BBC used a 3-man commentary team as far back as the mid-90s, when Martin Brundle was not driving in some races (he shared a Ligier seat with Aguri Suzuki) he joined Murray and Jonathan Palmer in the box, and also for the final race of that year in Adelaide Murray and Jonathan were joined by Alan Jones. In fact, I seem to recall they had 3 commentators on occasions as far back as the late 70s/early 80s, as James Hunt and Jackie Stewart got embroiled in an argument mid-commentary alongside Murray at a race in Britain.

Then back in 2005, the BAR team were banned from a couple of Grands Prix for a technical infringement, so Jenson Button joined James Allen and Martin on commentary for ITV.

There are probably other examples I've forgotten about, but it's certainly not that BBC 5 Live are blazing a trail.

I was at a folk festival (no mobile signal either) all weekend so I missed F1, Wimbledon & the Euros finals. How was the race?

Funnilly enough I believe Ben Edwards and Coulthard were also the members of a 3 person team way back in '94 when DC wasn't driving for Williams (e.g. Suzuka), along with Wattie on Eurosport. May have only been the practise sessions.

Exactly what I was looking for! Thanks lettice! C.

I believe so.

Regarding the radio rules & Rosberg's penalty, I've been saying all year that I felt the additional restrictions introduced for this year were a step too far & I stand by that. I think the whole situation & Rosberg's penalty are ridiculous.

By all means put a stop to the coaching as far as been told where to brake, what gear to run, How to manage your tyres etc... But I feel that everything else should be allowed, Especially when it comes to been told how to fix issues as we saw at Baku & with Rosberg yesterday. Let the drivers focus on the racing & actual driving of the car rather than fiddling about with settings & all that.

But surely Rosberg WAS told what gear to run in though? How do you police between fixing a genuine issue, or "fixing" an "issue" which causes the car to run at an improved pace for example?

It's pretty clear that not using a particular gear isn't a performance advantage, and there was no doubt there was a genuine problem: it was plain for the whole world to see.

In Baku Hamilton had the car in a sub-optimal mode, so telling him how to change mode would have only been to improve performance.

The question really is whether "driving" includes the engine settings.

Indeed, I remember they did that a few years ago for a Brazilian GP start.

To me allowing Rosberg to keep 2nd, but DQ Mercedes for those 18pts would have been an option.

Is it just me who wishes the BBC's Andrew Benson would shut up with his Hamilton bias?

Merc confirmed they will not be appealing the stewards decision and accept they were in the wrong!

Well it is the BBC talking about a British driver..

Going back to 3+ man commentary teams, Back in 2010 the BBC had Croft, Ant & Karun doing commentary for a practice session at Abu-Dhabi & during the session Brundle also joined them as he got locked out of the TV comm box.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xnpovs

He is always talking about Hamilton but often not in a particularly positive way.

Notably after the Baku race, when there were a lot of very negative comments, which directly contradicted comments he made the previous week.

My thoughts are he doesn't particularly like Hamilton, and it is clear that he really is biased towards Alonso, but the number of times he says something along the lines of Alonso being the most complete driver out there.

I think there is another issue at play here this season, with the BBC not having live coverage on TV, they have gone for a click bait approach, which is over sensationalizing the coverage and Andrew Benson's comments.

So I don't think Benson is biased towards Hamilton, for the reasons above. I wouldn't mind them replacing Benson with a better journalist but that is another matter.
Having read the comments after the British Grand Prix it is very OTT.

Forget Top Gear, Jenson's clearly auditioning to join the The Goodies.

Video: BBC Look East - Formula 1 driver Jenson Button on a tandem in Milton Keynes.


Massive obviously!

The final sentence of that article reminds me of the tag line to the 2009 season review.

Sounds better now than it did back then.

One of my favourite free practice guests on the BBC was Patrick Head. He was answering questions like how do you get into the race car engineering side of F1. Considering that F1 is obviously engineering and data-led, Ch4's lack of ex-team engineer guest pundits is a disappointment.

Correct, it was Brazil 2008 (and ironically that 10 minute delay is the reason the final few laps of the season ended they way they did, as without that delay the last few laps would've unfolded differently)

I'm not so sure they're really admitting they're in the wrong, more that they're maybe worried that by appealing and emphasising that without those radio messages Rosberg would've retired, they may decide the stewards were too lenient and they should've DQ'd Rosberg because he'd have retired without avoiding 7th gear, and the appeal panel then deciding "well if that's the case, we'll DQ him so he gets 0 points, the same as he'd have got had he not had those messages". Sometimes it's best to accept a decision than to appeal it and risk a more severe punishment.

They haven't appealed simply because the rules prevent them from appealing. Don't over think this.

The rules don't prevent them appealing. The fact they have zero change of winning and them accepting they were in the wrong is why they didn't appeal.

In other news, Red Bull ran the Halo today at the Silversone test!

It's a bit OT, but just watching the ITV4 highlights of the Laguna Seca WSBK.

There's something weird about them, the sound mix seems a bit off such that the bikes can barely be heard most of the time. Gives it a strange feeling of distance/comms being phoned in a week later (which it may well be, I guess).

Also, a random comment about Silverstone. Croft and the organisers seemed at pains to point out it was a sellout - but while it was no doubt heaving with an impressive number of fans, didn't the grandstand overlooking where one of the Manors span out (Haryanto?) look a tad half-empty for a sell-out crowd, or am I being a bit pedantic?

That's the Paddock Club grandstand. I'd imagine the people with tickets to those seats were "busy" in their hospitality marquee.

Ah, I see - thanks for clarifying for me.

I expect they can claim a sell-out if all the stand tickets are gone even when there are still acres of room to fit more general access punters in.