F1 isn't broken - it needs YouTube

As talks continued this week to try to edge Formula 1 closer to a rules revolution package between now and 2017, it is as though everyone is now convinced that something major is broken.

Such is the clamour for change, with wider cars, bigger tyres and 1000bhp engines all being targeted, that you could be forgiven for thinking that the current generation of machinery is an utter failure.

Yet there is a danger of F1 getting a bit ahead of itself here in deciding that it is the cars that are at fault. What if it is not actually what is happening on track that is the root of the problem?

Ecclestone and Vettel fuelled the criticism of F1 early in 2014 © LAT

This ever-growing momentum for a new F1 has been fuelled by the panic that set in last year when the sport was hit by falling television viewing numbers.

Headline-grabbing figures of a five per cent audience drop worldwide, with bigger losses in key markets like Italy and Germany, left Bernie Ecclestone convinced that the sound of the engines and the new fuel economy formula were to blame.

It was his constant lashing out, supported by comments from figures including Luca di Montezemolo and Sebastian Vettel, that helped deliver a self-fulfilling prophecy of doom.

Did anyone actually ask the F1 fans what they thought, though? Did they really all hate it last year? Or, as the 10 per cent hike in Australian Grand Prix ticket sales for this year shows, was it all much ado about nothing?

Without proper market research - something F1 seems ridiculously loathe to do - it is hard to reach a firm conclusion about what all fans (and not just the loudest minority) really thought of the new rules.

If there are genuine complaints, though, are they really related to what is wrong with the cars? Or could they actually be as a consequence of how fans are getting to watch grand prix racing?

F1's business model has been built around a lot of the commercial rights income coming from the sale of exclusive live television rights in different markets.

Keeping that income at the levels free-to-air companies were previously willing to pay has forced the exodus to pay-TV channels, which has served to further drive down the audience reach.

It is the intense paranoia around maintaining the value of those television rights deals that has fuelled the huge limits on footage of races online, and the constant fight between YouTube users and Formula One Management
in putting up and taking down clips of F1 racing. Perhaps by doing this, though, F1 is killing off the goose that can lay its golden egg.

Maybe audiences aren't tuning in to grand prix racing, not because the cars or the racing are lacking, but because sitting through two hours of live sport in the middle of an afternoon is no longer a normal thing to do.

Younger generations want instant gratification these days - with maximum return. Within seconds, they can watch the most spectacular live moments, epic fails, the best overtaking moves or the best crashes. They are not going to readily sit for two hours watching 66 laps of Barcelona for a potential last-lap overtaking move.

But if F1's race highlights, crammed into two minutes, were readily available within minutes of the chequered flag dropping, then you might just be able to hook them in enough to get them coming back for more.

It's not all bad news for F1 - Australian GP ticket sales are up for 2015 © LAT

A loyal F1 audience should not just be counted on those that tune in every other Sunday to sit through two hours. The reach has to go bigger than that; it has to focus on more than grabbing in those who are happy to just read about it; it also has to lure those that want their 120-second YouTube highlights.

It is about giving fans access to F1 in the way they want it rather than the way that they are told to take it. Do that and you are more likely to see them make that transition to becoming fully engaged and spending their Sundays watching it live.

But F1's commercial chiefs, with their insistence that social media is not valuable, don't seem to care much
for anyone other than the fan who is already giving up their Sunday afternoon.

That is not good enough any more. Race edits that are shown on F1's official website only appear several days after the event, by which stage the world has moved on and the media's spotlight is no longer interested in what has happened on the track.

If F1 woke up to producing the brilliant highlights packages, as well as mobile and tablet coverage that most people now think is the standard way to watch sport, would the product based on the current cars and formula be a turn off? Of course not.

There is plenty to get excited about with the way F1 is right now. And that's without the need for wider cars, bigger tyres or 1000bhp engines.

Perhaps F1's revolution should not be about what is televised but focus on how it is televised instead.