There wouldn't have been much to stop them announcing Verstappen as a Red Bull driver for 2017 without having to publicly slap down Kvyat, though, surely.


As a driver at a Red Bull team, yeah, seems to be game over. Hard to imagine them promoting him back to Red Bull in 2017, unless he goes and wins a couple of races in a Toro Rosso and/or Ricciardo gets pinched by another team, and it seems unlikely they'll keep him on at STR for another season.

Only if Sky allocate another transponder on the Astra satellite for them. With the current cost-cutting, that is extremely unlikely.

I believe Sky were using fibre since the very beginning as the primary way of getting the pictures back to the UK, with AT&T providing the service.

Surely a contract for 2017 would be enough to stop him signing elsewhere?

This smells of a lingering penchant towards Sebastian by some in the RBR team, and is an attempt to appease him.

I don't think Danil did that much wrong in Russia, he isn't the first nor will he be the last driver to go far too hot into a corner, or get caught out by a car slowing in an acceleration zone.

Russia must have just been the catalyst. The article link that JP posted earlier gives a bit of insight into some of the probable background issues:
http://www.motorsportmagazine.com/op...yat-verstappen

Anyone who had money on Verstappen winning a race this season was probably smiling today.

I really feel for Kvyat because he has been well & truly thrown under the bus in favour of someone who is still very much a rookie!
Jenson Button's tweet response was perfect IMHO

Ahhh, so basically they've switched from AT&T To Tata then for this service (I guess more convenient given Tata are at the track anyway.

Nope. This is nothing to do with that. This is talking about getting Sky's pictures from the circuit back to wherever they're based in the UK, for them to be played out to viewers as normal. Previously they used AT&T for this, now they're using Tata.

isn't it more likely they kept Kvyat until the Russian GP so they could use him for promotion, but were planning all along to put V in the RB?

Not to get all forum police on everyone, but this thread isn't really a broadcasting discussion anymore is it?

Yes, but it's saner than the other "ZOMG BERNIES AN EVIL DWARFFFFF MERC ARE CLEARLY SABOTAGING OUR LEWIS'S CAR" conspiracy-nutjob threads that a lot of other general motorsport websites seem to be tbh.

Also, it's not really an F1-specific broadcasting discussion thread either. But that's the same with most motorsports threads on non-motorsports websites.

When it comes to staying on topic this thread is less Alain Prost and more Yuji Ide.

But we all love Gerhard Berger for switching off Martin Brundle's radio mic all those years ago...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zy7uk7MOeF4

Of course the young Button was replaced by Montoya (at Williams) and Alonso (at Renault) IIRC. Both regarded as better future prospects.

To be honest Chris it stopped being a broadcast discussion a long time ago. Shame really, this place used to be very informative with even broadcast channels like F1D+ reading what we had to say and actually acting upon some of our suggestions. Sigh- miss those days.

Sorry to be pedantic, but are you referring to F1Digital+ the service (The expanded world feed package FOM offered to digital broadcasters across Europe), or F1Digital+ the channel (The UK-only channel set up by FOM on BSkyB to offer the above package to British viewers)?

Also, I do think the thread still has a broadcasting slant tbh. That was part of the reason I started posting here, because I got more & more into how FOM shoot & broadcast the sport, and how it's distributed.

On thing that should be broadcast as a result of the Kvyat demotion is an in-depth look at the negatives of Red Bull's young driver programme. When Algesuari and Buemi both got fired, broadcasters steered clear of criticising them, when JEV got fired, a few people said it was a shame, but no broadcaster seems to want to be critical of Red Bull dumping heaps of guys in their early 20s on the scrapheap (although they all end up in Formula E now).

In reality, Kvyat should never have been at Red Bull in the first place. Vergne should have replaced Vettel, with Verstappen and Kvyat at Toro Rosso so there was something quantifyable to measure Max against last year with the quickest getting the RBR seat this year. Instead Max got all the attention last year, but was often slower or just marginally better than Sainz, which isn't really good enough to deserve a spot at Red Bull.

Almost certainly referring to the F1D+ channel considering that's what lead to this thread being created in the first place. It's funny to look back and realise just how groundbreaking that channel was. I was only 5 at the time, yet I still somehow managed to convince my mother to pay that ludicrous £12 fee for each race (apart from the first GP, as I was slightly busy having a major heart operation at the time. ). God knows how I achieved that.

Which is fair enough, but a couple of weeks back there was about a 3 page discussion on DRS, and now everybody is on about Kvyat. Makes it very hard to pick through what is actually relevant to the reason I click on the thread.

I think broadcasting should obviously take a priority, but actual discussion on the racing is good here because it tends to largely be more intelligent compared to some forums.

There's comments about the broadcasting side during every GP weekend. However, recent events mean that there is a far smaller discussion due to the shrunken audience.

Going back to the WEC and filming FP sessions, there's an "FP3 Highlights" video on the WEC app, which appears to have live commentary from the TV team of Hindhaugh & Goodwin. So if they were commentating live, it's a shame that's not streamed on the app like Quali & the Race are.

*Correction, the video was called "FP3 Kicks off". Almost certain to be live commentary used on it now.

Really well edited, swapping between the two internal onboard cameras for Webber's WEC track guide video to Spa.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVqEJBuUeXo

Very chilled, relaxed commentary from the Radio LeMans audio stream today for the incident packed WEC Spa 6h. RLM team: Palmer/A. Brundle/Trusswell. Nice contrast to the shouty, pants-on-fire style as used by others. I felt last year's WEC TV commentary (not Eurosport) could have benefited from a driver or engineer in the booth for colour and insight.