Are the teams holding F1 back?

There's been a lot of worried talk in the Formula 1 paddock this season. Audiences are falling and the sport is failing to generate new ones.

Setting aside accusations that F1's promoter doesn't promote the sport as well as it could, and the fact that its media strategy pretty much stops at the end of a TV camera lens, just how do you make the sport relevant to a new generation?

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube could all provide a platform for engagement, but they are merely media and can't really get to the heart of how and why people engage with sport in the first place.

Sport is about people and F1 would do well to remember that. When I started watching Formula 1 in the mid-90s it was all about the drivers' championship.

The constructors' championship, which admittedly was introduced only eight years after the F1 world championship began, seemed simply a (worthy) add-on to reward the hard work going on in the background.

Fans hope to spot their idols during a pitlane walkabout © XPB

I feel the emphasis has shifted in the modern era. The teams have become too rich, powerful and self-important, drawing attention to themselves at the expense of their real stars.

Too often now we hear drivers talk about getting a result for the team, or that a particularly disappointing defeat to a team-mate is nevertheless a good thing because it means "good points for the constructors' championship".

I don't want to see and hear that. I want all the drivers to duke it out with each other to prove they are the best.

Drivers have their own unique race numbers now, but this has done little to prevent the slow erosion of individual identity in favour of a fuzzy corporate collective. That we can barely see these numbers only adds to this unease.

People watch sport for the human drama: the best players going up against each other in any given discipline.

F1 obsesses about its technology, particularly so now it has entered a new hybrid-engine era, but I doubt better explanations of this machinery will bring audiences flocking to grandstands - or even to their own sofas.

Of course, hardcore fans - like those who attend races, read AUTOSPORT, work in the industry, or compete themselves - will lap this up, but F1's problem is not appealing to hardcore followers, it's in trying to appeal to general sports fans.

The physical demands for the racers are easier to spot in MotoGP

I love sport, and watch a lot of football and tennis, but I don't really care whether one player is using a Babolat racket while the other swings an Adidas. Nor do I care whether Cristiano Ronaldo wears the latest Nike boots or rival technology from Puma. I just want to see the best players doing their stuff, regardless of their 'machinery'.

The racing in F1 is arguably better at the moment than it's ever been, but the emphasis is wrong. F1 needs to focus more on its stars - the drivers - and help the public to connect with them.

Admittedly F1 suffers the inherent problem of those drivers' skills being largely invisible to the naked eye - certainly on TV - but the more of that skill you can convey in a way the public can appreciate, the more popular your sport will surely be.

Motorbike racing has an inherent advantage here, because spectators can easily see the riders working their machines, but perhaps F1 cars could be designed in a way that makes it easier to distinguish between the relative skills of drivers. Maybe they need to be even harder to drive...

Perhaps F1 is simply regressing to its natural level as a niche sport, having grown large on the heady fumes of tobacco advertising and big-money TV deals. Other sports are becoming more visible, and F1 has more competition for attention than ever before. So it needs to work harder.

F1 seems too elitist and too inward-looking to me. If it wants to build its audience it needs to engage - with ordinary people, not just the monied guests of the Paddock Club. The drivers - not the teams, or their sponsors, or their suppliers, or their corporate responsibilities - should be at the heart of the matter.

I spoke to one driver manager recently who said everyone working in the F1 paddock was there because they were 'hooked' on motorsport. This usually happens through some form of participation, so F1 needs to think seriously about ways in which it can become more inclusive.

At the end of the day it's all about people. The more you connect with, the bigger your audience will be.