The Singapore Grand Prix weekend is the focus this week as Sky Sports F1’s extended race coverage from 11:30 to 16:50 averaged 619,000 viewers excluding adverts as always. What this means is that the overnight rating of 630,000 viewers reported here is indeed for the original 11:30 to 16:15 slot. I believe those numbers are the lowest yet for a Sky exclusive race in the European time zone.

Elsewhere on Sky Sports F1:

– 406,000 – Live Qualifying (Saturday, 13:00)
– 122,000 – Live Practice 3 (Saturday, 10:45)
– 65,000 – Live Practice 2 (Friday, 14:15)
– 51,000 – Live GP2 Race 2 (Saturday, 09:05)
– 47,000 – Live Practice 1 (Friday, 10:45)

The F1 Show again fails to make the top ten for a race weekend based edition whilst, sadly, the F1 Legends edition with Eddie Irvine also did not enter. I do think scheduling is an issue here. By 16:45 on Sunday you would have what, maybe 50,000 viewers still watching the post-race? That is not a large base, and you would be better off putting the Legends show in between GP2 and the F1 instead of what feels like filler. I don’t think the GP2 sprint race has ever gone beyond 10:30 on a Sunday morning, so there would be enough time to put the Legends programme on.

BBC One’s highlights show failed to make BARB’s top 30, and therefore was under 3.61 million viewers unsurprisingly. Over on ITV4, cycling’s Tour of Britain dominated proceedings, taking seven of the top ten slots, with a high of 413,000 viewers on Wednesday evening.