UK fans wanting a winter F1 fix will have to look elsewhere as the dedicated Sky F1 channel will not air over the festive period, having been replaced by a specialist darts channel to coincide with the World Darts Championship.

F1 in the United Kingdom has been staged on a dedicated channel since Sky won the broadcast rights and launched the Sky Sports F1 platform at the start of 2012.

Sky F1 channel replaced by Sky Sports Darts in temporary change

With the F1 2024 season concluding with the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix on December 8, however, the broadcaster has opted to turn Sky F1 into Sky Sports Darts for the festive period, with this year’s World Championship at Alexandra Palace starting last Sunday.

It is expected that channel number 406 will revert to being the location of Sky F1 shortly after the World Darts Championship concludes on January 3 and ahead of the F1 2025 season, which begins with the Australian Grand Prix on March 16.

Darts has soared in popularity over recent years, with the 2024 final between teenage sensation Luke Littler and eventual winner Luke Humphries attracting a peak audience of 3.71million – the highest non-football peak audience in the history of Sky Sports.

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David Croft, the Sky F1 lead commentator, has made regular appearances on the broadcaster’s coverage of the World Darts Championship over recent years.

The F1 2024 season proved a controversial one for Sky F1, with a number of pundits drawn into a war of words with Red Bull driver and World Champion Max Verstappen.

Damon Hill, the 1996 World Champion, likened Verstappen to Dick Dastardly, the villain in the children’s cartoon Wacky Races, after the Red Bull driver was hit with two 10-second penalties for separate clashes with British driver Lando Norris during the Mexican Grand Prix in October.

Hill’s fellow pundit Martin Brundle also criticised Verstappen, claiming the 27-year-old’s unsporting conduct in wheel-to-wheel battle risks tainting his F1 legacy.

Hill announced his departure from Sky F1 weeks later, having joined the broadcaster in early 2012, and FIA steward and former Sky F1 pundit Johnny Herbert revealed the 64-year-old was left “very unhappy” by the public reaction to his views.

Verstappen took aim at the British media after his impressive victory at the following race in Brazil, pointing out a shortage of UK journalists in the post-race press conference at Interlagos after Norris’s title hopes suffered a fatal blow.

Verstappen’s father, the former F1 driver Jos Verstappen, later claimed that the negative treatment by the British media had fuelled his son’s desire to prove his critics wrong in Brazil.

Sky F1 was previously boycotted by Red Bull and Verstappen at the 2022 Mexican Grand Prix after taking exception to comments made by pit-lane reporter Ted Kravitz, who remarked that Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton was “robbed” of the World Championship at the controversial F1 2021 title decider in Abu Dhabi.

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