F1 has had a bright winter

The start of a new year is always a moment of reset for Formula 1. The all-too-brief, post-season run-up to Christmas inevitably lends itself to a bit of reflection on the rights, wrongs and missed opportunities of the year gone by.

But come this week's return to battle stations, and thoughts become focused entirely on what lies ahead. Everyone adopts the mindset of what one high-profile technical figure once said to his workers: whatever it is you do, just do it better.

What the recent downtime since the final race of 2014 in Abu Dhabi has done, though, is allow F1 a rare few weeks of being surrounded by positivity and some upbeat assessments of its current state.

That Lewis Hamilton was able to walk away with the 2014 BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award before Christmas showed that F1 has captured the attention of the wider public.

Hamilton's winter awards successes have shown his popularity with fans - including rappers © LAT

The stirring of emotions caused by Jenson Button having to hold on until the 11th hour at McLaren to find out if he had a future in grand prix racing proved that passion does still run deep among fans.

The good vibes of Hamilton's success and Button's new contract seemed a world away from the difficulties that F1 faced off-track in the closing stages of the campaign as the sport appeared on the surface to be hitting the self-destruct button.

The collapse of Marussia and Caterham, arguments over money, a war over engine rules, and a promoter firing off some fairly leftfield soundbites about ignoring younger fans, created a feeling that F1 was stuck in a spiral of negativity.

When faced with such an onslaught of doom every other week in the paddock, it was hard at times to not believe that F1 was facing a full-blown crisis.

And yet, step back from it all for a few weeks, and you realise that it's far from being on the road to ruin.

Sure, some empty grandstands and falling television viewing figures set alarm bells ringing, but figures have to be put into context. F1 is still massively popular, and just because other categories - such as the World Endurance Championship - are growing, it doesn't mean that audiences are about to shift their allegiances.

As FIA president Jean Todt made explicitly clear during a chat at the Abu Dhabi GP: "The problem of the F1 audience dropping? It is clear that if you go from free-to-air to pay TV the audience will drop. You don't have to be a genius to understand that.

"For WEC, we are the promoter, and it is something we are building from scratch. But if WEC viewing figures are here [puts hand low down], then F1 is still here [raises hand high up]. Although maybe it [F1] is losing a little bit because the world is changing."

Ecclestone and Todt have different views of modern F1 © XPB

Indeed there is a huge difference between a sport going through some bumpy times amid a changing world and it being in full-blown meltdown. Is everything rosy in F1's garden?

Of course it isn't. It could do a lot of things better. It could certainly do a lot more for fans. But to suggest it has everything wrong and is dying is wholly incorrect.

"F1 does not have a bad image," added Todt. "Saying that, it could have a better image. If you have George Lucas or Luc Besson presenting a new movie, and they say 'my movie is not good', it is not very clever.

"Maybe his movie is not good, but then he will call his team - say 'guys it is maybe a bit too long, we should look at what to change'.

"I am completely happy to do that; every morning you wake up, and you think what is the way to do things better?"

F1 remains a truly brilliant sport, and there are a multitude of reasons to be excited about what is coming in 2015. Will the opposition close down on Mercedes? How will the Hamilton/Nico Rosberg battle develop? What can Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel do at their new teams? Can Daniel Ricciardo be even more sensational?

There are signs of F1 getting its house in order off-track, too. The new F1 Promotional Group, a proper social-media plan by Formula One Management, and the good vibes of the winter, all point towards a positive future.

Melbourne cannot come soon enough.