A bright new dawn for Formula One season in Australia

The old ringmaster has gone, pushed aside by Formula One’s new American owners, and the marketing men have moved in with a mission to overhaul the circus and give spectators something more modern for their money.If an era ended in January with the exit of Bernie Ecclestone, following Liberty Media’s takeover, the Formula One season starting in Australia on March 26 marks a bright new dawn.The cars are faster, wider and more aggressive-looking with fatter tyres and revised aerodynamics but, behind the scenes, more far-reaching changes are being mapped out to drive expansion.Sean Bratches and Ross Brawn have been appointed managing directors for the commercial and sporting sides respectively, under chairman Chase Carey, and sponsorship and research executives recruited.The sport is set to accelerate further away from the Ecclestone era, one in which the 86-year-old controlled everything with a famous reluctance to delegate.“There will be a point in the season...where we start to effectuate change,” Bratches said. “We are going to be very aggressive. We are going to try new things, all in the spirit of better serving Formula One fans.”In the short-term that means building up the race weekend, adding in entertainment and events along the lines of SuperBowl week, exploiting digital platforms and building fan engagement through social media.Longer term, expect new races – with Las Vegas and other US destination cities high on the wish list – closer ties to promoters and a push to maximise revenue.Brawn, the former Honda and Mercedes boss who won titles with his own BrawnGP team and was previously Ferrari technical director, has a three and five-year plan on the sporting side.It has to be slow burn because of contracts that run to 2020 but he is looking at everything from the format of races to how the sport should look and sound.“In the five-year programme we’ve got to identify what sort of engine we want in the future, because that’s the sort of timescale it takes, and list the things that are important,” he told an audience at a talk in Oxford this month.Levelling the playing field, allowing smaller teams a chance to compete against wealthy manufacturers, and keeping traditional races on the calendar are high on the agenda.Ensuring the 20 drivers were the best in the world, free of commercial considerations, is another box yet to be ticked and one linked to the thorny subject of a fairer distribution of revenues.Brawn said that only truly applied to the top half of the grid at present.“We should have a true meritocracy in Formula One. But you can’t do that because some of the teams rely on the commercial input of their drivers, else they wouldn’t survive,” he said.But there is no question formula One fans will have a lot to look forward to as the season promises thrills that seemed to have been lacking in recent years.