Former champ Hill slams Ferrari

The 1996 title winner has also criticised those who run the sport in the wake of proposals from motorsport govering body, the FIA, to overhaul grand prix racing's rules.

In an interview with BBC Sport Online, the 42-year-old said: "For a long time [F1] has walked a very fine line between being a serious and credible sport, and a circus where you're not really supposed to take anything too seriously.

"That can only work for so long. After a while, people get wise.

"The more coverage there is of F1, the more educated the audience becomes and the more they expect and the less easy it is to hoodwink the viewers."

Hill linked the downturn in TV viewing figures with Ferrari's manipulation of race results between Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello.

"It has been quite sad to see some of the things that have happened this year," he said. "Orchestrating their races backfired on them in Austria...and it went horribly wrong again in America.

"Both those events were terribly damaging, much more damaging for the sport than if they had carried on racing properly."

Hill went on to accuse FIA president Max Mosley of contradicting himself over the rules for suggesting changes like weight penalties as a way of equalising the field.

"It is not so long ago that Max was talking about not creating a situation where the racing was fabricated artificially," he said. "That doesn't match particularly well with the suggestions he has recently come up with."