More than 2 million viewers watched Nico Rosberg win the Bahrain Grand Prix in Channel 4’s first live race of the new Formula One season – 1.5 million down on BBC1’s coverage of the same race last year.
Channel 4 pulled in 2.3 million viewers (a 16.2% share) for the second fixture of this year’s F1 calendar, across three-and-a-half hours of coverage of from 3pm on Sunday, peaking with 3.2 million.
Last year’s Bahrain Grand Prix was the fourth of the F1 season and averaged 3.8 million viewers (26.4%) when it aired live on BBC1 on 19 April.
Last year’s second race of the season was in Malaysia on 29 March and drew 2 million viewers (33.6%) at the much earlier time of 7am, with 1.7 million (14.7%) watching the as-live replay on BBC1 from 2pm.
The race made Channel 4 the most-watched TV channel for large parts of the Sunday afternoon schedule.
Channel 4, which was on air for 30 minutes longer than the BBC last year, said it also won the highest share of ABC1 (19.9%) and male (20%) viewers, as well as the 16- to 34-year-old demographic, where it had a 15% share of the audience.
Channel 4 bought the rights to F1 racing, shared with Sky, after the cash-strapped BBC moved to pull out of its deal three years early. The commercial broadcaster will air 10 F1 races a year, with all of the races shown live on Sky.
Sky has since announced that it will have exclusive F1 coverage from 2019, with only the British Grand Prix to be shown free to air.
Channel 4’s coverage is fronted by Steve Jones, whose style has not been to everyone’s taste, and former F1 driver David Coulthard, who has received plenty of plaudits for making a successful transition to his TV role.
Channel 4’s F1 coverage began a fortnight ago with highlights of the Australian Grand Prix which it did not broadcast live. It averaged 2.1 million viewers, down from 3 million for last year’s highlights on BBC1.
