Formula One needs fresh ideas, says Hamilton

Lewis Hamilton has welcomed new thinking from Formula One's new owners Liberty Media Group.

The Mercedes driver was responding to suggestions from new sporting boss Ross Brawn proposing a new non-championship event. Brawn believs an annual event for money rather than points could allow experimentation with formats.

"That doesn't sound like a terrible idea," said Hamilton. "A new format is definitely needed for Formula One. Thursday to Sunday has been the same for the last 11 years."

Hamilton said that the whole sport needed a proper shake-up to make it more exciting in order to to win back fans who have drifted away.

"With the way the cars are, which makes it difficult to overtake and people complain you can't overtake, you need to come up with something unique and different races.

"Look at Monaco. You can't overtake there so maybe we should do something different to spice it up. Maybe a sprint race. Monaco should be different from the others."

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Hamilton was happy to see the new owners ease up on restrictions covering teams and drivers sharing social media content from pit lane.

"It's great they are coming up with new ideas," he added. "I'm hoping with everyone's help these guys will be able to squeeze out that extra bit to take it to the masses.

"The potential of Formula One has not been reached in terms of global success, it's far from [attaining] it to be honest.

"I don't know if it'll ever be as big as football, but [we can get] closer to those guys."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.