Formula 1
26
home country of the United Kingdom. In 2006, twenty-two teams applied for the final twelfth team spot available for the 2008 season. The spot was eventually awarded to former B.A.R. and Benetton team principal David Richards' Prodrive organization, but the team pulled out of the 2008 season in November 2007.
The FIA is responsible for making rules to combat the spiralling costs of Formula One racing (which affects the smaller teams the most) and for ensuring the sport remains as safe as possible, especially in the wake of the deaths of Roland Ratzenberger and Ayrton Senna in 1994. To this end the FIA have instituted a number of rule changes, including new tyre restrictions, multi-race engines, and reductions on downforce. Safety and cost have traditionally been paramount in all rule-change discussions. More recently the FIA has added efficiency to its
priorities. Currently the FIA and manufacturers are discussing adding bio-fuel engines and regenerative braking for the 2011 season or from the start of the 2013 season. Former FIA President Max Mosley believes F1 must focus on efficiency to stay technologically relevant in the automotive industry as well as keep the public excited about F1 technology.
In the interest of making the sport truer to its role as a World Championship, FOM president Bernie Ecclestone has initiated and organised a number of Grands Prix in new countries and continues to discuss new future races. The sport's rapid expansion into new areas of the globe also leaves some question as to which races will be cut.
Television
Formula One can be seen live or tape delayed in almost every country and territory around the world and attracts one of the largest global television audiences. The 2008 season attracted a global audience of 600 million people per race. It is a massive television event; the cumulative television audience was calculated to be 54 billion for the 2001 season, broadcast to two hundred countries.
During the early 2000s, Formula One Group created a number of trademarks, an official logo, and an official website for the sport in an attempt to give it a corporate identity. Ecclestone experimented with a digital television package (known colloquially as Bernievision) which was launched at the 1996 German Grand Prix in cooperation with German digital television service "DF1", thirty years after the first GP colour TV broadcast,
Autódromo José Carlos Pace in São Paulo hosts the Brazilian Grand Prix