Just heard the news about 1996 World Champion Damon Hill who is set to leave Sky Sports F1 at season’s end. He has been there providing punditry from day one since the network’s first foray into Formula 1 back in 2012 after BBC were no longer able hold full rights at the time that ended decades worth of live full season coverage on British free-to-air television.
But the TV landscape of live sport has changed ever since anyway with Sky holding and still has full season rights while the BBC initially carried half of the live packages over the next couple of years before Channel 4 took over the free-to-air several years later.
Now as of the 2019 and 2024 contract extension deals by Sky, Channel 4 still has the local free-to-air rights until at least 2026 but can only air the British race live and everything else being highlights.
This is much like the model we have here with our Formula 1 coverage where all races are currently behind the paywall on Fox Sports/Kayo (although every practice/ qualifying of all other races including race highlights are free-to-view on Kayo Freebies) & the annual Australian race live via free-to-air on Network 10. This is despite 10 still having a great relationship with F1 that way goes back to 2003 off the Nine Network despite cutting back awful lots of coverage over time – this goes from full season coverage to half season live coverage to then the Australian race live + highlights and now just the Aus race live.
Speaking of 10, Damon Hill was actually part of their comprehensive Australian Grand Prix on-air presentation over the last two years at Albert Park – including race day commentary alongside Richard Craill and journalist Tom Clarkson.
This was when Australian F1 legend Mark Webber no longer able to devote time on 10 when he had to be there for current Aussie F1 driver Oscar Piastri who currently drives McLaren-Mercedes as his agent while Channel 4 paid him more than well enough to be part of their commentary/punditry team at times throughout the year. Don’t know if his exit from Sky was his decision or by the network themselves but it looks like 10 will have to find another new analyst to replace Hill going into 2025 since he will want to slow things down back in the UK.
We could either see Jolyon Palmer or maybe James Hinchcliffe onboard since they are from F1 TV. Maybe Jenson Button since he now calls the US home these days in California and it wouldn’t be too much of an issue for him to fly over to Melbourne for 10 as long as he doesn’t have anything else with going on. If not, maybe Anthony Davidson or even Karun Chandhok as outside picks if they would be willing to go there in-person?
As we know by now, Sky sometimes pick studio hub locations at selected Grand Prix events in London when the current F1 calendar year is so jam packed & not all races will be on-site going forward considering the cost of travel, hotel accommodation, production setup, etc.
But again, just playing around with speculation as still too early to tell ahead of the next Australian race who will be opening the next Formula 1 campaign in March 2025.
And let’s hope Jack Doohan will still be able to make it towards the grid on time as a full-time Alpine-Renault driver on debut amid rumours of him being dumped before he could even touch a Formula 1 car for the rising Argentine Franco Colapinto, who has been making an immediate impact, since he unexpectedly replaced the crash-prone Logan Sargeant very recently at Williams. For now, we wish Damon Hill the best of luck with his next chapter in 2025.