Back to broadcasting, here's another reason Jenson needs to be signed up by C4 or Sky at some point:

http://www.skysports.com/f1/news/124...-race-notebook

Ted was obviously expecting to grab a few words but I don't think he was expecting that!

Amusingly this means both McLaren drivers have taken over a Sky broadcast this year:

http://www.skysports.com/f1/news/124...irement-claims

If C4 or Sky could get Webber and Button signed up as their punditry team then they would have the best combination out there.

End of Season Review!!

Caveats:
I've mainly watched on SSF1 this year
I have no issue with C4, but haven't seen enough to properly comment
The broadcasters had a poor year to cover imo

I made a bit of a New Year’s resolution back in Jan to only switch over to the F1 during Q3 and the parade lap. After devoting endless hours over the years to every conceivable bit of coverage and pod-casting etc I'm very F1 weary!! Over the course of the year I've caught the odd bit of FP1/2/3 etc but on the whole I've made a deliberate ploy to not watch anything other than the important bits.

Conclusion: Best decision ever, I no longer feel obligated to watch every single snippet, my weekends suddenly became much freer and the general stress of following a particular driver evaporated and I enjoyed the sport a little more.

I think on average each year there's marginal improvement to the coverage, I think this year was a bit flat in that respect, I didn't really notice anything different or new. I welcomed C4 coming to sport, what I was saw was ok, a little too ‘teeny’ with the graphics and vibe for my liking but a solid start.

Commentators - I must declare I'm not a big fan of Ben Edwards. That said Crofty who I've usually been roughly ok with, drove me to despair this season. The suddenly dramatic rise in volume at the slightest on track action set me on edge. I got to the point where I took a compressor (rack mounted one – for you guitarists out there) and put it between my TV and audio system. I squashed the living h*ll out of the SSF1 signal and normalized Crofty’s volume. It’s not so much what he’s saying, it’s the way the volume jumps 20-30db when he goes. An extreme solution I know but it was really getting to me.

The commentator mantra is inform, educate and entertain; I didn’t really get that from the guys this year. Maybe I’m just a little too cynical but most of the times the commentators said something along the lines of ‘oh he’s in with a chance to pass here’ it was complete codswallop. It’s so obvious sometimes they’re just saying things to notch up the excitement; i found it insulting at points. I’ve watched enough to know when a driver is truly in with a chance to pass/catch etc.

I thought the commentary teams had quite poor on track action to cover, I’m not a VES fan at all but he gave them the most to work with this year. The Merc battle up front was tediously predictable and pretty much dependent each race on Lewis’s starts/reliability. You pretty much knew by T2 how the rest of the race was going. I think it was appalling for the sport that the Merc’s were crawling on Sunday and still nobody could get realistically close. With the sport in poor form I have quite some sympathy for the coverage teams and maybe I’m being unduly harsh at points.

I thought the actual camera work was good, sharper focusing and better motion smoothening from the FOM feed(s). I don’t like the wide shots (done to include the advertising) but credit to the camera operators who I felt did a solid job this year. The saturation on the feeds were good, I think there’s still a little bit of work to do covering gamma and black levels but overall I felt the color and contrast of the main feed is the best it’s ever been.

I like to hear a bit more of the ambient audio whilst the cars are circulating. The engine note trail off was quite quick, I live pretty close to an F1 circuit and the car noise is markedly different in reality. I'm not sure if that's poor mixing or deliberate.

Roll on 2017 and hopefully a fresh injection of new rules will refresh the sport a little. Failing that there’s always Sportscars

I was reading somewhere (might be on here, might be on Autosport, can't remember) that said that its more & more difficult to schedule your life round an F1 weekend nowadays, given that you have all the F1 sessions, as well as the support races too most weekends. And so the more F1 weekends in general you get, the more weary fans will get of the sport. I don't disagree with this tbh.

In terms of the season this year, I still think this was far more exciting compared to the bore-fest of the early 2000s...

For 2017, i'm looking forward to FOM's revamped F1 app, that will at the very least include every single onboard cam live, with rumours of the other feeds being on there too (just not the world feed).

As for my viewing habits, instead of trying to watch practice & quali at every round, I shall only watch practice & quali for the following rounds: Australia, Spain, Monaco, Canada, Hungary, Belgium, Monza, Singapore, Japan, Brazil & Abu Dhabi. Once again a local folk festival I go to is holding it on the same weekend as the British GP, so i'll be reluctantly giving that race a miss as per usual.

Or instead I may just stick to whatever schedule Channel 4 uses. I prefer Sky's team in general, yet I'm getting exceedingly fed up with Brundle's increasingly out of date & irellevant viewpoints tbh. If i was in charge of Sky's coverage, i'd drop Brundle entirely and recruit more youthful & relevant drivers/ex-drivers.

FOM coverage-wise, I wish they'd introduce a PIP window to show the cutaways to the garage, celebs, audience etc.

Hopefully your on the beta trial.
You will not enjoy the celebrity special feed then

No PIP, just get rid of the celeb and most family shots completely.
Unless they offer some insight to the action, like the Massa family at Brazil 2008.
The other problem I find, is they seem to hang on the celeb shot for too long, its as though they are waiting for the celeb to wave at the camera. How often after a second do most of us just shout at the screen, Get off!

Disagree on Brundle, he his up there as one of the best commentators and pundits for me.
He and Crofty work very well together during commentary. Crofty has his moments but he also works well for me.

Have to say that for the 1st time this year I did start to get a bit fed up of watching by the final 2-3 races & spent most of the past month or so wishing the season would just end already.

I've somehow managed to watch all but 5-6 practice sessions live going back to 2005 & have always loved doing so & it sometimes feels like i'm the only person that enjoys watching & gets something out of watching the Friday sessions. However for the 1st time this year i've just started feeling a bit fed up of having so much coverage to watch & to be honest I think the unnecessary length of Sky's Pre/Post race stuff is starting to play a role in that.

Naturally I don't have to watch everything but for as much as I say what i've said above during the sessions & Sky shows I still enjoy watching them & still want to watch them..... I just wish there was less like there was a few years ago when I wasn't feeling like all I was doing was watching F1.


I feel like if we see more races added I'd actually reach a point where I become more selective of which I watch & be more open to not watching every race live (I've watched every race live since the start of 1995, Every qualifying session that was live on TV since 1996 & all but 5-6 practice sessions since the start of 2005).

Think I watched virtually every quali and race live in the 00s, since then not been as consistent. Have missed loads of qualifying sessions and at least 1 race per season. Fact is if Arsenal are at home and it clashes with a race, the Arsenal game is always a priority.

The last 2-3 seasons I haven't watched any pre/post coverage on BBC/C4/Sky. It's just the same comments, the same reactions and the same nonsense every race.

Having said that, if the competition is properly close between Mercdes/Red Bull/Ferrari next year I would watch more of the content C4 and Sky produce.

I think Lewis maybe needs to go to a privateer team, one not so closely aligned to a manufacturer, as they are typically by definition, less corporate than a large manufacturer team such as Mercedes.

Does that mean Williams, even they are a big corporation now. Uncle Ken (Tyrrell) is a thing of the past, unfortunately

Even as a relatively newly single guy with no ties, I've struggled with all the F1 that is on now. It's hit the point where quantity is not better than quality, the problem I have is that it almost gets to the point of watching out of obligation rather than want. The few times I have skipped races it lessens my desire to watch the next as I feel out of the loop with what s happened.
It's also a bit of an issue for me that the majority of the races are early PM on a Sunday. To me this now seems like the worst time of the day for people with busy lives to watch.
Its on during the nicest part of the day where people will be out doing things with the children, shopping, visiting friends & family walking the dog etc. & because its such a long pre-race/race/after race programme that has a heck of a lot of information to take in, it ruins the chance to do something else before./after too.
I much prefer the early morning or late races now as I can get stuff done during the day without rushing to either get back for the race or home before its dark afterwards in the winter.

Force India if their upward trend continues or simply back to McLaren. Ferrari is always an option at some point and they tend to always have a marked number 1/2 driver combo that would suit Hamilton better.

Ferrari seem certainly less corporate than Mercedes or McLaren.

In other news, the German Grand Prix has been officially taken off the calendar, and the Baku race has been pushed back a week, so there's no more clash with Le Mans (and in even better news for me, the British Grand Prix no longer clashes with the folk festival I go to - albeit it still clashes with Wimbledon & Formula E's New York race)

Speaking of the German GP, there's a rumor in Italy that the San Marino GP in Imola will return in its place from 2017 to make a 21-race season again. The head of the Imola circuit didn't comment on that and didn't dismiss the rumor, so take it for what you will.

April 30 in Sochi?
Очень холодно

Jp

This is the first season I have ever found myself reading or doing other stuff while a race is on in the background.

Unless the rule changes next year have a big impact - I can well see me not bothering much longer.

It has become a background entertainment thing for me too. I take far more interest in the after race discussion, interviews & reaction than the race itself.
The commentator gets excited & I look up now from the phone or PC to see what's happening.
Overtaking seems to have become (for most drivers & tracks) a 2-3 lap process of testing lines, exits, power deployment settings & energy recovery times before someone slide up the inside of a corner with the guy being overtaken knowing exactly what is coming but being next to powerless to stop it with DRS doing of of the work.
It's only the sudden unexpected overtakes that really interest me now when a driver appears out of the pits and is suddenly about to be overtaken or has a chance to overtake immediately that seems interesting now.

Well that might explain why Imola suddenly withdrew its complaint about Monza getting funding from the Government or ACI re. the Italian Grand Prix, instead of Imola...

WTCC looking at the possibility of "joker" laps on its temporary/street circuits

http://www.autosport.com/news/report...ing-joker-laps

Also a new (aesthetically unpleasant) increased points system for its main race:


There's always that feeling of no matter how bad F1 gets, at least it isn't WTCC...

...yet

FOM seems to be doing its best to emulate the WTCC fascination for showing everything except the damned racing at crucial moments.

Maybe one day they will discover the technical marvel of picture-in-picture if they insist on showing us some non-entity looking bored in the pits squandering access to an F1 team that most of us could only dream of

Then Bernie was talking about 2 x 40 minute races per weekend which sounds eerily familiar, but will hopefully never happen.

As JP said the other day, at least there's always Indycar...

At least WTCC doesn't do the celeb shot, even if it does the mechanic/team principal/mum shot (to death).

Probably only because there aren't any celebrities there, but still, small mercies and all that.

#burn

Also, what else would Martin Haven get annoyed about, if it wasn't for the terrible TV direction? Or the terrible steward decisions and penalties? Or the terrible Citroen team orders? Or...ok, you get the point with that

Glad it wasn't just me then!
Ive had it on background for a fair chunk of the season finishing off work i brought home or even playfighting with my sprog.
I agree too that the changes need to make it a competition, properly, or im going to find myself fading away from it quite quickly.

I'm kinda torn on Imola nowadays as while it's always been one of my favorite tracks to drive in sims (It's my Asetto Corsa test track where I take all newly added cars & game updates out to test), However it's a track that with each layout change i've found myself enjoying watching cars actually racing on less & less primarily because each change they made after 1994 seemed to make the racing worse & the track a bit less interesting to watch cars drive round.

The initial post 1994 changes took away the speed & primary overtaking spot (The flat out run to Tosa) & made Rivazza harder to overtake into (Shorter run into it & closer to the right hand kink before it which made defending a bit easier) although they did get rid of the horrid little chicane at Acque Minerali. The change to Variante Alta in 2006 ruined that corner as it went from a fun little flick that was quite challenging because of the kerbs to a rather slow & boring un-interesting chicane. And then the changes made in 2009/2010 that removed the Variante Bassa brought back some of the speed & may improve Tamburello as an overtaking spot but I kind of always liked watching the cars bounce over the kerbs there & it was always a bit of a challenge where you coudl lose a lot of time if you took too much kerb through the exit & were thrown a bit wide (Much like the old pre-06 Variante Alta).

Did you watch F1 back in the 2000s? Mercedes never dominated the sport as much as ferrari or red bull did tbh...

F1 this year has gone from first order of business to last order. But im looking forward to next year, at least the cars will look good.

Do we know what Channel 4s outro song would have been if Lewis had pulled it off?