Ben was great partnered up with Jeremy Shaw for CART/Champcar (Eurosport? late 1990s early 2000's), really enjoyed the commentary back then.

CART footage from Cleveland 1999: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEovYIxtYpE

Ben Edwards's ESPN International/Eurosport comms on the end of the Michigan 500 in 2000 ended up being used on American tv the following week in their montage footage... Worth finding on YouTube both that and the original ABC to see the difference.

ABC US coverage, 10 laps to go (Official Indycar on Youtube)

ESPN/Eurosport with Ben and Jeremy, 7 to go.

If you did not want or expect to be challenged on this then you should have said MANY.

I must have missed that earlier. Very odd statement.
Rant on...
Every F1 fan that I know outside of this forum that I socialise/chat with as friends/family and work colleagues is a football fan.
Be honest if you do not like football, I will generally ignore you in my life outside of here (so there may be some that I do not generally engage with), as Id have little to casually chat with you about and cannot understand any Male (sorry for being sexist but writing this with OH beside me with a big smile on her face) who does not get fully engaged with it She just said, 'What a man who does not like football, they must have a big void in their brain or life, not a Man for me dear'.
Phew!
On that, just love it when Crofty jumps in with something about football as I always think ha-ha he has annoyed a few, well on here anyway. Just a bit of his passion, it happens.
Rant off.

Ben did do well in those old cart days, remember watching that, but never twigged from his recent commentating that he did that. Not been a fan of his latest BBC stuff and especially with DC, it didn't seem to work that well. Those two partnerships from above in cart worked well together.

Many/Most - Same thing tbh.

You need a dictionary.

I watch the odd significant international match (i.e. i'll watch the knockout stages of the Euros for example - no point watching the groups unless it's a decider at the moment) myself, but personally i'm not a die hard fan & never will be. Never got the appeal of supporting a particular team myself either. I'd watch any football match & just hope for an interesting result.

Personally (and I'm probably referring to a small minority of football fans here) all the football fans I've spoken to say they only got into F1 after Hamilton started winning, and only dislike Vettel because he's German...

Those people I knew also were rather... backwards/racist in their views & I don't tend to endear myself to such people.

Above quote edited to avoid upset (!!!)

Of course the Indycar season ends in early Autumn, to avoid being crushed in the US TV ratings by American Football.

More here: USA Today - 'IndyCar's Mark Miles says 2016 schedule caters to TV audience'

But that happens across all sport and other entertainment and has done for the six decades Ive been on this planet.
If we stick with F1, the same effect happened for me with Fittipaldi when I first started watching F1. Many did for Hunt/Lauda/Mansell/Senna/Schumacher.

As for being German, that's just a casual throw away comment that I'm sure we are all guilty of, but the Germans are good in Motorsport, and football, like the Australians and New Zealand in Cricket or Rugby. Its well annoying and I do hate them for it LOL! Makes for great sporting rivalries though.
On Hamilton, His whole life has been the push to get him where he is and he achieved his goal. His Dad did well there. I love his passion and enthusiasm for the fans and his very modern Wow! for when he meets the likes of Arnie or Michael Douglas. Not one Myself for getting star stuck, but them I'm from a pre reality era and find it hard to take this modern approach sometimes, but Hamilton is enjoying his gravy train in the world he grew up with and knows, good luck to him. Its very tough to handle the pressure not just on the track but off it too and from what I see he handles it pretty well. Im sure for that reason that many of the younger generation get a lot of inspiration from him.

or to anyone else either it would appear judging by your crass foot in mouth postings recently.

May have said before, but I agree with others feeling "underwhelmed" by Ben's commentating. when you watch and be amazed by his old CART and early F1 work, these days he sounds like a well refined news-reader (maybe because he's been commentating for so long now that it is inevitable it will become second nature), theirs just no "rawness" or passion, the shouty bits seem forced and staged, also he maybe needs that fiery, shouty co-commentator like a Jeremy Shaw or John Watson to bring him out of himself. And sadly DC is just not that.

Bear in mind he's quite a diminutive, quiet, reserved chap in person (so I've heard), when does he really ever do a "piece to camera"?

Who was commentating on the archive footage Sky used of Schumacher going in to the Wall of Champions?

Mark Blundell.

Wow, just when I thought I'd read it all. Could have killed? Killed?!

By the way, see if you can find a clip of the start in Canada back in 2014 you might find it interesting...

Back to broadcasting...

I thought the camera work was great this weekend. Some interesting new angles, and they managed to convey the speed of the cars very well. A few reaction shots but nothing that annoyed me. Genuinely well done FOM - keep it up.

The highlights on Ch 4 were dire. On from 10.40 to 12.45. So many ads. it was gone 11pm when the race started, then seemed to stop for more ads after about 8 mins, progress was so slow with so many breaks. Gave up at midnight when I think it was barely half way through the race, very disappointing.

Actually, reading around, it appears Di Resta was right on the tyres, and only the soft was mandatory in Canada.

http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2016/05/3...-softs-canada/

and


http://www.pirelli.com/corporate/en/...tice-sessions/

So, if this is right - and I'm genuinely confused now to know what is right here - (a) well done di Resta and (b) well done F1 on making the sport so convoluted that you only know what's going on if you read Pirelli press releases

Bet the figures were dire at that time, always watch their highlights show on delay so can skip through ads, I bet this was a good race for Now TV.

C4 doing a decent job so far, can see why the BBC picked this live, always a good race apart from the one boring one got a few years go. Better than some of the identical Tilke circuits and boring new ones.

I'm a little confused by that because the graphics on the live timing indicate somebody's pit stop status as red if they haven't stopped yet OR if they haven't ran 2 compounds yet (see the column of red 0's -> http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/wp-conten...-1-470x293.png). I haven't noticed this change this season.

Presumably the guys like Perez who started on softs don't actually need to stop at all then?

I'm staggered this hasn't come up before or been mentioned more publically.

On the subject of guest co-commentators I thought Derek Warwick did a pretty good job in 1998 having also re-watched the race a few years ago. It did help though that it was a far more interesting race than Sunday's. He was present this weekend in Montreal.

I suggested a few weeks ago that Mark Webber should be the colour commentator when he's a C4 pundit. He's a bit more outspoken, maybe he'd be a bit like James Hunt or Barry Sheene behind the mic (Sheene was colour commentator for V8 Supercars).

I think this was the first race which encountered this specific scenario. Initially I thought it was an ultrasoft-specific thing, but in Monaco, soft and supersoft were nominated as mandatory, albeit you don't need to run both, just one of either of them.

http://www.pirelli.com/corporate/en/...co-grand-prix/

- for whatever reason, Pirelli didn't nominate supersoft as mandatory in Canada but nominated two sets of softs instead and one to be used/

http://www.pirelli.com/corporate/en/...pound-choices/

So I think you're right, you could have had a possible no-stop strategy. Having said that, reading the releases it could be made clearer (particularly for Monaco):

Monaco


Canada

But yes, bizarre that this wasn't picked up - either everyone just assumed it was as per Monaco, or it's more correct to say that the "you've got to use both compounds" rule doesn't really apply in the same simplistic way any more post 3 tyre compound change.

I know footie fans that will sometimes watch a bit of F1 and bikes and will know who is winning mostly but not much deeper than that, along with darts in particular {shrug} and one thing that causes much amusement is the notion of my watching practice.
All the people I know that are deeply into F1 without exception do not watch footie and couldn't even identify Gareth Bale - just happened this week-end (!)
Without doubt some F1 fans revel in a kind of inverse football ignorance, eg Ted Kravitz will at the drop of a hat remind us he knows next to nothing about football and even less about rugby - thus reinforcing his motorsport credibility amongst such types.
I never watch footie but can usually remember the news from the night before to engage in elevator small talk or pub banter - a bit like The Fast Show sketch during which conversations about last night's game, Walcott being offside, and Arsenal tactics of walking the ball under Wenger Have to be careful though not to go too far and be caught out. Those that know me and witness such encounters are usually impressed. It does seem to make one an odd fish if pronouncing no interest in football whatsoever.

On the subject of Ben Edwards, it is obvious he has changed - I wonder how much of it is DC and how much is because of the quieter F1 engines. In the past everybody had to shout like their trousers were on fire but now they can speak normally, even snooker commentator whispering Ted Lowe would be OK now. So maybe its hard to sound naturally exciting.

About people changing, this may be sacrilege but much as I love Ted and his notebook, I hope he doesn't become too tabloid journalist and calms down again. His aggressive quizzing of a teared up Arrivabene re changes wasn't the Ted I like to watch. It felt like Ted was feeling pressure to be "interesting" and stepping up a gear while Brundle was missing. Stay cool man.

Hats off to Mr Di Resta!

LMAO!!!!

I have no words.....