F1 Red Bull driver Sebastian Vettel's "recent dominance has scared away the audience for the sport," according to Patricia Cazón of AS. The F1 World Championship "lost 9.2 million viewers in the past year" -- from 88.2 million viewers on Spanish channel Antena 3 in '12 to 79 million in '13. The "average audience per race also declined by 482,000," dropping from 4.6 million in '12 to 4.2 million in '13. The decrease is "closely connected with Vettel's dominance." It is "interesting to analyze audience behavior: it is as if there were two F1 World Championships this year -- one up until the Hungarian Grand Prix, and the other afterward." This year, the season started with bigger audiences than it did in '12, but then "Vettel began to dominate and the audience became disconnected." It started with the Hungarian Grand Prix, "the first of nine consecutive races won by Vettel." After the "season title was decided in India," races in Abu Dhabi, Austin, and Brazil reached half of the TV audience that tuned in to those races the previous year. This year, the total audience from the Hungarian Grand Prix through Sunday's Brazilian Grand Prix (32 million) was much lower than during the same period in '12 (43.7 million) (AS, 11/26).
