The official F1 2016 Season Review is amazing

EDIT: Having written the article below praising F1 for its social media efforts, it appears F1 doesn't actually want anyone to watch its YouTube videos as it's blocked them being embedded on websites. To watch the video on a smartphone (it's worth it) click the video's YT link above rather than the play button.

It took Formula 1 a long time to embrace social media. Head honcho Bernie Ecclestone was famously reluctant, primarily because he couldn’t see a way to make another billion dollars out of it.

Thankfully for fans, F1 has taken to social media in a big way in 2016. It now has accounts on all the major platforms and has come up with some great initiatives, including Grill the Grid, reposting old footage and, most importantly, not being afraid to poke fun at itself, something the sport at large could learn a lot from.

One of its cleverest initiatives is its 2016 season review video, created in the style of 1980s video games like Pole Position (see video below) or Outrun. The team that made it clearly spent plenty of time on similar games in their youth as everything from the music to the menus to the graphics is spot on.

Being a little over three minutes long it is by no means a comprehensive review, but a few of the major events are covered and the section regarding Daniel Ricciardo’s ‘Tyre-gate’ situation is very funny indeed.

With Liberty Media extremely likely to complete its deal to take over Formula 1 in early 2017 chances are its social media presence will continue to expand. Then all it needs to do is offer a live streaming service for fans to watch on demand…

The sport is facing one of its biggest technical shake-ups in decades in 2017 and we’ll be eagerly awaiting the arrival of winter testing to see which team gets the best handle on the new cars.