F1 Fanatic

The Telegraph is reporting that Lee McKenzie will anchor the BBC’s FI coverage for the Japanese Grand Prix while Jake Humphrey will be on Commonwealth Games duty:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/motorsport/formulaone/7925699/Formula-1-to-be-presented-by-female-for-first-time.html

What do other British viewers make of her F1 work? Aside from Legard (and if you want to bash Legard please go to that thread to do so) I think she’s the weak link in their output.

She has a very limited set of stock questions – ‘Tell us what happened’ and … err … that’s about it. I appreciate her role is to get on the spot comment from the DNFs mid-race, so there aren’t a great variety of questions for her to ask. But, a stronger presenter would make more of the role and find different ways of asking the same thing.

I also find her in-depth pre race features rather insipid. No doubt the teams’ PR people love them but I take them as a cue to start making my sandwiches for race-time viewing.

A lot of people have questioned the loss of James Allen from TV F1 commentating, I think the BBC dropped the ball when they didn’t take on Louise Goodman. If nothing else, she certainly had a good relationship with Jenson Button, which would have facilitated privileged access during the year he challenged for the title and again this year while he is world champion.

I like Lee. Sure she’s vague with her questions most of the time but the best thing I think is for the driver to explain what happened to their knowledge and from their experience. Loads of reporters go “so tell us what happened”. She could ask some more precise questions after mind.

She knows most of the drivers pretty well though and watches them come through the different series which I think helps.

To be fair, the pit lane reporter role doesn’t really leave room for much else besides asking what happened and looking pretty

Cringe. I’m not a fan and don’t thing she has a hope in hell controlling EJ and DC.

She doesn’t seem to even do anything, they should get Holly Samos in instead of her if they need a girl on the team.

Louise Goodman was an aberration, I’m not Lee McKenzie’s biggest fan but dear god I am elated not to have to hear Ms Goodman’s cat call.

I think they should get Martin Brundle to do it, he was awesome that time in Fuji two years ago when he did it for ITV. It was the one time ITV wasn’t hopelessly jingo-istic and he actually made Blundell look inteligent. Having said that I’ll reserve judgement until after the it happens.

I’d like to see how she gets on.

I like her pre-recorded interviews but we’ll see how she copes with the live situation.

To be fair to her, she only ever gets a couple of minutes witht the drivers after they’ve retired or whatever.

Zahir – In fact, Martin did such a bad job that all recollection of the Fiji GP was removed from F1 records and public memory :P