Ferrari driver Sebastian Vettel (left) and his Mercedes rival Lewis Hamilton have both slammed ... [+]
Formula One has long had a tendency to make knee-jerk changes. Rarely does a season go by without the introduction of new regulations designed to rev up interest in the race series. In just the past five years F1 has switched its V8 engine for a V6 and widened the wings and tires of its cars. These kind of changes are often lost on viewers but drive up the teams’ costs. Despite this, there is no end in sight to the tinkering.
In 2021 F1 is planning to introduce a radical new car design and, as we recently revealed, it spent $4.1 million on research and development last year alone. Before these changes get to the finish line F1 is reportedly planning to make yet another major modification by testing new qualifying formats at three races next year.
The current system sees qualifying split into three rounds with the fastest drivers advancing to the next one. The slowest are knocked out at the end of each period and their grid positions are based on their best lap times. Reports suggest that F1 is planning to evaluate switching this for mini-races that would see the grid start in reverse championship order.
The change would require unanimous agreement from the teams and although they haven’t put the brakes on it, their biggest names have been highly critical. “I don’t really know what to say to it,” said reigning champion Lewis Hamilton recently. “People that propose that don’t really know what they’re talking about.”
Even his rivals at Ferrari are in agreement. “I don’t know which genius came up with this,” said Sebastian Vettel sarcastically. “It’s completely the wrong approach.” His team mate Charles Leclerc echoed this and added “I don’t think it’s the solution for Formula One.”
Adding a mini-race to an F1 weekend would boost the teams’ costs. In contrast, in 2015 we proposed a new qualifying format to F1’s authorities which would guarantee that F1’s two fastest drivers would go up against each other in a one lap shoot-out. It wouldn’t drive up the costs as much as a mini-race so would reduce the risk and would be truly innovative.
F1 doesn’t appear to have learned its lesson from 2016 when it changed its qualifying format for just one race before widespread criticism forced it to switch back. Just two years earlier it made yet another change when it awarded double the number of points as usual for the season-ender in a bid to boost Ferrari’s chances. The famous Italian team still failed to win the title and the gimmick was dropped the following year.
NASCAR too has fallen foul of this kind of tinkering when it introduced what are now known as the playoffs. They ensure that the title is decided at the last race and have come under fire from fans who have voted with their feet. Over the past three years the audience of the championship-decider on NBC has crashed by 45.6% to 4.2 million.
It shows what is at stake by F1 changing its qualifying format and the big question is whether it is even necessary or is just for the sake of it.
The answer perhaps comes from ESPN, the sports broadcasting behemoth which screens F1 in the United States. Its track record stretches all the way back to 1962 when its sister network ABC broadcast the series for the first time in the US. It aired highlights of the Monaco Grand Prix on ABC’s Wide World of Sports and continued to screen select races until the 1980s. ESPN took over the wheel in 1984 and continued until 1997 when it lost the rights to the Speed Channel which had a 17-year run as F1’s broadcaster.
NBC Sports took over the driving seat in 2013 and stayed there until the end of 2017 when it withdrew a $40 million offer to screen F1 for a further seven years. As we revealed in motoring magazine Autoweek, NBC didn’t want to compete with F1’s new online service which streams the races directly to fans. ESPN stepped into the breach and F1 has been all the better for it.
ESPN is 80% owned by The Walt Disney Company which is one of the smartest operators in the media industry and only agreed to broadcast F1 at no cost. As we revealed, this instantly saved ESPN the $4 million that NBC Sports was paying annually. It followed this up with an even smarter maneuver.
To hit the ground running, ESPN uses a pre-prepared package of F1 coverage. Its show is simulcast with British network Sky which has one of the biggest budgets of any F1 broadcaster. Despite this it wasn’t an easy ride.
Sky is commercial free so there are no natural moments for ESPN to cut to ads. In the season-opener this led to commercials being shown at seemingly random times and some of the key moments on-track were missed. To swerve around this hurdle ESPN signed a sponsorship deal with Mothers Polish, the maker of high-end waxes and cleaners. It is a win-win.
F1 is famous for its upscale sponsors and races in glitzy race locations like Monaco and Melbourne. This attracts wealthy fans who have to be dedicated as the races take place all over the world which means they are often on air at inconvenient times in the United States.
It explains why F1’s 2015 Global Media Report showed that viewers in the US tend to be from the ABC1 end of the socio-demographic spectrum and are twice as likely as the general population to be high-earners. As we reported, this is just what Mothers Polish is looking for but it is far from the only beneficiary of the partnership with ESPN.
The sponsorship from Mothers Polish enabled F1 to broadcast the races commercial free which has boosted ESPN’s audience and driven up F1’s popularity. Testimony to this, in the first year of the deal, F1 was the only major racing series to see year-on-year viewership growth in the US.
“Overall we were very pleased,” said Burke Magnus, ESPN’s executive vice president of programming and scheduling. “We knew that there were passionate F1 fans in the United States and we’re very happy that they navigated to our platforms and responded to our offerings.”
In 2018 an average of 547,722 viewers tuned into the races on ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC, a 2% increase over the 538,114 on the NBC networks in 2017. That positive trend has continued into this year as live telecasts of the 16 races which have taken place so far averaged 511,000 viewers across ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC. It is an increase of 20% from the same point last year on ESPN networks and a rise of 25% from the average on NBC networks in 2017.
All but three of the 16 races have seen year-on-year viewership growth and, crucially, telecasts of qualifying rounds are up 46% on last year. ESPN appears to have found the winning formula in the United States but rather than letting it tick over, F1 is changing gear. Only time will tell whether that pays off.
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