Martin Brundle still remembers the noise.
Not the engine note, not the paddock hum — the backlash. When he left the BBC to join Sky ahead of the 2012 season, it didn’t go down quietly with everyone who’d grown up with free-to-air Formula 1 as a British institution. Brundle admits he “took a bit of stick” for it at the time, but the reasoning was simple: Sky weren’t just buying rights, they were building an entire operation around the sport.
Fourteen seasons later, that bet looks less like a leap and more like the moment UK F1 coverage changed shape for good. Sky has announced a multi-year contract extension that will keep Formula 1’s live broadcast rights in the United Kingdom and Ireland until at least 2034 — a stretch that would take Sky’s tenure to 22 years.
For Brundle, who has lived through every iteration of British TV F1 from ITV to the BBC to Sky, the new deal lands with a sense of weight as much as celebration. “It is a big responsibility,” he said, reacting to the extension on Sky Sports News, before underlining just how relentless modern F1 has become. The calendar now runs to 24 races a year — a travelling circus that never really stops, even when the cars do.
And that’s the point he keeps coming back to: if you’re going to commit to telling the story of a sport that happens almost every weekend for most of the year, you can’t half-do it. Sky’s model from day one was saturation coverage — live sessions, constant shoulder programming, features, analysis, digital output, podcasts, the lot. Brundle describes it as a machine that effectively never switches off once the pit lane goes green.
“We don’t miss anything in Formula 1 and I think that is a big responsibility,” he said. The line is telling, because it captures the bargain Sky has always implicitly offered: pay for access and you’ll get completeness. It’s also the standard Sky has boxed itself into. When you present yourself as the place that never misses a detail, you’re judged mercilessly for the moments you do.
Brundle’s recollection of the 2012 decision is framed around intent — Sky making clear it wasn’t dabbling. “As soon as they told me they were going to do a dedicated Sky F1 channel, I thought: ‘Right, this is serious. I need to be part of this.’” In 2012, Sky F1 was the first channel in Sky Sports history devoted to a single sport, a template it later rolled out across Premier League football, cricket, tennis and golf. At the time, though, it was a statement: F1 wasn’t just another rights package; it was the centrepiece.
The other part of that statement was personnel. Sky didn’t simply build a new broadcast from scratch — it hoovered up some of the most recognisable faces from the BBC operation. Brundle was among a group that also included David Croft, Anthony Davidson, Ted Kravitz and Natalie Pinkham. The move effectively redrew the broadcast landscape overnight, and it also made Brundle a lightning rod for fans unhappy with the direction of travel.
His view now is pragmatic: Sky and F1 have been “very good” to each other. F1 gained a partner willing to bankroll wall-to-wall production; Sky gained a sport with a fiercely loyal audience and a calendar built for subscription television. The new extension is simply the latest proof that the arrangement suits both sides.
Still, Brundle is careful to frame the long-term deal less as a victory lap and more as a test. In his words, the “bottom line” is the audience — “the subscribers, the people who tune in”. And he knows what they demand: trust, credibility, and an editorial line that isn’t shaped by what viewers want to hear.
“We’ve got to tell them the story as we see it, as it unfolds — whether they like what we say or not!” he said.
That’s Brundle in a nutshell: the broadcaster who still speaks like a racer, wired to call it as he finds it. His reputation has been built on being unshowy but uncompromising — someone who can translate the business end of a lap into plain language without sanding off the edges. When you’ve spent years in the paddock as both participant and observer, you tend to develop a decent radar for nonsense, and Brundle has never been shy about using it.
There’s also a neat bit of symmetry in the timing. The 2026 season marks 30 years since Brundle’s final year on the F1 grid, racing for Jordan. He moved into ITV’s coverage the following year, beginning the second act of a career that’s now become as recognisable as his driving ever was. He later shifted to the BBC when it took over the rights in 2009, before the defining jump to Sky in 2012.
Last year, that contribution was formally recognised when Brundle received an OBE for services to motor racing and sports broadcasting.
The extension to 2034 means Brundle’s original hunch — that Sky were serious about committing to F1 long-term — has been proven in the clearest possible way. But it also means the expectations only rise from here. Sky has more time than ever to shape how F1 is watched, discussed and understood in the UK and Ireland. And for Brundle, the task remains what it’s always been: earn the trust, tell the story straight, and accept that not everyone will like the truth when it arrives.
