Will this be the year when the Australian Formula 1 Grand Prix finally loses traction and vacates the Albert Park circuit for a grateful city in Asia?

Yesterday’s race, apparently won by a Briton, was met with a collective shrug from Melbourne’s once-loyal racegoers with official attendance statistics overestimating interest by at least 100,000 punters and TV ratings remaining disastrous.

Implored to “feel the energy”, it seems many Melburnians stayed away from the circuit that even with rain threatening, resembled a barren brownout.

The Grand Prix Corporation’s official attendance estimates, released 40 minutes after the start of the race, pegged the total crowd at 305,000 — 46,300 on Thursday, 68,000 on Friday, 82,200 on Saturday and 108,500 on Sunday.

Victorian Premier John Brumby issued a ringing endorsement of the event, which costs Victorian taxpayers $50 million a pop, proclaiming it  ”the best-attended since 2005.”

But according to the trenchant surveyors at Save Albert Park, who conduct their own count each year based on a seat and corporate box count alongside photo galleries, TV pictures and even an extra 20% for patrons that might be somewhere in the track’s bowels chugging beer. According to SAP, the Corporation overstated the total by a massive 93% with the four-day attendance put at just 157,680 — 16,000 on Thursday, 31,055 on Friday, 47,005 on Saturday and 63,620 yesterday.

Now, it’s possible that the Grand Prix Corporation adopts a rigorous mechanism for monitoring the turnstiles, but no-one has ever gone into detail on precisely what that mechanism is. Unlike most other major sporting events, ticket bar code data is never collected.

A spokesperson for the Premier told Crikey this morning that the figures were the Grand Prix Corporation’s and “that any queries would have to be referred to them”. The Corporation did not respond to Crikey‘s repeated requests to release their methodology.

Even the famed “global TV audience” which is apparently an excellent opportunity to display Brand Melbourne to the world, is in the middle of a massive slump.

While this year’s global ratings are yet to see the light of day, this Herald Sun story from a few weeks back, humorously penned by former Grand Prix Corporation spin doctor Geoffrey Harris, showed last year’s total viewership was down 4.4 million from 2007, with the new twilight start-time resulting in less rather than more viewers, which was one of the main reasons for the shift from 2 to 5pm in the first place.

And back home, the race wasn’t enough to get Channel Ten over the line last night, with Seven winning the night and just 816,000 people tuning in.

Away from the track, another major PR problem was the debacle surrounding the Friday night-impounding of Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes under anti-hoon legislation after he was caught pulling donuts outside the track. The Saturday News Limited papers ran small on the story, perhaps owing to the lateness of the incident that would have been confirmed by police close to deadline.

But while Brumby left it to Major Events Minister Tim Holding to back his hoon laws, Grand Prix chief Ron Walker went to the superstar’s aid for the “indiscretion” which he charitably described as “out of character”.

“I know Lewis Hamilton well and he spends a lot of his time talking to young people about road safety…I think he can be forgiven for this indiscretion,” said Walker.

“I think the right foot felt the urge to accelerate and indicate to people the Mercedes has huge power…I’m not making excuses, but he’s a fine man.”

Then, on Sunday, there was GP driver-cum-social theorist Mark Webber’s assessment that the Hamilton incident was a symptom of Australia’s creeping “nanny state”.

“I think we’ve got to read an instruction book when we get out of bed — what we can do and what we can’t do … put a yellow vest on and all that sort of stuff,” Webber railed. “It pisses me off coming back here, to be honest.”

In most other circumstances defending a hoon would draw instant tabloid outrage, but it took until this morning for Deputy Police Commissioner Ken Lay to finally slap down Webber on Neil Mitchell and make the obvious point about how damaging the comments were to the government’s road safety message.

“There’s probably a few Lewis Hamilton and Mark Webber fans who are alive because of our approach,” Lay thundered.