Current owners of Formula One Liberty Media are looking for ways to engage its fans during F1’s winter off-season.

With a long and arduous season that runs from March to November, fan interest suffers a huge drop during the winter months.

To tackle this drop-off, Liberty Media have already considered a few ideas.

Such ideas include competitions involving teams or drivers to festival type events tailored for the F1 world.

Last month’s NFL draft inspired such thinking says current F1 chairman Chase Carey.

The NFL draft is a three-day event held during the off-season of the National Football League in American sports. Apart from the draft itself, the three-day event is best described as a sports festival with everything NFL related to immerse yourself in.

The draft is a huge draw for the NFL both in terms of attendance and TV viewership and is followed annually by die-hard fans. This is something that F1 should look to emulate, according to Carey.

"One example would be the NFL, which is not playing right now but they just had the NFL Draft. That is a big event," he said.

"They have created events that are interesting for fans even when they are not in the season.

"So we would like to determine - how do we create more interesting things for fans, whether it is unique competition or unique events, or things that are around the sport that continue to build interest and enable fans to engage more?"

Despite the need to engage fans on a year-long basis, Carey insists that lengthening the season itself is out of the question.

"One of the ambitions we have is to figure out how we make this sport something that engages the fans 12 months a year," he said.

"But it doesn't mean we will race [that long] - our season is not going to go [to] 12 months.

He added: "We have a pretty full season - our season goes from March to the end of November so it is a long season, and we have to recognise that there is a lot of wear and tear on that season."

Carey concluded that whatever F1 comes up with, it must not take away from the main attraction of the sport which is the races themselves.

"The 21 races that we have will always be the highest profile, but we think we can do other things that enable fans to connect with the sport," he said.

"It may not be a competition on track, it may be other aspects of the sport, but there are some unique ideas for various forms of competition that we are engaged with and talking to various parties about."