Coulthard is the main issue here, unlike Brundle, who on sky knows that Crofty does the live action bits and he does the Analysis, Coulthard thinks he's lead commentator, co commentator, director, lead analyst, presenter, talent, eye candy.

He just won't shut up and let Ben flow, without DC Ben would be the perfect commentator but he can only be about 80% of the commentator he can be when DC insists on blathering all through his flow.

Saying that, I still think C4's commentary did a better job than Sky's at the start.
Despite only having one commentator talking at the time, Croft immediately rushes to blame Lewis Hamilton before the literal dust had literally settled. Literally.

Although surprising that anyone at sky will blame Lewis for anything, in hindsight I wonder if he regrets massively jumping to conclusions like that.
It's not really his job to do that and the replays really changed everyone's opinion on the matter.
Bit cringeworthy, unfortunately.


Murray would make the perfect gamesmaster!

Do it like the good old days, just pop round his house, give him a script, put a black towell around his neck and film him neck up, Sir Patrick Moore style


Ugh, I hope they burn down battersea park on their way out this year as revenge on all the NIMBYs

If there's any journalist types here, the Save Battersea Park fun-police have been fundraising via kickstarter their a campaign to take Formula E to court to get the Formula E race cancelled or at least stall it in the courts so it becomes untenable for the organisers.
If the race indeed gets cancelled for other reasons, I'd be very interested to see what they do with people's money they have successfully raised.
I very much doubt money will be returning into people's accounts so I wonder what other social justice campaign will hurriedly be created to spend other people's money!

Is this the one which has a massive 43 followers on Twitter?
Other than the local newspaper, nobody takes them seriously. They are just a very loud but very small minority group.

Formula E is rubbish anyway.
Far too much emphasis on conserving the battery. And I'm sorry - motor racing with whirring electric motors is just not racing

I know!! The live timing on Race Control is in MpH and updates mid run too; there is a mobile version of the page too.
racecontrol.indy.com
The joys of a world feed....

To be fair to the Battersea NIMBYs, they have been screwed over by Formula E and the Council. Their park suffered a load of disruption, and residents had a helicopter hovering over their heads for days - all at the height of summer, on one of the few weekends it's worth having a park on your doorstep in London!

It's not even as though these races are good to attend in person - the advertising and track layout means it's hard to work out what is going on, and we've had reports in this thread of dreadful security staff being rude to attendees. The poor buggers are having to put up with all of the disruption at a place they couldn't have expected a motor race to take place in when they bought their homes, and even the motorsport fans get little benefit from it!

The residents couldn't be told how much the Council was being paid for this disruption (for commercial confidentiality reasons, aka so the other race tracks around the world wouldn't ask for the same), so couldn't work out if it was worth all this hassle. I don't think most of the locals were saying 'ban this race at all costs' but instead it was more like 'let's not renew the contract if the benefit is only a library being able to stay open an extra hour each day, but do renew it if it means all the libraries threatened with closure can stay open'. That seems a reasonable position to me.

Just a heads up that Quest has live BSB this afternoon from 12:30

Ta for that. Bloody Eurosport had kicked it into the weeds for the bloody patball / lycra-louts

That said I will probably still watch the two hour highlights from this evening in HD as a mid-week treat rather than through the fog of Quest SD as I will have had my fill of racing for the day with the MotoGP from Mugello.

"Home of motorbike racing...unless just about anything else better's on" isn't as good a slogan for them for them really, is it!

It's on Eurosport Player in (albeit 720p25) HD, and with commentary.

I wondered if it might be. I scrapped my Eurosport Player sub though after I got BT TV with Eurosport bundled in.

Is the Quest thing ongoing for the season or just a one off?

Read that Discovery were going to be using Quest for sports coverage alot more.

I think this BSB on Quest is a one-off because of the clashes with the other sports on E1/2, it's unfortunate that we end up with a race weekend that clashes with something bigger like the French Open.

Interesting read on Verizon and their network in Indianapolis

http://www.indystar.com/story/money/...-500/84536312/

Jp

Battersea Park is a shit place to have a race to be fair. It's not good for local residents, it doesn't look good on TV (it doesn't look like London so what's the point?), it's not great as something to attend, there's not much going for it. If we're going to have a UK round why not somewhere like Brands Hatch? They would look good around there.

Unfortunately for Formula E it seems to require short tracks with lots of hard stops so they can recover energy from the brakes, and so they can get a decent number of laps in due to the speed and range of these cars. Though some regular tracks have been adapted like in Mexico. I agree most of the city tracks aren't great aesthetically, they're basically concrete tunnels.

I noticed Formula E had a prime time repeat on ITV 1 today, anyone know how that's working out ratings wise?

BTW, the final 2 hours of Indy 500 qualifying starting now on BT/ESPN...

I'm glad you've posted that. I thought that I must just be missing something or reading it wrong!

That is why Formula E is terrible. Most of the tracks are these overly narrow pointless street circuits which are mostly single file. Reminds me a couple of those A1GP ones, one race that the couldn't clear parked cars etc (China was it?) Use real tracks or go home.

London did have the Crystal Palace circuit, but it was deemed too dangerous to race on by the early 1970s. Similar to Thruxton today, but with no run-off or chicanes.

Speedhunters website: 'Crystal Palace, Temple of speed'

Video: Murray Walker commentates on the Daily Express F3 Trophy final from 1970. Only 1 car with wings, plenty of slipstreaming. Look out for the angry James Hunt at the end of the race.

Yeah, there's nothing like taking motorsport into the city centres instead of the usual race tracks at least 50 miles from the nearest big city.
Formula E is gaining a lot of traction in the non-traditional motorsport fan demographic, it's hopefully going to continue on that tangent while pushing the new technologies further so the speeds etc increase.

Plus the racing is consistently excellent so you don't know what you're missing.

can i give you the heads up about this weekend world superbike round, its also going to find itself on quest due to the tennis and slow bikers

I can't speak for previous Indy weekends using the ESPN/F1 knockoff graphics for the International feed, but having watched a bit of the Indy 500 Qualifying last night, it seemed that periodically, they were also flashing up classification graphics from the US Domestic feed, as the style was completely different & the speeds were in MPH for those... Not exactly consistent. (Maybe that might have been BT doing that as it seemed to happen when the US commentary team were on an ad break?)

+1 Give it time.

Whilst I like Formula E, I'm not convinced the statement above is true.

If the street circuits are actually decent no problem. Not when they are single file garbage. Bring folk from a city to see a street race that is a procession, with the occasional idiot bit of driving...

Occasionally they've got it wrong, but the Berlin race was pretty decent. Did you watch it?

One advantage of street tracks is that generally drivers are being punished for their mistakes (a bit too much in this race thanks to the stewards)