BBC races away with five-year F1 rights deal

The beeb have...

Clarkson, let's have him presenting/commentating, would be MUCH more entertaining!!

Clarifications

Hurrah, or not? The Beeb still has multiple channels so you'd still be flicking the through 1, 2 , 3 and 4 trying to find coverage.

As for commentators, what about that great guy that does the MotoGP for Eurosport? I'd be up for that. Murray still works for aussy channel 10 and does a better grid walk than Brundle. But Beeb, please, please, please, no Simon Taylor. Why does that guy keep getting commentary jobs????

And when did Lewis last overtake anyone called Mika? Hakkinen and Salo were gone back in 2001/2002.

@Rob

Well, that just proves my point about ITV ruining my viewing of F1....

I guess it can only really be the curly-haired one with the testicles somewhere around the larynx area...

Paris, because testicles around the larynx area are her forte, I've seen the evidence

Bring back Murray

you know it makes sense

At last!

Finally, F1 back on a channel that doesn't stop for ad breaks! Just two points:

* Much as I loved Murray Walker, no bringing him back, please. He's had his day, and I want to remember him as the legend he was. :)

* If they don't bring back The Chain as the theme tune, someone needs to be used as a speedbump of the first corner - it's the best matched theme tune ever!

Dummm... da-da-daaa-da-da-da-da-da DUMMMMM

To Paul

" Also - PLEASE drop the token female asking dumb questions."

Would that be Tamara ECCLESTONE you are talking about?

(Mentioned in Private Eye latest issue- don't watch the racing myself.)

ITV in HD vs. SPEED network

The ITV broadcast is available in Canada in HD from TSN. It isn't in the UK? That would be a shame. For some reason sometimes the resolution seems to be off but it's clearly 16:9 HD signal.

As for those complaining about the broadcasters, I can tell you that the ITV crew is heads and shoulders above the US commentators from the SPEED network. That's truly the pits. They didn't last long on TSN. They tried them at one point and got the ITV crew back in a hurry. I am actually quite pleased with Louise and Martin and the lot.

F1 interest

Hopefully now that they banned the computer controls of the cars F1 shouldn't be so processional this year. Now we get to see the drivers actually drive. Motor racing has always needed a massive surfeit of torque over traction to bring out the best in the drivers and make it most interesting. Now we seem to have that back. Tiny errors get big punishments, witness sudden right turns in the middle of the straights and drivers flying off the end because they've forgot they have to do the braking this year. I'm certainly not hoping to see drivers getting hurt, but I want to see them really driving, I want to see them recover from their mistakes and I want to see them going sideways.

Here is hoping for an exciting season.

Of course this year if there is any excitement they'll immediately have an ad break so we can't watch it so that we have to watch the highlights later to boost the rating for that too.

Roll on next year

Glad to see F1 coming back onto uninterrupted coverage.

Clarkson FTW

+1 on that. Might almost make F1 entertaining.

perfect

No adverts , Brundlefly commentating and murray shouting ahhhhhhhhhhhh

Would be goood....

...if Messrs Brundle and Blundell can transfer over to the Beeb....at least, that way, we will have some insightful comments from people who've been there and done it...

Mr Ryder and Mr Allen, can join the dole queue....

And Louise should take a break from running around and get a nice cushy PR job with one of the teams.....and become their spokesperson....as she did with Jordan....

As for the "anchor man's" job . .someone with verve and panache and fire.....stand up Mr Alan Sugar.... !!!!!

@Decline not due to safety rules

Hmm, I'm afraid I have to take issue with that, I for one lost interest when the number of participants killed or maimed fell below the level required to hold my attention.

And I want MORE jiggling bimbos, not less.

ITV had to butt out because....

... Steve Ryder sadly(!) stuck irretrievably up Lewis Hamiltons Arse.

@Kelly Fiveash

"Last September Surrey-based McLaren was fined $100m and kicked out of the constructors' championship for spying on rival team Ferrari" is a slight distortion of the facts. Their punishment was for disseminating unsolicited confidential information. God alone knows what the punishment would have been for actual spying, although the fact that Renault got away with it implies it is better to be guilty and found out quickly than to be innocent and not tell anyone for a while.

Spray that champagne

Good news. But just remember however how much ITV improved the whole weekend's coverage. Until they made an effort, BBC coverage was two men in a windy commentary box, and the sport was just another "feature" within Grandstand.

Hopefully the BBC will use some common sense that ITV sadly lack. Why they never show Friday practice on ITV3/4 I just don't understand. Ditto if races overrun - how about continuing coverage on the digital channels rather than rudely cutting it all to show Coronation Street? Here's a programming tip, you morons: I doubt there is much cross-over between the F1 audience and the Corrie one. So don't p1ss off the former to appease the latter.

Martin Brundle MUST be part of the BBC package. By a long way he's the best been-there-done-that TV commentator in any sport. Having met him, he's an affable chap too. Murray I can take or leave - if he comes back, brilliant as that would be, at some point he will very sadly have to go again (and I'm thinking in an Arthur C Clarke sense...)

Oh and the BBC website is at least usable, unlike the eye-stabbing ad-laden over-sold abortion that is ITV-F1. It would be no surprise if, following the report of a serious driver accident, the story would conclude with "click HERE to buy Ferrari merchandise". Using that site I swear I can sometimes hear the ITV sales team slobbering in the background at another banner ad sale. At least I hope that rhythmic squishing sound is them slobbering. It would not surprise me if this website were the single reason Bernie Ecclestone grabbed the first offer the BBC made. "£6.34 and a decent website? You promise not to try and sell me some rawlplugs? Well when can you start?"

And as for James Allen... well... I was going to be polite and not mention him. But now I'm in the mood, "spectacular" is not a word I would have used three times during last weekend's coverage to describe three cars slightly spinning off the circuit, or going ever-so-slightly wide. Spectacular would be that 1991/2 race when the car got launched as it crossed the finishing line (Pedro Lamy was it?) Spectacular, James, was the opening corner at Spa in 1998: almost all the field piling into each other. David Coulthard farting, James, is NOT and never will be a spectacle.

So it's probably good the Beeb have it, as long as they treat it properly. I wouldn't expect HD coverage - that's up to Bernie and he's only just got to grips with televisions being a bit wider than they were in 1982.

Re: So...

"When are we going to start getting NASCAR coverage from the Register?"

Hopefully never, since that's not real racing...

Anyway, I'd love to be able to watch the ad-free BBC broadcast of F1 from here in the US. I'd pay for it if the price is reasonable, is that possible?

The Speed TV commentators here are good, the pre-show things are nice (although I usually don't care to watch them anyway)... But about 25% of the race is not shown! Ads every 6 or 7 laps, so out of every 8 laps, 2 are gone. And, you know, interesting stuff always happens during those 2 laps... What's up with the incompetence of American TV? (and apparently British ITV too) Back home (Brazil) they show the whole thing on only one *private* TV channel, but without a single ad break (commentators suck though, but I don't care that much). More than two hours. Maximum that happens, maybe 3 or 4 times in a race, is a voice over announcing some product with a little logo on a corner of the screen for 5 or 10 seconds, and that's it.

Why can't they do it here? Incompetence, that's my guess. I mean, don't these people know Picture-in-picture in the backwaters?

Rose tinted rims...

I,

For one, would much rather see the current snafu-laden ITV1 ad-fest, than return to the two-paper-cups-and-a-piece-of-string production values we left behind with Aunty in 1996.

As many a sane reader has alluded to: Murray *was* a legend back in the day, and if he stays off the TV, will remain so. Likewise, Steve should stick to the golf and I wouldn't mind if Fatty Blundell had a "long nap" too.

If only ITV's dumb-it-down approach for the "Corrie early-birds" is forgotten, Louise can be forgiven too. That just leaves contentious James. He comes out with such fantastically ignorant uninformed twaddle but does not have the lovable charm of his gaff-prone geriatric spiritual-ancestor. Sadly (or maybe not), he too must go the-way-of-all-flesh.

F1 is dead! Long live F1! Aha...

Yours muchly,

Paul.

P.S. If one of Bernie's drones is spidering this coverage, would you mind terribly asking your boss to make the original camera-feeds available to local directors who may have an interest and (God forbid!) some slight knowledge of motorsport, so we might actually get some relevant racing coverage once in a while...

Hmmm

Hmmm , the last time I watched Formula One the commentator was screaming into the mike like a two year old child , and was almost enough to put one off for life , and reached for the mute button and got a better view ! To be honest even a trainee radio horse race caller could show him how to do a proper job with none of his pretend queer drama , he is and still remains total crap as an overpaid car race caller even now !

Say , with Bernie moving the race to Beijing for the bigger monies on offer, I wonder what the EU rules are in regard to full brand cigarette plastered all over the cars advertising on prime time TV like the Beeb ?

on speed channel

the commentators are funny mixing up drivers just like murry

Re: Clarkson FTW

Unlikely, considering that Clarkson thinks F1 is boring. And he's dead right. If I wanted to watch a bunch of blokes changing tyres I'd go down to my local KwikFit.

Martin Brundle's commentary.....Bring in NEW BLOOD

"...if Messrs Brundle and Blundell can transfer over to the Beeb....at least, that way, we will have some insightful comments"

Brother PLEASE! I have lost count of the number of times poor old Martin has been asleep at the wheel, commenting in a completely different direction from whats happening on the track. How annoying to listen to someone simply talk for the sake of talking! As a person whose been inlvolved in motor sport I think his attempts to create drama where there often isnt any takes the attention away from driver performance and technology advances. When Bridgestone was still in competition with Michellin how many times did you hear Martin talk about "..a family of compounds"? Im still not convinced that he even knows what that actually means. How refreshing it was this weekend to see a fresh set of faces on the podium..Auntie, lets have more of the same behind the mike! and yes some of us REAL F1 fans would love to watch Friday practice as part of the weekends build up.

Bumpoo

Bugger, just when ITV started streaming all the free practice, qualifying and race live on the web the BBC get the contrac,t so now we'll have to deal with that POS iPlayer wankery. Boo hiss etc.

Bring back Murray. Bring back The Shunt. I miss Morecambe & Wise.

Well all right, it probably won't happen, but Formula 1 -- more sterile, more pretentious, more self-regarding than ever before -- needs a Murray Walker to fuel it with the zeal of an enthusiasm so great it does become genuinely inarticulate.

Otherwise we're left with Mr Allen, who manages the inarticulacy but not the enthusiasm, and Steve Ryder, who unfortunately for him encapsulates all that's wrong with F1: veneer all the way through.

Like many others here I long for Murray and James to be back together on our screens again. But then, I miss Tommy Cooper and Morecambe & Wise.

ITV did a great job when it got the F1 franchise: it certainly invested far more in the programming than the beeb ever did.

But as the original "team" was whittled down, and viewing totals declined to the point that sponsor after sponsor decided the broadcast wasn't worth backing -- Toyota pulled out after one year; the Daily Telegraph after one year; I can't think of a single sponsor who re-signed after 12 months -- the reality became apparent that F1's golden era has gone and, like Eric & Ernie, Walker & Hunt, ain't ever coming back.

The Beeb probably picked up F1 at a price which startled the hugely irritating Ecclestone, not because it was high but because it was so low: no percentage in ITV continuing on, not when cheap reality or even cheaper quiz shows rack up higher audience figures.

As an F1 devotee from the days when, er, it wasn't even F1, I thought I'd feel a sense of pleasure at the prospect of it returning to the Beeb.

Now I realise, I couldn't actually care less.

NASCAR

Big_Boomer:

Since when was NASCAR a World Championship?

Uh, never. The N stands for National, you know.

Do they race outside the USA? (Mexico & Puerto Rico don't count!)

Yes they do. First, Mexico is not part of the USA, and I believe they have also held races in Canada, Japan, and Australia.

But NASCAR races are usually decided by the skill of the driver, rather than how much money the team spends - the rules are constantly tweaked to make sure the cars are as equal as possible.

I would rather watch a race where the winner isn't known until the last lap, and the margin of victory is a few car lengths, or a straightaway at most, instead of one where the qualifying order is pretty much the same as the finishing order and the margin of victory is measured in minutes.

Open wheel racers have been switching to NASCAR at an ever-increasing rate. Juan Pablo Montoya started it, and it took him almost an entire season to win one race, and that was on a road course, rather than an oval.

-Chris

@Chris + Gordon Ross

"I would rather watch a race where the winner isn't known until the last lap"

Kind of defeats the purpose of having a multiple lap race doesn't it?

"Just look at the last season: The drivers championship wasn't decided until the last race of the season"

And the Constructors Championship was decided in court effectively...

/Rant

And.. THERE... Goes...

...a great big slice of the licence fee to televising the world's dullest sport. All the racing seems to be over at the first corner, then it's just down to who breaks down first.

I hear they've got the 4th International Paint Drying Championships on Eurosport...

F1

"It suffered in the popularity stakes after new safety rules were imposed in 1998, following the death of Ayrton Senna four years earlier."

Not really, it suffered, in the UK, due to Damon going to Arrows and then Jordon. It suffered because of a lack of overtaking which is down to less emphasis on mechanical grip and more on aerodynamics so cars lose speed as they get closer together.

I can't really remember any new safety rules having a big impact in 1998.