Channel 4 averaged around 2.1 million viewers on its Formula One coverage debut, which was about a million down on last year’s BBC show.
C4 took over the free-to-air rights from the BBC at the end of last year, after the BBC was forced to make cuts on its sports coverage of around £35 million.
Sunday’s highlights of the Australian Grand Prix brought in around three million viewers on average in 2015, but was 27.7% down on that this year.
However, it wasn’t all that disappointing for Channel 4, they managed to peak at around 2.7 million viewers taking them past ITV in the overall viewing figures for the day.
This years coverage was around twice as long as the BBC’s, and the channel said it had the most viewers of any terrestrial channel during the F1 show’s airtime, with around 18.6% of the share.
The race was an action-packed one, Lewis Hamilton lost out at the start, Fernando Alonso was involved in a huge crash, and Ferrari’s tyre strategy error led to a Mercedes one-two in Australia.
Channel 4’s coverage of Formula One will continue at the Bahrain Grand Prix, and will be the first of ten races that are broadcast live in 2016. The lights go out at 1600 GMT on April 3.
