F1 Fanatic

It just seemed very over-engineered.

For example, when Jake, EJ and DC are in the pitlane, they’re constantly walking up and down, finding cars to look at and people to interview. Sky had a couple of brief interviews, but apart from that they just stood in one place- they may as well have been in a studio.

Most of the time the camera wasn’t even on them- they talk for a couple of minutes and then cut to some sort of short movie, and then there’s an advert. The BBC coverage was a lot more natural- the Sky coverage seemed too scripted and most of the build-up consisted of pre-made movies, which managed to be flashy and over-edited, yet still dull and uninformative.

I was dreading F1 going to SKY and the thought of not being able to see live F1 left me feeling sick. But having had endless adverts, billboards, flyers in magazines, ect rammed in my face everywhere i turned, I caved in and got the cheapest HD package available and in all honesty I haven’t regretted getting it at all. Having just watched both SKY’s and BBC’s coverage of Qualifying, I have to say I enjoyed the SKY coverage more (though in all fairness to the beeb I can’t make a genuine comparison until they have a live race weekend). In 2009 BBC were a tad ropey in certain areas but went from strength to strength and delivered great shows and I think SKY will do the same because at the moment they are trying a bit to hard to give it the big ‘wow factor’ with the pre-advert stat stuff and the ‘skypad’ thing. The presenting team seems to be ok and i’m sure over time will be accepted once we’re more familiar with them. Probably the best bit is the practice session coverage is given the full pre-build up and analyzed as though it was a qualifying session which the Beeb could never do due to it being on the red button.

4:25 to put the kettle on!!

Enjoyed the Sky coverage. They’ve got the money to throw at F1, as demonstrated by the fact that it got it’s own channel! Crofty and Brundle seemed to work well together, and although I didn’t watch much of the Quali build up, it seemed pretty good. Damon Hill seems a little fixated on 90s F1, but that’s not neccessarily a bad thing! XD

Will be watching the race build up from 4:30, hoping for a good race!

I’ll get up at 4:25 as well

i don’t have sky but i am getting up at 5:45. the funny thing is that i need about 4 alarms to wake up for university but only need 1 to wake up at 6 am for F1.

I will be getting up just before coverage starts at half past four, you know, to have the kettle on. :)

I have to say, I really like the coverage. I think Georgie Thompson is probably not needed, and Anthony Davidson is underused, but overall I think it’s been great. I love the Sky Pad sections of the programmes and I’m glad to see Crofty and Martin Brundle in the comms box. I think they work quite well together. The ad breaks during the practice sessions didn’t really bother me much. Qualy and the race will be (I hope) uninterrupted.

I was an existing Sky customer before the season started so it only costed me an extra €20 (ish) per month. I can think of worse things to spend it on, so really I’m very pleased with it so far.

I think I’ll be waking up around half an hour before the race starts. See you all on F1 Fanatic Live :)