What Ross Brawn needs to do to fix F1

When you are on the inside of Formula 1, it feels like you are on the cliff-face of excitement. Everything that is happening around you is so cutting edge that you just can't help but be impressed.

But take a step back and look at F1 like a television viewer or trackside spectator, and you see something completely different. That is something Ross Brawn must keep in mind in his new job with Liberty Media.

I have been on both sides, so I can assure you that this is exactly the problem. I still move mountains to watch grands prix live, but when sitting there, especially when trying to justify it to my wife, I often wonder why I just don't wait to read about the result on Autosport!

The spectacle is central to F1's popularity. And producing the best possible spectacle to maximise the show is not just about rules and regulations.

This is the problem: currently, you see two racing cars driving about at the front - not often that close together - without any information on strategy.

You actually feel that listening to a GP on the radio is better than watching it on TV. This is because the commentator has to paint a picture of a scene that you can't see. So it's like telling a blind person what the scenery is like; you don't tell lies, but you can expand the truth. And then they can imagine something more vivid than reality.

Look at something like snooker, which has strong leadership, whether you like it or not, from Barry Hearn. On TV, you see the balls, the scores, how much is left on the table. It's not spectacular like F1, but it's immersive and you always understand what's going on - when a player is focusing, up pop their statistics.

This could be very easily done when the camera is on a driver. For example: Fernando Alonso, 272 GPs, 2 championships, 32 wins, 22 poles, 22 fastest laps. This happens occasionally, but it can happen more often and you can go into far more depth with facts (such as years since last winning the world championship).

This can also be done for the constructor, where we could remind everyone McLaren last won that title way back in 1999. It wouldn't take much to create an information bar to deliver those facts and it would be very helpful when things get a bit boring. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Understanding what is happening on screen is key, because the second the person watching on TV loses interest, they walk away or watch something else. If this happens, there's no guarantee they will come back.

This weakness has been down to FOM not making the most of what it has got in terms of the data available.

It wouldn't take much to incorporate all of this information into the broadcast, even things as straightforward, but massively important, as what tyres times were set on.

At the moment, unless you have your iPad beside you and connected to one of the F1 information websites you just don't have a clue. Now, how many 'floating voters' will have that luxury? If you can make a casual viewer into an ardent viewer then you are going in the right direction.

What Ross needs to do is put the jigsaw together properly in a way that really tackles the problems, rather than doing things that just don't get to the heart of the matter. This year, for example, we're heading into the new season with a regulation change. But this has been done simply with the aim of making the cars five-or-so seconds per lap faster.

If you look at F1 from the past few years, the cars race at around five or six seconds slower than they qualify; on TV you can't tell that, and actually the racing is more exciting than qualifying because sometimes you actually get two cars racing each other, and when this happens you do have a spectacle.

The problem the drivers and teams have been complaining about, if anyone can be bothered to listen, is that the tyres just aren't durable enough. They have to drive within the grip available to them to make the tyres last, and that reduces the opportunities for close racing.

How many times during practice, for example, do you see a driver on the limit? They fit a new set of tyres and, in reality, they have one lap if they are lucky. After that, it is just about making the tyre survive.

I remember the battles Michael Schumacher, Alonso and Rubens Barrichello used to have where every lap between pitstops for fuel and tyres was like in qualifying, and the tyres just got faster and faster.

What part of that has been addressed? Beyond a vague desire for Pirelli to produce tyres that don't degrade so much, nothing.

Everyone wants to close up the competition, but what's actually been done to achieve that? They've taken away the engine tokens system, which means everybody just goes on a massive spending campaign and develops something that will never see the light of day in a road car environment.

Why not simply monitor it so that people have the opportunity to catch up?

If you have the best engine, you can't develop the power unit for a period and the others can. Let the others have a go and actually close the gap.

This strategy could even be used with chassis development; if you're winning you need to keep the same specification, if not you can introduce updates.

Bigger tyres was a sensible move because everybody has to pay for the tyres and everybody gets the same gain, but the slightly more aggressive cars have just cost people a lot of unnecessary money.

Ross's involvement is good, and he has said some sensible things about needing a strategy. But remember he's been successful at teams with a lot of money. Even Brawn had vast sums of money spent on developing the 2009 car when it was still Honda the year before, and it was then given a budget to run it. What we don't know is what he would do with a Sauber or a Manor. He's very capable, but this is a different challenge.

Making F1 into a spectacular sport that becomes a must-see as opposed to a might-see or not-really-interested-in-it is not an overnight task. But some very simple moves could have a very positive effect in the short term.

This would get the ball rolling and give F1 time to address the bigger issues of what changes needed to be made to the technical and sporting regulations.

Brawn has talked about the importance of taking a long-term view and creating a proper strategy, and he is absolutely right. But there are also some easy wins that can be implemented without reinventing the sport from the ground up.

This is all simple stuff that can be done easily, without any cost to the teams and with a tiny cost to F1 as a whole before you get onto the more difficult things.

So that's where I would start.