I actually cringed when reading about that social media boost.
I don't know how it will go but to me it would seem like success will come more from what media rights they can pull. ITV, BT and Fox are all big enough so if you can get as much live and free to air coverage as possible then people will watch it.
Seeing some familiar names on the grid wont hurt either and I think the timing has come pretty good given the changes in F1 could see some fans move on.
Also it'd be nice to see the Adelaide street circuit get involved.
edit:
Interesting to note that the first race is tomorrow and not a word has been mentioned prior to this and all I can find about it is a one hour highlight package on ITV 4 for English viewers. Apparently a free to air channel has it in Spain but nothing is showing in my guides.
I hate seeing racing over regulated, and if they want innovation then they should have just a control tyre, a control shell of the car for safety reasons, a maximum weight, and maximum dimentions. Leave the rest up to the designers and see what happens. You will end up with dominance through the series from particular manufacturers, but it will stimulate development of technology and ideas faster.
While channel surfing I got this and thought I'd take a look. First impression was the cars seem to be very equal as after the safety car went in nobody was able to pull away from anyone else and it was just a procession.
I may be totally wrong as I had to quickly turn over due to the whine of the cars.
