F1 Fanatic

I watched the Race live with sky and the BBC program this afternoon and both shows are missing something. As many have commented, Sky’s presentation just felt stiff or stuffy and just a bit lost.
The commentary team of Brundle and Croft is fantastic, it’s what i had hoped BBC would do a couple of years back, but I do miss Coulthard’s technical insight.
From the BBC though, Couthard and Ben Edwards are good, but they do seem to lack that “race event awareness” that Brundle is so quick and accurate with; Example Brundle quickly assumed the safety car was going to be needed after Petrov retired and instantly Knew that McLaren were compromised by this, whereas on BBC no one really mentioned a potential safety car until it was announced and they kept on how this was good for McLaren. But this brings me on to my biggest issue with BBC, Gary Anderson! His insight is useless! He said that Vettel didn’t have to back off under safety car conditions because we wasn’t round by the incident area, so he could keep full speed and get the jump on McLaren, Seriously? At least Brundle explained the Lap Time Delta and how all drivers are effected.
But as for presentation i have to say Sky will need to up their game, What’s with the 15sec video montages in their post race analysis, in fact where is their post race analysis? And driver interviews played in on the parade lap? Really? And they need more Anthony Davidson! He’s the only person there who’s got (Relatively) recent racing experience, like Coulthard on BBC, so they need to use him more to keep it current and informative, not just speak to him for 1 minute of analysis here and there, and surely he’s strong enough to present the SkyBox sections himself, Georgie doesn’t bring anything useful to the discussion.
Hopefully some of Simon Lazenby’s awkwardness will go as he settles in the paddock and gets known by the teams and drivers. Only time will tell. I had higher hopes for Damon, and dare i say it but i think i prefer Eddie Jordan to him!
But as for post race analysis BBC have got it sorted, Jake’s charisma just shines through, his interviews with drivers just has the right flow, and he asks the questions we all want to ask…

As for ad breaks in practise, if your on the red button, if you switch to an onboard the moment they go off for an ad break, they carry on showing the coverage from the car, as long as there is a car on track. This may have been a fault but it was certainly one way to miss most of the ad breaks, but I had to time it very well otherwise I had to watch the same 5 adverts again!
I don’t have a problem with the ads during pre and post but I wan’t some substance inbetween the breaks!

just seen sky are showing on the f1 channel ‘F1 highlights presented by Jake Humphrey’

@Estesark It says it on my tv guide on virgin media but just caught the end of the show and it was definitely that simon bloke not jake. Must be a typo.

Here in the USA we get ads in FP2, Qualifying &, Pre-Race (30min show), the Race, the podium/interviews and then depending on how close it is to the end the end of the scheduled broadcast time a short maybe 15min at the max post-race wrap-up. The only two we don’t had ads during are FP1 & FP3 and that’s because they’re not even on TV they’re streamed online. Thankfully for the most part during Qualifying the commerical breaks only happen during the 2 breaks between sessions or if there is a red-flag. If anything major happens during the ads then depending on severity SPEED either breaks into to ads to resume coverage (standard Motorsports practice among all US Networks for all live Motorsports), or they show us a replay when they come back from break.

I had found a stream for Sunday so I watched the Sky Pre-Race until the SPEED one came on here then I kinda paid attention to both, for the Race I had moved my computer monitor next to the TV so I could look at the Sky stream when our TV was in commercials, and then for the Post-Race Sky had the Podium live while SPEED went to a break and tape delayed the Podium & stuff. For this weekend if the stream is still working I plan on checking out their coverage of FP1 & FP3 as the SPEED Website Streaming coverage we get of those two are without commentary. And speaking of commentary, we have Bob Varsha (play by play), Steve Matchett (rather quite during the race except for technical explanations and stuff like that), David Hobbs (annoying to no end) all at the SPEED studios in Charlotte North Carolina and then Will Buxton actually at the track in the pits.

As far as people saying there is no-need for a dedicated F1 Channel.. IDK we have a dedicated NFL Channel over here (Yes I know American Football with 10+ games ever Sunday is way different then Motorsports) that while they don’t actually show many games live (other networks have rights for the games, the NFL channel has a scrolling scoreboard as well as highlights during the games), however during the week they have news shows & they replay various games. People over here have long said that NASCAR (once again I understand NASCAR is 9 different National/Regional Touring Series & 100+ local short tracks & not just 1 series like F1) should have their own channel & many people here would love to see a channel dedicated to F1, GP2, GP3 (which we’ll never here in America). My question is this though, does the SkyF1 channel just cover F1 or is it GP2, GP3 & possibly other various forms of Motorsport as well?

And yes we pay for coverage here in the USA. SPEED Channel is a Cable Channel, I’m fortunate enough that it’s part of my $60 basic cable package but a good majority of cable providers here actually make you buy a ‘Sports Tier’ to get that channel so those people have to pay even more. Don’t get me wrong though I have no earthly idea how your TV works over there, here you have two choices “Over the Air” & Cable or Satellite. OTA is basically a handful of local channels that you can pickup with an antenna & Cable you subscribe to the local provider in your area and then pay what it cost for whatever package you want (usually a package with just the local channels, then ‘basic cable’ with about 80 channels that vary from provider to provider/region to region, then from there you can add various bundles) & Satellite works much the same way as Cable. We don’t have any annual TV License or anything we have to pay just the Monthly Cable/Satellite bill if we subscribe to Cable/Satellite.

Petty thing I know, but why do the presenters need hand held microphones in the skypad, is quite off putting!

Have to agree on the montages on the formation lap where aweful and tacky!

Other than that Sky Sports F1 did okay, Croft needs to calm down, but will definately watch BBC when they show live.

@Enigma They were correct on that.
1 — Alain Prost
2 — Alan Jones
3 — Alberto Ascari
4 — Ayrton Senna
5 — Damon Hill
6 — Denny Hulme
7 — Emerson Fittipaldi
8 — Fernando Alonso
9 — Graham Hill
10 — Jack Brabham
11 — Jackie Stewart
12 — Jacques Villeneuve
13 — James Hunt
14 — Jenson Button
15 — Jimmy Clark
16 — Jochen Rindt
17 — Jody Scheckter
18 — John Surtees
19 — Juan Manuel Fangio
20 — Keke Rosberg
21 — Kimi Raikkonen
22 — Lewis Hamilton
23 — Mario Andretti
24 — Michael Schumacher
25 — Mika Hakkinen
26 — Mike Hawthorn
27 — Nelson Piquet
28 — Nigel Mansell
29 — Niki Lauda
30 — Nino Farina
31 — Phil Hill
32 — Sebastian Vettel