Hamilton agrees with Brawn over weekend format and says of Liberty Media: "It's great they are coming up with new ideas."
Friday 3 March 2017 16:56, UK
Lewis Hamilton has welcomed Ross Brawn's suggestion F1 should stage a non-championship race to experiment with new formats.
Brawn, recently appointed as managing director of F1 by new owners Liberty Media, raised the idea during an exclusive interview with Sky Sports.
"That doesn't sound like a terrible idea!" Hamilton responded. "A new format is definitely needed for Formula 1. Thursday to Sunday has been the same for the last 11 years."
One possibility is that the non-championship event itself would see teams compete for prize money but not points.
But it's the opportunity for the sport to change its traditional format which most appeals to Hamilton.
"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," the Mercedes driver said.
"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."
Liberty Media have already made their mark on F1 by easing restrictions on the use of social media by the teams during testing - an approach Hamilton, considered to be the most social media-friendly of all the drivers, has also welcomed.
"It's great they are coming up with new ideas," he added. "The potential of Formula 1 has not been reached in terms of global success, it's far from [reaching] it to be honest.
"I'm hoping with everyone's help these guys will be able to squeeze out that extra bit to take it to the masses. I don't know if it'll ever be as big as football, but closer to those guys."
The Sky Sports F1 Digital team will be providing live commentary from dawn until dusk for all days of winter testing while Sky Sports News HQ will also deliver live updates from trackside.
