F1 Fanatic

I think it’s very telling when said ‘Messers’ Legard can’t even pronounce the name of the sport correctly.

It’s ‘form-YOU-la-one’, John, not ‘form-LEE-ah-one’.

And whenever he’s come to the end of his sentence, and you can hear Martin gasping for air in the background, ready to make a comment of his own, Legard clearly sees this microsecond pause as too much dead-air, and feels the need to fill it immediately with is what is 99% of the time inane drivel.

It’s at times like these that I stand up from the sofa and yell ‘shut up’ over and over at the TV until he does, before sitting down to listen to whatever pearl of wisdom Martin has to let slip.

He really hasn’t improved in the year and a half in the job, and clearly many many people think so. I’ll be very disappointed if he’s still talking at us in 2011.

I’m going to have to say something obvious now,

5LIVE. PRESS THE RED BUTTON GO TO SPORTS MULTI SCREEN GET CROFT AND DAVIDSON

————————————————————————————-

Everyone says that but I turned over and it’s not F1 specific coverage they switch over to talk about football matches and other sports.

I gave Legard a chance last year, and gave up after 3 or 4 races, thankfully I had access to 5live 75% of the time for the remainder. He is a good blogger, and off-mike, knows his stuff.

In the commentary box, he’s a disaster, and he’s not getting better. My two unforgivable sins that he’s committed recently are both examples of why Martin Brundle is a better commentator, and honestly makes me feel pity for the man to be stuck in the same box as Legard. Both are nothing to do with the transition from radio to tv, nothing to do with slips of the tongue or heat of the moment, they’re both just sheer brainless unprofessional commentating.

At Turkey, when Martin, Ted, DC, Eddie all discussed that they’d love to be a fly on the Red Bull pitwall if Vettel came out – the camera was right there, and we could see Vetter talking to the team and his engineer. Could we hear it? NO! Because Legard was talking over it, telling us vital things like “There’s Vettel on the Red Bull Pitwall” and “That’s his engineer (whoever) there, that he’s talking to right now, that you can see”. YOU ********* ***** **** *** *** ********* ****, Legard. Aaaargh! Then at that golden moment before the winners step out onto the podium, and there’s a few unscripted unguarded moments where they talk about the race – he was badgering Martin with stupid questions, and we couldn’t hear it. Same again this week – talking over the drivers before the podium.

The “messers”, “pushing on”, “what can he do here”, “will it be enough”, “WHAT’S GOING ON HERE?”, “blah from blah from blah from blah” is annoying, but the above is just unforgivable in my view. It shows a total lack of understanding for what the job is – compared to Jake Humphrey’s instant, instinctive presentation it’s embarrassing. Never mind what we the public think, and whether we hassle the BBC to change him – the producers of the show must surely see this sort of thing and feel professionally disappointed. Particularly when the 5 Live team of Ant & Crofty are so excellent.

I was glad to see Ant’s last appearance on the Forum actually – he got on much much better this time, and you can see how his commentating has given him more confidence and ability. His discussion of “Why, was Lewis surprised to see Jenson” was both prescient, articulate, and well presented.

It pretty much sounds like the dutch commentators here. The french comment on RTBF is either assisted by d’Ambriosio or by an ex-Honda engineer or an ex-autosportspilot. Sounds like having someone like Di Resta or a similar co-commentator might be good.

Seeing how legendary this man is, I’m going to watch a BBC stream on the internet for Valencia :)

I’ve just copy and pasted Magnificent Geoffrey’s excellent Legard poem from a couple of weeks ago, I think it deserves a place in this thread:

Down the hill,
And towards turn one,
Jenson BUTT-on,
Pushes on.

Pole for Ferrari,
Is going to be tough,
Here comes Fernando,
IS THIS GOOD ENOUGH?!

Webber is flying,
But so too is Vettel,
As Nico Rosberg,
Is joining the battle.

THERE’S PROBLEMS THERE!
Is that a Ferrari?!
Nope, it’s actually,
Jaime Alguersuari.

SOOT-il has lost it,
And KOO-bica too!
That was the last thing
They needed to do!

I’m sorry there Martin,
You’ll just have to wait,
I’ve just been informed,
That Petrov is eighth.

Hamilton wins!
He’ll surely be happy,
But will he be champion,
Come Abby-Dabby?

Beautiful. Shakespeare-esque, I would say

Haha there’s so many negatives totting up against Legard, I can’t stand his commentary either but everything’s already been said, so instead I’ll say a mention a plus point, it’s funny when he ‘woofs’ haha.

Legard seems to make exponentially more mistakes every race that goes by.

Murray Walker made gaffes in his time, but they were usually funny, not fundamentally wrong. “I predict Fisichella will pull away” and then during the ad break he lost 2 places; “Is that a BODY on the track, I hear?” “No, it’s a piece of BODYWORK”. Saying Massa and Liuzzi have tangled when the on-screen graphic has been saying it’s Alonso and Sutil for the past 5 seconds is pathetic. Interrupting Brundle every 5 minutes is downright unprofessional.

And even though I have no choice (no 5 Live in Canada!), I still wouldn’t replace Brundle for Davidson for the sake of getting rid of Legard.

I never really got the Allen hate.
I could see where people were coming from but underneath the bias and sometimes-over-enthusiasm there was clearly a deep understanding of the sport and he was usually very quick to figure out/point out what was happening strategy-wise throughout the races.
That’s the thing I really liked about him. Whenever someone pitted he would explain what position they would come out in, how it would affect their race etc. That made even the most hectic races easy to follow (Brazil 08 springs to mind). Something Legard completely fails to do.

Of course, I could be looking at Allen through rose-tinted spectacles. I haven’t re-watched any of the ITV races for a while.

Regarding Brundle, I wouldn’t be surprised if he is becoming frustrated at being talked over by Legard. He’s constantly having to fight to get his voice heard instead of being able to relax and be as good as he used to be.
When he’s sat next to someone more competent he’ll shine again.