Steve Rider says Sky's long-term domination of Formula One 'inevitable' Speaking at the AUTOSPORT International show at the NEC in Birmingham on Sunday, Rider also urged the BBC to show more top-level motorsport in a bid to "fill the gap left by F1." "The BBC had a great structure for showing motorsport in the 1980s, back when I started to get really heavily involved, and right through to the 1990s it had a great portfolio," Rider said. In that time we had British Touring Cars, British rallying, the World Rally Championship, Formula 3, all supporting the F1 coverage as that was the pinnacle. I remember when BBC lost F1 to ITV at the end of 1996. Myself and Mark Wilkin, who was the brilliant producer of the F1, tried to convince them to make a strong commitment to sports cars, touring cars, rallying... but their opinion was 'We're out of F1, we have no enthusiasm for other motorsport'. There's now a chance to do what they didn't do then and replace the gap left by F1. People talk about the damage done by the current BBC/Sky situation, but to me the real damage is being done by keeping British motorsport off domestic television. You have BTCC on ITV and that's fantastic. But there needs to be more. Through the BBC showing F3 in the 1980s, viewers saw Ayrton Senna for the first time; Damon Hill, David Coulthard, Mika Hakkinen... I'd love to see them making that commitment again. The WRC, British rallying, F3 all are desperate for terrestrial coverage.