, or ankle-deep in mud or snow for too long.
"A question I am often asked," Domenicali wrote, "is whether or not I had any idea that Drive to Survive would catapult my friend from being a generally anonymous but well-respected team principal into a superstar.
"The truth is, as much as I value Guenther as a friend, I never considered for a moment what effect his personality and character might have on the general public. Or on the sport, for that matter.
"The fact, though, is that the show has created a monster."
Two lines into his blow-by-blow account of the 2022 F1 season and Steiner, a self-confessed "glass half-full kind of idiot" is already swearing. He talks about the possibility of developing the team's 2020 car as akin to "polishing a turd".
Gene Haas, the US owner of the Haas F1 team, is a billionaire. He owns Haas Automation, the largest machine tool manufacturer in North America. He started in NASCAR, then bought a bankrupt F1 team - and all the necessary resources to support it - in 2014. Physically building the race car was handed over to specialist Italian manufacturer Dallara.
Even as a small team by F1 standards, Haas has to be fed by significant sums of money. Steiner disclosed that the Haas budget for season 2020 was $173 million "whereas Ferrari's was $463 million and Mercedes even more than that. Almost half a billion [dollars]."
And in the ego-crushing business of F1, a team can spend that much in a year and still go - quite literally - backwards. Steiner knows - because that's what happened to his team.
In 2021, new funding caps were introduced where the parts of the sport which were "performance critical" - design and development, component manufacturing, and testing - were set at $145 million per team. But salaries are not included, so the big teams hire all the best talent.
For his part Steiner says he has "never watched a single episode of Drive to Survive and ... probably never will".
"I know I'm not everyone's cup of tea but I'm actually OK with who I am.
"If you don't like it, tough shit."
Drama is always around the next corner in Formula One but Haas always seems to attract more than its fair share of headlines.
One was dumping their pay-to-drive Russian Nikita Mazepin, whose oligarch-cum-chemical magnate father was tipping around A$20 million into the team, after the outbreak of the Ukraine war.
Another, far more dramatic, was in March 2020 when Haas driver Romaine Grosjean crashed at high speed into a safety barrier during the Bahrain Grand Prix and the race car split open, then burst into a ball of flame. Miraculously, Grosjean escaped with only burns to his hands.
While having little interest in watching himself on Drive to Survive, Steiner has seen how that sudden mass popularity, many of them new adopters with scant knowledge of how the sport operates, also has a backlash effect.
"Over the past couple of years, things have got a lot worse on social media with regards to abuse," he said.
"I suppose that could also be down to Drive to Survive. At least partly. Some of the shit we had thrown at us after the Uralkali and Mazepin episode was just horrendous.
"In my opinion, real F1 fans do not behave in this manner."
Fiercely competitive and always striving to "stick it" to the high profile teams, Steiner wears his heart on his sleeve. The team's only pole position start landed in 2022 - largely as a result of making the right call when rain arrived, followed by an opportune red flag - and Steiner, understandably, was ecstatic.
And his sign-off is as irreverent as the start: "Take care, you bunch of wankers. See you on the other side!"
Driving to Survive - A Year Inside Formula One by Guenther Steiner is published by Penguin Ramdom House (RRP $35)
