In my review of the European Grand Prix, I didn’t mention Luca Badoer, who made his high-profile Ferrari début at the race. It was always going to be a tough ask, because the odds were so heavily stacked against him.

For one thing, he had to get used to the car, which he had never driven at racing speeds before. According to Ted Kravitz:

Evidently the Ferrari F60 is a very complicated car to operate. There are many buttons and dials to turn and twist: Kers harvest and usage settings, brake balance and bias levers, fuel and oil pumps, front flap adjusts and the usual revs, throttle and mixture settings.

I’m not sure if he is implying that the F60 is more difficult to get used to than other current F1 cars. But whatever, it is certainly new territory for Badoer who is used to driving cars in the relatively tranquil environment of the test session rather than the intense spotlight and razzmatazz of a grand prix weekend. To deal with all of this in the first time he’s properly driven the F60 — and in his first race for ten years at that — is undeniably a big ask.

Luca Badoer must have been as shocked as everyone else when it was announced that he was to race in Valencia. It is typical of Badoer’s luck. F1 has shat on this driver for his whole career. I would highly recommend his biography on F1 Rejects for a full overview.

He may not be F1 championship material. But he is the 1992 Formula 3000 champion, having beaten Rubens Barrichello, Olivier Panis and David Coulthard among others in the process. So he is no fool.

But in F1 he never got the proper chance to demonstrate his abilities, being stuck with back-of-the-grid teams Scuderia Italia, Minardi and Forti — and despite usually having the upper-hand over his team mates on the racetrack, politics often meant he found it difficult to move ahead in his career.

You might have thought that signing with Ferrari to become their test driver in 1998 would have seen an upswing in his fortunes. In a lot of ways, Badoer must be the unsung hero of Ferrari’s success since then. He is the test driver who has helped develop cars capable of winning Championship after Championship following a twenty year drought for Ferrari.

Normally a team’s test driver would be the first choice to step in if a driver needs replaced. Inexplicably, when Michael Schumacher broke his legs in 1999, Ferrari opted to look outside the team. They placed Mika Salo in the car, when most observers expected Badoer to get the nod. Subsequently, Badoer stayed on with Ferrari having been promised that he would be the reserve driver.

Since then, Ferrari has had a remarkable period of driver stability. Between 1999 and 2009, Ferrari changed drivers only three times (Irvine replaced by Barrichello, Barrichello replaced by Massa and Schumacher replaced by Räikkönen)! At no point did any driver have to be replaced at short notice. No space for Badoer ever emerged. One must imagine that after twelve years waiting, he would have given up believing.

Then Felipe Massa was injured at Hungary. In the year that there was a radical change in technical regulations which is said to be the biggest in 25 years. In the year that testing is banned. In the one year that Luca Badoer had never driven the Ferrari car. And when the next race was at a brand new circuit which he had never visited.

Of course Luca Badoer didn’t get the call. Michael Schumacher did instead, and the media could barely contain their excitement. Schumacher is a seven times World Champion, but still people openly wondered: is Schumacher up to the task? Can he get used to the new car? Is he fit enough? At 40, will he be too old? In the end, it turned out that Schumacher couldn’t do the job because of the injury he picked up while racing Superbikes in Germany.

So it was down to Badoer to shoulder the responsibility of making something out of the pickle that Ferrari found themselves in. Of course, the media won’t be lining up with the same excuses that were already being served up on Schumacher’s behalf before his comeback. This was despite the fact that there are actually quite legitimate reasons for Badoer to be off the pace. Badoer is not much younger than Schumacher, and is the oldest driver on the grid. But that is not an excuse apparently, despite the fact that it supposedly would have been for Schumacher.

Instead, the media has spent its time openly laughing at Luca Badoer, almost willing him to do badly. The schadenfreude soaked through the reports as the journalists gleefully reported Badoer’s four pitlane speeding offences on Friday, a symptom of the fact that the pitlane speed limit is substantially higher during test sessions and Badoer needed time to adjust to the new braking points required.

All I can say is, Badoer is not the one who parked his car at Rascasse, but never mind. Of course, the journalists were just taking it out on Badoer because he isn’t Princess Schumacher so they lost their “fairytale” story that is so desperately needed to sell a turgid circuit like Valencia.

I found the gulf in opinion between the journalists and the drivers very interesting. While the journalists were busy thinking up oh-so-witty nicknames like “Look-how Bad-you-are”, the drivers in contrast felt sorry for the situation that Badoer found himself in. Jarno Trulli described Badoer’s situation as “impossible”. Lewis Hamilton said that Badoer has “done a good job just to keep it on the track”, while Kovalainen shrugged: “I don’t know what else you could have expected.”

The split was also demonstrated on the Chequered Flag podcast. David Croft mocked, “even Yuji Ide had more promise” (which is totally untrue — Badoer has already achieved much more in his career than Ide could ever hope for). F1 Racing’s Bradley Lord said, “Badoer approached this race as a test — and he failed this one.” Ha-very-ha. Anthony Davidson had plead to his bloodthirsty journalist colleagues, “give him some space!”

David Coulthard summed up the situation nicely: “Who would be Luca Badoer? You wait 10 years for your chance to race for Ferrari and then, despite having no preparation whatsoever, you get slated for not being Michael Schumacher.”

In Checkpoint 10’s excellent analysis, it is shown that Badoer was not actually half as bad as the journalists would have you believe. His qualifying time was 103.4% of the fastest time, when the 107% rule used to eliminate drivers on a regular basis.

He struggled during the race. After a good start, he was obviously spooked by being surrounded by other cars on lap 1 and spun. He then panicked in the pitlane, seemingly allowing Romain Grosjean to overtake him before he crossed the white line. And he had a worryingly erratic second stint. But overall, Badoer showed improvement as the race progressed, and noticeably caught up with Räikkönen’s pace as the race progressed and Badoer became more comfortable.

In sum, yes, Badoer had a very disappointing weekend. But that is mostly because driving standards are so high these days. You don’t have to go far to find real joke drivers who definitely did not deserve to be racing and did a much worse job than Badoer.

I grew up watching people people who paid to get a race seat trundle around up to a dozen seconds per lap off the pace. Hell, you only have to go back a few years to encounter and Yuji Ide, who suffered the ignominy of being stripped of his super license. The last pay driver went when Sakon Yamamoto lost his seat. Driving standards all the way through the grid are very high compared with ten or even five years ago. This amplifies Badoer’s rustiness.

Badoer’s performance in Valencia is the sort of thing that would have been commonplace at the back of the grid in the mid-1990s. You might say that this is not the mid-1990s, but when you consider everything that is stacked against Luca Badoer — his age, his lack of experience, never having driven the F60 before, never having been to the Valencia Street Circuit before, and having to get used to the modern-day race weekend environment — I think he should be cut a bit more slack.

I feel very sorry for Badoer, who has had a very tough F1 career where he has been given the rough end of the stick at almost every turn. It looks likely that Badoer will be replaced come Monza, which would be fair enough if he doesn’t show a perceptible improvement in Spa.

But now Badoer will probably be remembered for these two difficult races where he was thrown in at the deep end, and everyone decided to point and laugh at this man (who, do not forget, is actually putting his life on the line when he goes out to race). I am not sure whether this is better than being remembered for breaking down in tears at his previous European Grand Prix, in 1999.

Wow, a day certainly is a long time in F1. I am not sure when I will get round to actually writing about the Hungarian GP, though at least there is a long break until the next race.

But the big news this evening is that the next race will feature Michael Schumacher on the grid. He has been announced as the replacement for Felipe Massa while the Brazilian makes his recovery.

A lot of names have been bandied around over the past few days, and none of them seemed terribly lucky. Optimists suggested that Fernando Alonso or Robert Kubica might be able to get out of their current contracts to move to Ferrari mid-season.

Mirko Bortolotti was another driver on the radar. Last year’s Italian F3 champion has impressed in previous tests with Ferrari. He is currently building up his skills in Formula Two is widely tipped to have a bright future. But it is near enough unheard-of for Ferrari to hire a young rookie.

Some talked up the chances of David Coulthard or Anthony Davidson getting the role. That seemed a bit like pie in the sky thinking though.

The other drivers who currently have relationships with Ferrari are the team’s official test and reserve drivers, Marc Gené and Luca Badoer. But they were unlikely to step in for a whole host of reasons. Neither has a particularly strong track record as a race driver, although you can argue that neither ever had a decent opportunity to show their skills.

But their lack of fresh experience will have seriously counted against them. Gené last raced five years ago for Williams, and faced the ignominy of being replaced by Antônio Pizzonia for being too slow! Meanwhile, Luca Badoer hasn’t raced in F1 for ten years.

The last time Ferrari had to replace a driver midway through a season was when Michael Schumacher broke his legs at the 1999 British Grand Prix. Then, it was widely expected that Luca Badoer, as Ferrari’s test driver, would take his place. Instead, the Scuderia controversially overlooked him and hired Mika Salo.

It was a bad year for Badoer, who came close to finishing 4th for Minardi in that season’s European Grand Prix before his car broke down. He has never had an opportunity to score a World Championship point since.

Luca Badoer has held the test role at Ferrari for a staggering thirteen years without there ever being a sniff of a race drive. If he was overlooked in 1999, he was going to be overlooked today.

Now that testing is banned, it makes you wonder just what the point of a test driver is any more. I recently read that neither Marc Gené nor Luca Badoer have had any mileage whatsoever in this season’s Ferrari F60, in which case the advantage of selecting them over Michael Schumacher — who has loads more talent and, perhaps even more importantly, ocean loads of PR value — is non-existent.

This comes mere weeks after an elaborate re-arranging of deckchairs at Red Bull, as they apparently sought ways to replace Sébastien Bourdais at Toro Rosso without putting Brendon Hartley in the car. Up until the mid-season point, Hartley had been the official Red Bull reserve driver. But mere days before the reserve driver would actually be needed, he was replaced by Jaime Alguersuari.

Other drivers left twiddling their thumbs this year include: Pedro de la Rosa, Gary Paffett, Christian Klien, Romain Grosjean (though perhaps not for long), Adam Khan, Kamui Kobayashi, Nicolas Hülkenberg, Vitantonio Liuzzi, Anthony Davidson and Alexander Wurz.

If a team had to bring in a replacement driver, how many of these would be considered ready and able to race? Not many of them have much in the way of decent mileage of 2009’s cars. Who is to say, for instance, that McLaren would not rather stick Paul di Resta in their car over Pedro de la Rosa? Would Toyota happily give Kobayashi a seat, or would they prefer to take Nakajima?

Just a few years ago it looked like drivers could make a decent living out of being a test driver. Now they never get to test, and they’ll be lucky to get to race.

Practice coverage

This is another aspect of the BBC’s coverage which is a massive improvement on ITV’s offering. Last year, practice was just covered online, on some infrastructure which was clearly pretty shaky. This year, practice is covered on the red button. Even if you opt to watch it online (which I often do), the BBC’s stream is much, much more reliable and the picture quality is better than ITV’s.

Moreover, while ITV provided just the raw World Feed, with no commentary, the BBC broadcast it with the Radio 5 Live Sports Extra commentary. The Radio 5 Live team have been covering practice for a few years now, so it was logical to use their commentary for the television coverage to do it cost-effectively.

I must say, I think the coverage of practice is great. It shouldn’t be the most captivating of sessions. But the 5 Live team use it as a chance to flex their muscles, and they simply chat about whatever is going on in the world of F1 in general, at a fairly leisurely pace. It is like Test Match Special with fast cars, and I love it.

David Croft and Anthony Davidson are a great partnership for Friday Practice 1 and Saturday Practice. Meanwhile, Friday Practice 2 is normally covered by Maurice Hamilton and Ian Phillips. This is much more like a pub conversation, but I love the chemistry between the pair, and their chats about the political goings-on in F1 are unrivalled for their insight.

Radio 5 Live

As I have touched on already, Crofty and Davidson are a great partnership. Even though I like to listen to Jonathan Legard, I personally like David Croft a lot even if he is perhaps not ready for the main TV job yet in my view.

I first came across him when he read the sports news on Fi Glover’s Radio 5 Live programme back in 2001. Even back then he was an engaging broadcaster who had great chemistry with his colleagues. He clearly has a deep knowledge of a lot of sports. He never struck be back then as someone who was particularly a fan of F1, which makes the fact that he is so good at covering it all the more impressive. You can see he talent in the way he is also comfortable commentating on darts and boxing matches.

Meanwhile, Anthony Davidson is a complete revelation in the commentary box. It is no surprise this year of course — he was already impressive in his previous sporadic stints commentating on Radio 5 Live and ITV. Davidson will be hoping he is racing in F1 next year (especially since there are six extra seats), but once F1 is off the radar for him, he is surely an ideal candidate for the Brundle role. Who knows — perhaps one day it will be Croft and Davidson commentating on TV.

As for Holly Samos, I still can’t tell whether I like her or not. Sometimes she seems to be doing a great job, while at other times I would be expecting better. She’s been doing the job for a few years now though, so I think the listeners should be able to expect nothing but the best at all times by now.

Like I say, though, I have not been listening to the Radio 5 Live race commentary as much this year as I have done in previous years, so I am basing my opinions on a mixture of practice coverage and what I remember of last year.

But for me, it says a lot about the BBC that is has two very competent commentary teams — one for TV and one for radio — when ITV couldn’t even scrape together one.

The Chequered Flag Podcast

Radio 5 Live’s podcast is still pretty much a must-listen. But for me it has noticeably decreased in quality this year, I am guessing as a result of budget cuts. Last year the post-race podcast would consist of decent post-race chat between David Croft, Maurice Hamilton and another major F1 journalist like Jonathan Noble, and sometimes Holly Samos.

Now it feels like Croft and Davidson just switch on the dictaphone for twenty minutes when they get back to the hotel. It’s still good, but in a year when coverage has stepped up in almost every other way, this is a noticeable exception to the rule.

Commentary

The BBC’s lead commentator Jonathan Legard has come in for a lot of stick on the internet. In my view, most of it is wholly unwarranted. Indeed, I am quite confused at the negative reaction he has been getting. I used to listen to him from time to time when he was on Radio 5 Live, and I was a fan of him then. In my view, it took years for the station’s Formula 1 coverage to recover from his departure. He has a good voice and is clearly passionate and highly knowledgable about F1. I like his tone and his sense of humour.

Most importantly of all for his job is that he almost never makes mistakes. The internet collapsed in a heap of laughter when he committed the heinous crime of mistaking a replay for live action during the Malaysian Grand Prix. Name me a commentator who has never done that? There was even a mitigating factor then, as FOM’s replay graphic was playing up during the race. Apart from that, I can’t think of any time when he has made a bad mistake, misidentified a driver (except for the odd mixed-up Red Bull for a Toro Rosso — we’ve all been there) or misread a situation. He has had a couple of bad race starts, but once the race settles in he is fine.

In contrast, Brundle has made a few errors this season, including a mega clanger when he spent half the race in Spain confusing the prime and option tyres, which actively ruined viewers’ understanding of the race. During qualifying at the British Grand Prix he spent an entire lap talking about Räikkönen even though we were watching Massa, a fact backed up by a FOM caption. He made a few mistakes during the German GP as well.

Some criticise Legard’s reliance on crutch phrases, which I would agree is one jarring thing about his commentary. But let us face it, at times Murray Walker may as well have had a drawstring coming out of his back, and everyone found that endearing. Why it should be different for Legard I don’t know.

It is true that the chemistry between him and Martin Brundle has not been very good, but that was inevitably going to take time to build up, no matter who Brundle was commentating with. Legard has a good conversational style which I like. It is a potentially great way to cover duller moments of the race without resorting to James Allen’s trick, "let’s listen to the engine [while I think of something to say]".

Unfortunately Brundle doesn’t seem to know how to deal with Legard’s conversational style. He seems not to know how to respond to Legard, often choosing not to respond at all.

A typical example of this happened during the German Grand Prix, when Brundle responded unneccessarily sarcastically towards Legard’s inquisitiveness over Brundle’s statement that it would be a shame to for refuelling to be banned. It was almost as though he felt threatened that his viewpoint was being questioned. Speaking personally, I disagree with Brundle’s point of view (strategy plays a role, but if you allow it to dominate is just replaces racing with mathematics), and the rude way he expressed it totally alienated me.

Sometimes listening to Brundle you think he deliberately sets out for a scrap. Maybe it is his way of spicing it up by playing devil’s advocate. But I get the feeling that being combative is the only way he knows how to operate. He did, after all, make his name by constantly correcting Murray Walker, and later James Allen. He never stops "correcting" people. You almost get the sense that, given the chance, he would "correct" Michael Schumacher on the subject of being a seven times World Champion.

It probably doesn’t help that he is now working with a commentator who doesn’t constantly need to be corrected, which means he now has to adapt his style to that of a colour commentator rather than encroaching on the main commentator’s role as he has always done before. This is new territory for Brundle, and I don’t think he is coping well.

Some people suggest that you could solve this problem by making Martin Brundle the main commentator. It might be worth experimenting with, but I can easily see Brundle’s ego soon dominating the entire show if he was to be given that role.

I have to admit that sometimes I wonder now if I would miss Martin Brundle. I spent most of last year listening to Radio 5 Live, sans-Brundle, and it didn’t affect my enjoyment of the races. Given that he is almost certainly the most expensive person on BBC F1 team, I wonder if it is not time for him to be given another role, because for me he is probably the least value for money.

He does have a good turn of phrase, and is an engaging talker on F1, so I wouldn’t like to see him go for good. Perhaps he could be given a smaller role such as that of post-race analyst. The colour commentator role can go to someone with more recent experience of an F1 car such as Anthony Davidson, because Brundle increasingly seems at a loss to explain some of the technical elements of team radio conversations.

And can someone explain to me why Brundle hasn’t been taken aside and politely asked to pronounce Sebastian Vettel’s name correctly? He must be the only person in the world who appears to mistake this ace F1 driver for some kind of telecommunications company, or a brand of bottle watter. Vett-tel? It’s ‘fettle’. Really, really annoying.

The interactive forum

The BBC have a lot of great points to their coverage, but this is possibly the greatest innovation they have come up with. For an hour or so after the BBC One programme has finished, they continue analysing the race on the Red Button. This is something that simply would never have happened on ITV, so this is another great reason why the BBC is the right home for F1.

ITV’s post-race programme always felt like a rush job. The BBC’s probably would too if I stopped watching when BBC One stopped broadcasting it. But that extra hour feels just right. An extra hour to immerse myself in F1 news, interviews, analysis, footage, insight and knowledge. And there are a few viewer questions thrown in for good measure. Great stuff.

Red Button extras

Here is something else that you couldn’t have got on ITV — extra material on the red button. There are the rolling highlights, which I have personally never used and don’t really see the point of. It seems like a waste of a stream to me, but then again the BBC probably don’t have anything else to put on this stream (I understand that they are not allowed to broadcast the official timing screens).

But the on-board channel is a great addition to the coverage. I always have my laptop open with the on-board stream running. For one thing, it often catches incidents that are missed by the World Feed. It is notable that a lot of the BBC’s post-race analysis consists of footage from this channel — it is valuable stuff. During the German GP, they even interrupted the World Feed on BBC One to show a replay from the on-board channel! It is also interesting to watch the on-board channel during lulls in the race. I’m sure it will come in handy for Valencia.

The BBC also provide a handful of alternative audio options, though I never make use of them. I like Jonathan Legard and Martin Brundle is still interesting to listen to even if he grates more these days. But for those who haven’t taken to Legard, it is no surprise that the Radio 5 Live commentary option with David Croft and Anthony Davidson seems to have gone down a storm.

CBBC commentary seems less popular. I wonder if it is used very often. I can’t imagine I would have used it as a child. It’s like Newsround. No-one ever watches it because if you’re too young to be interested in the news, you simply don’t watch it. But if you’re old enough to be interested in the news, you watch the proper news, not the kiddy patronising version. CBBC commentary seems like a waste of an audio stream to me.

Pit lane reports

There are some very noticeable changes in the way the BBC deal with reports from the pitlane as opposed to ITV. On ITV, whenever there was a pitstop they would throw to Ted Kravitz who would then commentate on it. It wasn’t good. Usually he would just say, "yes, the fuel hose is in. And they have put new tyres on. And he’s away, good stop!" It felt pointless, although I guess it punctuated the commentary in a way. But I prefer it when Legard and Brundle commentate on pitstops, and for Ted Kravitz to be used when something genuinely interesting happens in the pitlane.

Meanwhile, Lee McKenzie is doing a fine job for her first season in F1 full time. She has plenty of experience in motorsport, so there are no real issues with her there. There have been one or two hairy interviews, particularly when she clearly got at Lewis Hamilton who responded tersely after being asked how it felt to be lapped by Button. But in a way that revealed a lot about Lewis Hamilton’s mindset.

In fact, Lee McKenzie seems quite good at that. Rubens Barrichello completely opened up in an unprecedented way after the German Grand Prix, all as a result of a simple but carefully-worded question: "It was going so well, what went wrong?" You could argue that it was never really going well for Barrichello, but the question obviously confirmed in Barrichello’s mind that he was on for a good result, hence his amazing rant.

On ITV, Louise Goodman often got some very interesting quotes out of drivers, but normally of the post-watershed variety. Not good when Webber is talking about kids fucking it up on breakfast television.

Louise Goodman was certainly good at finding drivers very quickly after they had retired. At the start of the season, it was noted by some that Lee McKenzie appeared to be much slower at tracking down the drivers. It transpires that the BBC are choosing to pre-record these interviews, probably to save money.

I also wonder if there is a different approach among F1 journalists in general this year. For the first time, drivers are mandated to conduct interviews after they have retired. Perhaps the BBC are going for the safe option, remaining in the designated area for a 100% chance of getting an interview, albeit one that is slightly late, rather than taking a gamble by going on a hunt to get a quicker interview at the risk of missing the driver completely.

It is noticeable that Lee McKenzie isn’t getting much airtime during the races though. This is probably because there are very few retirements in F1 these days. Given now that Ted Kravitz doesn’t have to do the whole "they’re putting fuel in his car!!!" schtick, I wonder if there is really a need for there to be two pitlane reporters. I wouldn’t know, but it seems as though they are doing less work than they did on ITV.

Something I would like to see from the pitlane reporters is more input in terms of analysing strategy. ITV were always good at this, because James Allen is a genius at working out strategies. Even if he wasn’t a great main commentator, he was always excellent as a pitlane reporter, and always had the edge when it came to reading the strategic elements of the race.

But reading strategy now appears to be the biggest weakness of the BBC’s coverage. I would like to see Ted Kravitz try and think about strategy more. Or, if Ted is not up to the task, bring James Allen on board as a strategy analyst.