Formula E poses a serious threat to Bernie Ecclestone with Formula One in dangerous decline

After a week of bankruptcies and crisis meetings, Formula One is beginning to feel like one of the big Westminster parties: increasingly out of touch with the modern world, and especially irrelevant among the young.

Yes, F1 has a long and glorious history. As well as attracting the best talent, it still hoovers up vastly more airtime and column inches than the rest of the world’s motorsport put together. Even so, a sort of voter apathy is seeping in.

Like many a political party, F1 has a sleazy and discredited leader in Bernie Ecclestone, who stepped beyond parody when he paid £60 million this summer to German prosecutors to make a bribery case go away.

As for the various tweaks to the format, they feel like they have been drummed up over a coffee. Take the “double points” rule for Abu Dhabi, which will backfire horribly if it steals the title away from Lewis Hamilton – the quickest and most charismatic driver of the season.

In the political world, the alternatives being offered to Britain’s electorate hardly inspire confidence. (Did someone say Russell Brand?) Yet motor racing fans are a little more fortunate. If they are looking for a protest vote, Formula E has arrived just at the right time.

FE’s electric motors took to the track in Beijing seven weeks ago, in an inaugural race that finished with a spectacular shunt. The peculiar whining sound took some getting used to, yet the whole event brought to mind Victor Hugo’s maxim: “Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”

This is a format compiled by a bunch of F1 exiles and refuseniks, and it has homed in on the old dear’s weaknesses – most notably, her love of conspicuous expenditure – with an insider’s eye for detail.

By contrast with Ecclestone’s bonfire of the banknotes, FE offers cost-capped racing for the age of austerity. Every car has the same shell and each team are limited to 13 operational track passes per race. ABT Audi’s annual budget, for example, is around £5 million, whereas Hamilton and the rest of the Mercedes crew chomp through an eye-watering £325 million, not including the £7 million bonus they paid out to staff for winning the constructors’ championship.

And then there is the technology. F1’s new hybrid engines, introduced this season, have alienated hardliners without engaging the green lobby. Whereas FE has done away with fossil fuels altogether and is moving towards induction grids in the pit lane. (Those are the futuristic devices that, in some neon-lit city of tomorrow, will recharge your battery as you sit at the traffic lights.)

Early data from the Beijing race proved encouraging: 713,000 watched on ITV4, which is already a third of the 2.28 million who tuned into the Chinese Grand Prix on the BBC. A worldwide audience of 25 million rose to 10 times that when you include the news broadcasts, boosted as they were by the sight of Nick Heidfeld’s Venturi heading into orbit.

Most revealing of all has been the enthusiastic response from sponsors. “If you look at any company’s annual report these days, the first page is all about sustainability and environmentalism,” says Jim Wright, Venturi’s commercial director. “People like the fact that we’re trying to kick-start a greener technology.”

At a conference this year, FE’s chief executive held up one of those brick-sized mobile phones from the 1980s. “This is what electric motors are like now,” he said, before holding up an iPhone and saying: “This is where we want to be.”

It is still early days for FE, which found itself lumbered with an unfortunate two-month hiatus when the Malaysian government postponed the Putrajaya race (now scheduled for Nov 22) because of elections.

But this smart young concept is well placed to take advantage of F1’s dysfunctionality. If a couple of top drivers should happen to defect – as politicians often do when their party’s ship is sinking – Ecclestone really will have a fight on his hands.