F1 Fanatic

Also, the Pitlane channel looks to be produced by FOM too. Seems to be an under-rated feature to me.

A bit of both. Sky has better commentary line up by miles. Ben Edwards is way out of his depth, often makes rookie mistakes when calling the racing, DC is good. But Brundle and Croft, plus the grid support of Kravitz is pretty much the dream team in terms of F1 commentary / analysis.

However, I’ll be watching the BBC build up, because Jake / EJ / DC are more interesting, and more fun!

Gonna watch BBC build up tomorrow until around 15 minutes before the race, switch for Brundle’s grid walk, and then stay with Sky for the race, switching back to BBC for the post race analysis….

It’s nice having both options available… especially as I’ve blagged the Sky without paying it – gotta love Sky GO!

@infernojim I will be doing exactly the same as you.

Georgie comes across as a bit amateurish, stop looking at the prompt, whilst the interviewees are talking!

@jlbergqvist

Also Sky’s coverage is more serious and less jokey, which is what I want. I’m here to watch a race, not Jake Humphrey taking the piss out of Eddie’s shirts. Also I got fed up with the pointless features showing HAM and BUT jet-skiing, and ridiculous “atmospheric” shots with them going: “the horse has tamed the bulls” and all those stupid metaphors. It’s a race not a gladiatorial battle. Also the BBC’s unnecessary feature of going round slums in India asking whether they’d heard of F1 or not, which was… urgh, it’s just not needed.

Really? I feel the complete opposite.

I love all the colour and atmosphere the BBC paint F1 with in their pre-race coverage. Formula one is a global sport and with each race taking place in a different nation, there’s a completely different society and cultural background to every single Grand Prix and the BBC embrace that. The Indian slums piece (and the Bollywood dance sequence) was excellent, I thought. I think BBC captures just how diverse and international a circus F1 really is through all the little pieces they do.

I also love how the BBC really do hype up the atmosphere before a race too. Those little hype videos they use at the start of a race coverage to help set the scene are always really well executed, I feel. It genuinely adds to the excitement, for me.

As for the casual jokey tone of the coverage, that’s one of my favourite things about the BBC and the main element that I feel makes me prefer their coverage over Sky’s. Jake, Eddie and DC are clearly good mates. They have this fantastic chemistry together and having the three of them in the pitlane after the opening credits always feels like meeting up with old friends. I think the post-race forum has played a big part in that, where they are always so much more relaxed and casual and it’s like it’s just three mates who love F1 chatting about the race they’ve just seen. It’s great.

I also don’t get why so many people get so irratated by the whole EJ’s shirts thing. Eddie Jordan wears some funny/stupid shirts. It’s quirky and different and funny. They make fun out of it. Do people really not want any fun in their coverage? Do we really just want a load of bland, robotic and generic presenters giving us the facts in monotone? I know I certainly don’t. And that’s the thing about Sky’s coverage (from the two races I’ve managed to see so far) it really is a bit clinical and dry and I just don’t prefer it.

Obviously, when the action begins on track, I want the information and to see what’s going on and I don’t want anything taking away from that. I also want to see the post-race press conference and get proper analysis of the major on-track events after the race. And that’s the other place where I think BBC is a lot better than Sky. Sky’s post-race analysis has been really shallow in these last two races. We had a major series of incidents on the last lap in Australia and we had no idea what had happened and Sky, with all their technology and shiny toys, didn’t show us any of it! I think the BBC manage to strike the perfect balance between providing coverage that has quite a bit of fun but is really professional and detailed when it needs to be. Sky are doing a great job so far, but from what I’ve seen of it in these first two weekends I really don’t see any reason to pay all that money to get for myself when the BBC give me coverage that I enjoy so much more.

@magnificent-geoffrey

Excellent post. I agree entirely, but I wouldn’t have been able to put it so succinctly.

I agree with everything Damon has said. The pre and post race coverage with Sky is pretty weak. I don’t like Ant (lol’d today when he predicted Seb to do well and maybe sneak pole and then Vettel completely failed), Georgie, the Sky version of Jake or D Hill (who thankfully wasn’t there today) or the pointless Skypad. Their interviews are fine though. However, on the BBC I don’t like the Jake version of Jake and I absolutely cannot sit through Edwards screaming his head off during the coverage. I miss EJ like mad though even if I think he talks nonsense half the time and absolute sense the other half. I miss DC too – although definitely not his skinny jeans- and the OTT way the BBC covers the sport like it’s some epic, gladiator scrap to the death. So when the BBC is properly covering a race weekend I’ll use them for the pre and post race coverage but plump with Brundle and Crofty (who I’ve found makes a few errors) for the commentary.