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Although I wouldn’t tend to believe the article as the source is Eddie Jordan, last weekend after everything that happened I thought that if the opportunity to go to another top team turned up then I wouldn’t be surprised if Hamilton took it.
For me the BBC’s list just lost any credibility it had by putting Vettel at number 8.
In a sport such as F1 it is hard to compare drivers from different eras and some, including myself, would be wary of including active drivers on the list.
Ultimately any ranking of drivers, even a season review list, always comes down to personal opinion, but no way should Vettel be ranked higher than Alonso.
By the time both have retired from F1 there may be a compelling argument for ranking Vettel higher than Alonso, but at this moment in time, even at the start of the season when this list would have been compiled, Alonso is clearly the better of the two, and the best driver in F1 at the moment.
The only way you could possibly justify putting Vettel ahead of Alonso is by using some of the records Vettel already has, but that just goes to show how irrelevant they are when compiling a list such as this.
Although di Resta’s double pass on Maldonado and Perez may not be technically the greatest, I just love those sort of double overtakes where two drivers are busy fighting amongst themselves then someone else just comes up and passes both of them.
In this weeks coverage did they say there would be a F1 Forum on the Red Button or did I miss it?
I don’t recall them mentioning anything but about half and hour after the show on Sunday I was looking through the Electronic Programme Guide on my TV and it said F1 highlights on channel 301 (the Red Button channel) so I thought I would see what they were showing and I caught the end of the F1 Forum.
It then seemed to show a full repeat of the BBC1 highlights programme on a loop.
Also does anyone know why Eddie Jordan wasn’t in Malaysia, again unless I missed it they only seemed to mention it at the end of the show when they said he would be back for China.
I don’t have Sky so for races the BBC aren’t showing live I have yet to decide whether to wait for the highlights on TV or listen to the radio commentary live.
As Australia was an early morning race I decided I wouldn’t get up early just for the radio commentary, for the rest of the season I think I will wait for the TV coverage as well, a factor in this is that I didn’t like Allen as a commentator when he was with ITV
I had to make sure to avoid all news coverage before the highlight shows, which for me is quite hard as the first thing I normally do is check the news.
The BBC’s coverage was good for a highlights show but I always felt like I was missing something and it affected my overall enjoyment of the race, even though I know they would have shown anything important.
They seemed to do a good job of editing the highlights together I didn’t keep a track of the qualifying countdown clock or race lap counter so I didn’t know for sure when cuts had been made, but I did notice some of the cuts.
An example was when Vettel went off the track when he was behind Schumacher early on, during the highlights he seemed to be back behind Schumacher as soon as they had shown the replay whereas live you would have appreciated just how quickly he closed the gap.
I am sure you could edit out scenes from classic films and it wouldn’t detract from the film or the plot but those scenes would still add something to the film.
The BBC show had new opening credits and some new graphics, I don’t know if this was because it is the fourth year of BBC coverage and so a regular change, or in response to Sky, but I don’t think they are an improvement on what was there before.
There were a few times when the BBC showed a short random montage between features pre race, which I used to think was to give the crew a few moments break when the show was live but now that it isn’t live I don’t know why they have kept them as they just seem a waste of time.
The BBC haven’t replaced Kravitz which is a shame, as the job that Anderson did seemed to be different. Kravitz was a pit lane reporter who went and checked with the teams during the race, whereas what Anderson did seemed to be just strategy and analysis.
There was nothing wrong with anything Anderson did but it could have been run alongside the work Kravitz did in previous years and you wouldn’t have said they were duplicating content.
I know they are limited on how much highlights they can show but now that it is recorded I don’t expect wasted time like that, they could have a little extra analysis instead.
As for the Edwards/Coulthard partnership, although they will have done some test commentary it is still early days. I don’t think I will have any problems with Edwards but I really liked last year with Brundle and Coulthard and I don’t think the current pairing will top that for me.
It will be interesting to see if they try to recreate the Brundle grid walk when they show a race live or whether they will use the format they had in the highlights show of each different person doing an interview with someone different, on the footage just cutting straight to a different interview.
Also if they do decide to do a live grid walk when they eventually bump into Brundle I wonder if they have been told to ignore him, as last year they seemed to have been ordered not to mention the Sky deal even when fans were chanting No to Sky.
Overall it is probably the best they could have done with just a highlights package
I caught most of the Sky season preview show when it was shown on Freeview the other night, I found out it was on when I was flicking through the channels so I missed the first half hour or so.
I think they put the program on Freeview as one big advert to try to get people to sign up, like when Sky used to do the Free Weekend pass on Sky 3 on Freeview which was basically all the best shows from their subscription services but on Freeview for one weekend.
Anyway back to the F1 show, You could tell it was early days as the presenters hadn’t fully gelled, and the content was what I would expect from a preview show, I didn’t like the set though with the pictures of F1 cars rotating in the background, but that is a minor quibble.
Overall it wasn’t bad but I don’t think it was significantly better than anything the BBC did like this.
As was obvious ever since the deal was announced the area where Sky will be better than the BBC is on the none-race weekend coverage. Sky have a channel dedicated to F1 and so can fill this with various documentaries, classic races and news shows.
The BBC’s race weekend coverage was pretty much spot on for me, especially last year with Brundle and Coulthard commentating. The only improvements you could ask for would be different presenters/pundits if the BBC team weren’t to your taste and a bit more post race analysis, because as good as the F1 forum is they didn’t seem to cover the whole grid all the time.
My main disappointments this season have been
That no one has been able to challenge Vettel and so there was never a battle for the Championship. I thought that even if Red Bull had a car advantage over the other teams it would be between Vettel and Webber but Webber just hasn’t been close.
The performance of Williams, I was hoping they could push on from last season and possibly challenge Renault for fifth, but instead they have dropped to ninth the bottom of the established teams by quite some way in the Championship.
And of course the TV deal with F1 going to Sky, we won’t feel the impact until next season though.
For me Vettel will be the next to driver to win a third world title.
It is always difficult to predict the future in F1, mainly because the competitiveness of the car is such a big factor.
When Alonso won his second title in 2006 I am sure most people would have thought he would have won another by now especially if you told them he would be in a McLaren for one of those years and a Ferrari for two of them. But he hasn’t managed it yet, even though for a lot of people, myself included, he has been the best all round driver in F1 during that period.
When Hamilton won the championship in 2008 after coming so close in his debt season of 2007 everyone predicted he would win more titles, but he has failed to do so yet and if he doesn’t improve on his performances this season he won’t add to his one title.
When Scheckter won the drivers championship for Ferrari in 1979 I am sure no one would it would be 2000 until Ferrari, the biggest name in F1, managed to win another Drivers title.
Personally I think Red Bull and Vettel will be the team to beat again next season. Adrian Newey and Red Bull will manage to stay one step ahead of the field just as Ferrari managed to during their period of domination a decade ago.
The other teams may say they have plenty of innovations to catch up but experimenting and taking risks to close the gap doesn’t always work, just look at the never raced McLaren MP4-18 from 2003 or the Walrus nosed Williams FW26 which only managed to win a race when they reverted to a more conventionally front end, a victory which at the moment is sadly still the last one for Williams.
Some have commentated that the ban on blown diffusers will affect Red Bull more because they pioneered the concept, however the 2009 RB5 was designed around a normal single diffuser and yet it wasn’t that far behind the double diffuser Brawn at the start of the season.
I see no reason why the 2012 Red Bull should not be at least equal to it’s rivals and I think Vettel himself will only get better.
When I read that article I wondered, if Vettel ever did want to be like Schumacher and go to a former great team and help build them up where would he go?
Of the big name teams in F1 Ferrari and McLaren have had championships in the past decade and are currently still top teams so they wouldn’t really meet the criteria of building a team up.
I think the obvious choices would be Mercedes or Williams.
Williams would fit the bill in terms of a former great team who have not won a championship for too long, but don’t think all the other resources needed would be in place to take them back to the top.
Although the Mercedes team won the championships when they were Brawn they haven’t looked like winning since then. They are often called the German national team and if Schumacher doesn’t manage to get them winning races before he retires for good perhaps the temptation will be enough if Vettel wants a new challenge when his current Red Bull contract finishes. As a works team they should also have the same resources as other top teams.
However if Red Bull remain competitive I wouldn’t be surprised if Vettel stays with them for a lot longer than his current deal. He came through their young driver program and you could say Vettel’s ties to Red Bull are similar to Hamilton’s with McLaren, and there has been discussions on this forum before about the likelihood of Hamilton staying at McLaren for the rest of his career.
Magnificent Geoffrey, I am surprised you missed out the banning of the Mass Damper in 2006 from your list for ‘Ferrari International Assistance’.
As for McLaren been docked points for Hungary 2007 because of what happened in qualifying, If anything I would have thought this would be used by some people just as much as the unprecedented fine McLaren received that year to say that the FIA and Mosley seemed to have it in for McLaren.
I never really understood the punishment to dock McLaren points while still letting the drives claim full points as it seemed that it was Alonso’s decision to hold Hamilton up and stop him doing another run, the team were trying desperately to get him to move and you could see how annoyed Ron Dennis was after qualifying, so it wasn’t as if it was a team decision.
Regarding Indy 2005 hadn’t the track been resurfaced since the previous Grand Prix there, so Michelin didn’t have any relevant data whereas Bridgestone did through their Firestone brand.
Also the reason Michelin had more teams than Bridgestone in 2005 was because Bridgestone had a very close relationship with Ferrari and made their tyres to suit them and so all the other top teams went with Michelin.
If F1 hadn’t been so rife with politics, powerplays and egos I am sure a sensible solution could have been found so there could have been a proper race with a full grid.
At the time I thought that Schumacher didn’t deserve a penalty, however in the interview with him after the race shown on BBC Schumacher seemed to agree it was his mistake as it was the first time he had used DRS, the only problem he had was that he got a ten second stop go penalty rather than just a stop and go.
I seem to think that most of the penalties handed out in recent years were just racing incidents and didn’t merit further action.
As for Hamilton and Massa on the last lap, Massa has said he didn’t have any problem with it.
Massa out braked Hamilton down the outside going into a chicane, where else could Hamilton have gone to avoid Massa as he locked his brakes anyway.
And if people think he Hamilton ran Massa wide, then it defiantly wasn’t anything worse than what Massa did to Button when Button overtook Massa earlier in the race.
I watched on TV and when the track announcer said that the Transport Minister was going to present a trophy I thought the crowd would boo and some would misinterpret it as booing for the driver, but I didn’t hear any booing.
I seem to remember at a previous Grand Prix, although I don’t know which race, where there was some booing during the podium and Brundle explained it was for the politician presenting the trophy and not the driver.
I also thought they did a good job filling in for the two hours the race was red flagged.
I think Brundle and Coulthard are a great combination in the commentary box and the chemistry from them being friends for years shows.
Was anyone else disappointed there was no F1 Forum even though we had just had five and a half hours of F1 on the BBC1 and BBC2?
