Exciting start boosts TV figures.

Formula One's close-fought start to the season, which has produced three different race winners and a three-way tie for the world championship lead, has resulted in encouraging television figures for the sport's 'big five' markets.

Audience figures for France, Spain, Germany, Italy and the UK all show an upward trend, despite the fact that, of the three races broadcast so far, two - Australia and Malaysia - have been at 'unfriendly' times for Europe, with Bahrain being slightly more acceptable in late morning. Ironically, some unseasonably fine weather across northern Europe resulted in the Bahrain figures dropping off in Germany, France and the UK. Qualifying, meanwhile, continued to pull strong audience figures - following last year's trend - underlining that the new knock-out format is more popular than its immediate predecessors.

Viewing figures in Germany appear to have taken the expected hit from Michael Schumacher's decision to retire, although Nick Heidfeld's fine start to the season could yet turn that situation around, while British audiences are rising steadily as word spreads about the race-winning potential of Lewis Hamilton.

Last year was a particularly strong year for F1 in Germany, making any drop-off in 2007 more noticeable, but RTL's Malaysian race coverage drew the top audience of all programmes on the day, out-scoring any programme in peak evening prime time. In the UK, meanwhile, ITV viewer numbers have been gathering momentum since the opening round, with live coverage of the Malaysian Grand Prix showing a 27 per cent jump over 2006. Although the numbers were down slightly for Bahrain due to the fine weather, an audience share of 39 per cent was eight per cent higher than 2006 - the evening highlights programme attracted one million viewers compared to the 400,000 logged in 2006.

Despite not having a driver in the top flight, TF1's French coverage has garnered an average audience share in excess of 38 per cent, while Spanish coverage has continued to enjoy rising figures, owing to Fernando Alonso's double title success and race-winning switch to McLaren. Year on year comparisons for both average and peak audiences for Tele5's coverage show increases for all three races so far, with Bahrain - which followed Alonso's win in Malaysia - yielding the highest live audience to date with an average of 5.2 million viewers, up on 4.2 million from 2006 - an audience share of 57 per cent.

Despite Schumacher's absence from the Ferrari line-up, Italian year-on-year figures have continued, with RAI's coverage attracting more viewers for each race than it did in 2006. The Australian Grand Prix attracted an unprecedented 72 per cent share of the live audience and, while the Malaysian share was 'only' 61 per cent, it still equated to 5.8 million viewers - a million more than in 2006. Bahrain attracted 11.1 million viewers for Ferrari's second win of the season, representing a larger audience than for any event in 2006, excluding the season finale in Brazil.