What F1 should learn from Usain Bolt

Amid the blanket coverage of the Rio Olympics of the past couple of weeks, it's been impossible to escape the widespread, deserved reverence for the achievements of the great athletes.

Usain Bolt's triple triple, Michael Phelps taking his Olympic gold medal tally to 23, Britain's cyclists sweeping all before them in the velodrome... the list is almost endless. But while they are feted, should Lewis Hamilton win his fourth world championship, it will be greeted with a shrug in many quarters.

So why is achievement in other areas of sport celebrated, but in Formula 1 often derided? It's a complicated question; one that must start with an investigation of the premise.

First, it's not entirely fair to say that it's only in F1 that people lack respect for success. In a multitude of sports there are accusations of 'financial doping', whereby hefty expenditure is a prerequisite, but not a guarantee, of success - and sports in the Olympics are no exception.

Second, while commercial types like to draw parallels between the Olympics and F1 as being one of a tiny number of global platforms, they aren't analogous. Between Bolt's 100-metre victories at London 2012 and Rio '16, 78 grands prix and eight world championship titles were won.

During that period, many who justifiably fete Bolt for his achievements would barely have registered his existence, let alone recognised his world championship victories and wins in minor events.

By contrast, those following F1 will have seen Hamilton win six races in a nine-week period from May's Spanish Grand Prix through to Germany at the end of last month. Familiarity, to an extent, breeds contempt.

Even factoring that in, you would still imagine people could get bored of watching Bolt win the 100 metres, 200 metres and 4 x 100 metres relay every four years. But they don't, because they recognise his greatness.

This is an important thing in sport. People enjoy the dominance of the truly great athletes - Michael Schumacher's run of titles from 2000-04 is perhaps the ultimate manifestation of that in grand prix racing in recent times. To recognise the greats, you just need to see them thriving.

This is where F1 hits trouble. When Bolt won his gold medals this year, Hamilton was on top in F1. When he won in London, Sebastian Vettel, under pressure from Fernando Alonso, was the dominant force in F1. Wind back to the Beijing Olympics and it was Hamilton.

So who is the best? Well, some would argue Hamilton. Others would say it's Vettel. But it could also be Alonso, whose near-miss in 2012 was a sensational example of a driver hauling a car into a title hunt it shouldn't have been in. You could even make a case for a Red Bull driver or two now.

And that's exactly where the problem lies. People connect to people, but at various times in recent years the best driver in F1, as dictated by the results, has fluctuated. There is no Bolt-like supremacy. It's a muddy narrative.

Motorsport has always been about the fusion of car and driver, and it always will be. If it wasn't about cars as well as people, it would be called running. But that will always present a barrier to many.

You might be able to sell the idea of a team and driver combination being the best, as with Schumacher and Ferrari. But in recent times we've had Hamilton/McLaren, Button/Brawn, Vettel/Red Bull and Hamilton/Mercedes as the gold standard. That makes things seem a little random.

The reality, of course, is that things change. It's incredibly difficult to have the best car in F1, and even a big spend does not guarantee success. But once you are on top, in a steady-state rules environment, it takes a lot to be dislodged.

The dominance of Mercedes since the start of the current rules regime in 2014 has been total. Only seven times has a driver not sporting silver overalls won - and on only one of those occasions can you argue Mercedes was defeated in a completely straight, performance-based fight.

That's difficult to sell to people. It's hard to win a world championship - only 32 drivers have achieved it and there hasn't been a new one since Vettel's first crown in 2010 - but it just looks a little bit too easy. Vettel was able to win the title in Red Bull's pomp; it's impossible for him to do so in a Ferrari right now. That can be tough to explain to a casual audience.

Going back to Bolt, another reason he's so celebrated is the immediacy of what he does. It's obvious he's an extraordinary athlete, a superhuman. The majority of people can produce a passable approximation of running, but only the most deluded would believe themselves capable of getting anywhere near Bolt.

Does F1 have that same impact? Quite simply, no. It looks too easy. The fact that it isn't easy, despite what people argue about the current generation of cars, doesn't matter. The cars look like they are on rails, people can't detect how much they move around or the myriad imperceptible inputs required by these extraordinary drivers to extract pace from the car.

The bottom line is it doesn't look especially difficult, something not helped by the very stable images produced by modern onboard cameras. Take a look at a classic onboard, say the ever-popular footage of Ayrton Senna at Monaco in 1990, and it looks savage.

The image isn't stabilised, Senna's head bounces around with every bump, the corrections are obvious. That looks superhuman. Look at a great Hamilton pole lap today - an achievement just as challenging - and it just doesn't grab you in the same way.

One of the appeals of sport is that you can't imagine being able to do what the greats do. You can try to emulate Lionel Messi as much as you want playing Sunday League football, but you know you never will.

But it does look as if you could jump into a Mercedes F1 W07 and lap pretty quickly with the same ease that you take your road car down to the shops. That this is completely untrue doesn't matter; perception is reality.

So F1 looks easy to the untrained eye. Combine that with the fact that whichever driver is on top can be perceived as down to luck, and it's no surprise some people don't buy into it.

Of course, it's not helped by the fact that much of F1 seems to be marinated in negativity. As ever, there are things to be negative about, but if those in the sport can't be bothered to communicate to those watching what's going on and avoid constantly belittling their rivals, why should they expect fans to continue watching?

Attempts are made to make F1 more engaging, but they backfire spectacularly. Next year's regulations package makes absolutely no sense because, while the cars will be a little quicker, they will not look any harder to drive. Having promised the earth, this own-goal will just lead to another round of hand-wringing.

When it comes to spicing up the show, the focus in F1 does have its heart in the right place, but not its thinking. For example, the limits on radio communications, since abandoned, was an idea that had merit. But it was poorly, hurriedly implemented and not properly thought through.

Likewise, the brief for the 2017 cars was to make them look spectacular and be harder to drive. For that, read a bit more swoopy aero-wise, with slightly bigger tyres and a few seconds faster. To the majority, that means nothing.

The lesson here is to focus on ensuring F1 can showcase the ability of the drivers. Dominance in itself is not necessarily the problem, so randomising what's happening is not the be all and end all.

But you've got to be able to watch somebody winning a grand prix and have the same feeling you get from watching someone like Bolt in action. The skills, the excitement, the human drama are all there - and in spades - it's just that F1 is not doing a great job of conveying it to the masses.

Make no mistake, the top drivers in F1 are incredible athletes and what they do is far, far harder than it looks. The key is to make the more superficial image match the fascinating hidden depths so many can't appreciate and that F1 itself insists on hiding.

That's easier said than done, but how about it goes on the top of the agenda when working out the approach for the next tranche of regulations?