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Archive: Internet

A look at Fota's proposals

5 March 2009 15:55

Categories: News, Opinion

Fota today announced its plans for the future direction of Formula 1. Perhaps predictably, the announcement is a mixture of the sensible, the radical and the downright crazy.

Fota carried out a “global audience survey”, with participants from 17 countries and encompassing committed fans of Formula 1 as well as marginal fans and those who don’t watch F1 at all. So there is clearly an eye on trying to expand F1′s appeal without alienating the existing fanbase. The key findings of the survey are not too controversial and I expect most fans will be nodding sagely as they read the list:

  1. F1 isn’t broken, so beware ‘over-fixing’ it

    Quite right. Amid all the doom and gloom, we are all fans for a reason and that reason is because we love the sport. It is worth remembering that there isn’t much wrong with F1. Indeed, most of what is wrong with F1 stems from ill thought-out rule changes over the past decade or so.

  2. F1 needs to be more consumer-friendly

    There is little doubt about this. F1 fans are somewhat short-changed compared to other fans. Internet coverage is woeful while the fact that HD broadcasts are not yet available is nothing short of a scandal. You cannot escape the feeling that Bernie Ecclestone simply should be doing a better job catering to the fans.

  3. Major changes to qualifying format are not urgent

    For all the hand-wringing about the qualifying format, the reality is that it’s the race that matters. Attempts to make qualifying more entertaining over the past few years have only backfired, and the last thing qualifying needs is yet another strange new format. The grid would be more meritocratically formed by ditching the ridiculous “race fuel load” concept.

  4. Revisions to the points-scoring system

    There is a clear consensus that the current points system simply does not reward winners enough. The only thing that has prevented a change so far has been disagreement over what the new system should be.

  5. Evolution of pit stops and refuelling

    There is a hint that refuelling should be banned (which is will be from 2010 onwards anyway), which makes sense given the dramatic reduction in overtaking which has occurred since 1994. Pit stop strategy does add an interesting dimension though, and it would be wrong to do away with pit stops altogether.

As for Fota’s actual proposals, my reaction is more mixed.

In general, Fota are promising a more fan-friendly environment. The technical and sporting changes must be approved by the FIA first (so you can be sure they will end up being a mess anyway). But as far as I know there is nothing to stop the teams from deciding among themselves to create a more fan-friendly environment. So it is very promising to see that this is exactly what they are promising.

Fota’s suggestion of increased media access to data is a must, and I can’t wait to see what the teams will reveal to the fans this season. Nominating senior team spokesmen is also a good idea. In my view, teams are sometimes quite good at talking to the media during races. ITV certainly managed to get a lot of senior figures doing live interviews during races over the years. But to guarantee this sort of access is of course a good move.

By now, further technical restrictions (such as increasing the life of engines, gearboxes and so on) are expected and uncontroversial. The move to reduce the use of exotic materials will no doubt reduces costs considerably without spoiling the show. But beware any moves that will make F1 seem too much like a spec series. Originally kers was supposed to be a performance differentiator. Already, just one year on, all sides seem determined for there to be a standard unit. What a mess.

I am unsure about a further reduction in testing. Fota has proposed a 50% reduction. This will save money, but there are a host of disadvantages which I have already outlined in my previous post on the subject.

Fota’s proposed new points system is 12-9-7-5-4-3-2-1. Put simply, this is not enough. A two point difference between 1st and 2nd place is far too low. Three points is hardly any better. In my view, 1st place should be worth around double what 2nd place is worth.

I am sceptical of the move to share data about starting fuel loads. The real solution is to get rid of race fuel loads in qualifying. But to publish the starting fuel loads would spoil the surprise element of the strategy, which is the only decent aspect of refuelling. Tyre compounds are already public via the medium of strange green markings on the tyres, so I’m not sure what Fota are proposing that’s different.

The suggestion that one point should be awarded to the constructor that makes the fastest pitstop during the race is absolutely stark raving bonkers. Fast pitstops are rewarded anyway by on-track advantage, and should not count for anything else. I can already envisage Force Indias and Brawns that are well out of the points coming in for unnecessary pitstops, stopping for a quick half-second wipe of the visor or something, just in order to make the fastest pitstop. What a joke. I’m amazed this idea is even being taken half-seriously by Fota.

I am not so sure about the reduction in the duration of the race to 250km (from the current 305km). The key findings note that “the current race format is not viewed as fundamentally broken”, and that concepts such as sprint races would debase the F1 experience. As such, it is completely unclear on what basis Fota wants race lengths reduced. It is completely contradictory.

I wouldn’t rule out shorter races completely. It is true that often very little happens after the final pitstops have shaken out. But 90 minutes is a good length for a major sporting event and part of the essence of Formula 1 is that there is the element of endurance to it.

I think it would be a good idea for there to be a mixture of different race formats throughout a calendar. Nothing too radical. But there’s nothing wrong with having some races shorter than others. And why not have some races where refuelling is allowed, and others when it is banned? Different drivers could demonstrate their varying skills, and different cars could take advantage of their peculiar characteristics.

I suppose there could be a risk that teams will start constructing special cars (with different fuel tanks, weight distributions, etc) for different race formats. But how about having a limit on the number of chassis that each team can use in a season? After all, it worked for engines.

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BBC announces plans for 2009 F1 coverage

24 February 2009 13:40

Categories: News, Opinion

Today the BBC has announced further details of its F1 coverage, which will start in just a month’s time. We already knew who would be presenting the BBC’s F1 coverage, but today we have found out more about just what the BBC will be offering the viewers this season.

Television coverage

The BBC have released full details of the television schedule for the whole season. All of the races and qualifying sessions will be broadcast on BBC One, with the exception of Brazilian qualifying which will be broadcast on BBC Two (as it will clash with Final Score). Races at unsociable hours will be repeated in full later in the day, just as ITV did.

Highlights

What is interesting is that the hour long highlights package will be broadcast on BBC Three. But it will be much earlier than ITV’s offering. While ITV begrudgingly broadcast their highlights as late on Sunday night as they could possibly get away with, the BBC promise to broadcast highlights at 1900 on the day of the race, with the exception of Brazil of course when it will be broadcast at 2300.

Practice sessions

In addition, all practice sessions will be covered on BBC Red Button. This is fantastic news. In 2008 ITV provided live coverage of Friday Practice — but not Saturday Practice. Moreover, ITV only showed it on the internet, meaning that it was a poor quality offering. The BBC will now give fans the opportunity to watch practice sessions at television-standard quality for the first time in the UK.

Red Button

There will also be a number of interactive offerings. On race day, viewers will have a choice of three streams:

  • The FOM World Feed (what we’re used to getting), with the option to choose between BBC One or Radio 5 Live commentary.
  • Rolling highlights
  • A split-screen offering, with the FOM World Feed, on-board action and a leaderboard (the FIA timing screens?)

After the race has finished, there will be an hour-long interactive analysis programme with Jake Humphrey, David Coulthard and Eddie Jordan.

Internet

All sessions will be broadcast over the internet on the BBC’s website. Users will have the ability to choose from a number of different streams — everything that you can get on television, and perhaps more? Moreover, at least one feed will be offered in “extra-high quality”, which the BBC say will be “near-televisual quality video”. There will also be live text coverage, and visitors will be offered the opportunity to vote and discuss the big talking points of the race.

All coverage will be available to watch again on the BBC iPlayer. Users will be able to download videos within 7 days of broadcast, though downloads will self-destruct in a plume of smoke after 30 days.

Website

The BBC are promising that a much-needed relaunch of their F1 website will take place before the season begins. We are promised blogs from Jonathan Legard, Andrew Benson and Jake Humphrey as well as one from an “F1 mole” (hmm, that rings a bell…). Murray Walker’s video review of each race has already been well publicised, but we are now also promised videos and text columns from Martin Brundle and Mark Webber.

If the BBC get this right, it could turn out to be one of the very best F1 websites around. It sounds very promising.

Radio coverage

There is a separate press release concerning radio coverage. It had already been confirmed than Anthony Davidson will be the co-commentator on Radio 5 Live, alongside David Croft. This is mixed news for a number of reasons.

First of all, it should be pointed out that the BBC has pulled off a major coup by signing Anthony Davidson for the entire season. The driver still clings on to hopes that he will get a race drive. But with empty seats in short supply, it looks like Davidson has chosen to develop his career as a commentator.

Davidson has had a few stints as a commentator, on ITV as well as on BBC Radio. He is very good at the job in my opinion. He seems almost as natural behind the mic as Martin Brundle. He effortlessly explains to the listener what a driver is going through, and his technical knowledge of the current cars will almost certainly be second to none among commentators throughout the world.

Sadly, this means that Maurice Hamilton will no longer be a regular commentator on Radio 5 Live. This is unfortunate as I enjoy listening to his comments and opinions. I am sure we haven’t heard the last of him though. I hope he stays involved with some of the podcasts he has worked on in the past — particularly The Inside Line, which I have praised a number of times here.

Otherwise, though, the Radio 5 Live team remains the same. David Croft is perhaps not the best commentator around, but he is a likeable presence with a great enthusiasm for the sport. I’m particularly looking forward this year to watching practice sessions on BBC Red Button, where the commentary will be provided by the Radio 5 Live team. Practice has always been an enjoyable listen, in a Test Match Special sort of way.

There is also good news on Radio 5 Live’s Friday night preview show, 5 Live Formula One. Martin Brundle and David Coulthard will make regular appearances discussing the latest issues in F1. I can’t wait to hear what the pair will come up with. Both are colourful analysts of the sport, and they have worked with each other for many years, so the chemistry will no doubt be super.

What’s missing?

Rumours on message boards had suggested that there may be the option to watch highlights of each Grand Prix all day after the race. But there is no mention of that in the press release.

It looks as though there will be no HD coverage after all. This is a major disappointment. The BBC have hinted in the past that they would jump at the chance to broadcast F1 in HD, so this looks like it’s Bernie’s doing.

And where is the information on the support races? This is what I was most looking forward to learning about today, but looking at the BBC’s press release you wouldn’t know they even existed. I would be gutted if GP2 didn’t end up on terrestrial television, after the races were shown live on ITV4 last year. I am hoping that red button coverage will be announced at a later date.

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A first from FOM — videos of the controversial incidents

14 October 2008 23:12

Categories: News, Opinion

It is increasingly a rarity. But today the powers that be in Formula 1 have done something right. Bernie Ecclestone’s website, Formula1.com, has uploaded videos of the three controversial incidents that happened during the Japanese Grand Prix. The intention is clear as the title of the video asks, “what do you think?”

This includes a handful of extra camera angles that have not previously been seen by the public. Put aside the fact that they should be offering more video clips anyway. We have to applaud them when they move in the right direction.

Going through the incidents one-by-one as I did in my previous post, I don’t think the angles of the turn 1 incident really telly us anything new. In my view, the videos conclusively show that the Ferraris were indeed impeded by Hamilton’s dodgy manoeuvre. However, as many have pointed out, Heikki Kovalainen wasn’t completely innocent and it also looks as though several drivers outbraked themselves as well.

The new videos of the Massa–Hamilton crash did make me raise my eyebrows. I think after seeing the onboard view from Massa’s car, I would be more inclined to give Massa a penalty. He got the corner completely wrong and was well out of place for the duration of the corner. It was Hamilton’s corner in my view. Massa appeared to make absolutely no attempt to avoid an accident until it was far too late.

Having said that, I still think that there was more that Hamilton could have done to avoid the accident too. For Massa’s onboard I can only conclude that Massa thought he could manage to get through on the inside, although I admit that that would have been quite optimistic of him. But if Hamilton was clever, he would have given Massa more space. Indeed, a harsh observer of the final angle of this incident may point out that it’s almost as if Hamilton turned into Massa. They both drove into each other. For me, this is still a 50–50 incident which probably would have been better left alone by the stewards.

Unfortunately, the new angles for the Sébastien Bourdais penalty do not reveal an awful lot. Ideally we’d have a helicopter view, or a view from the inside of the corner. Seemingly no such angle is available, so all the angles we are given are from the far side of the incident, taken from the left of Massa’s car.

From what we can see though, it looks to me as though Bourdais is not quite as tight in to the inside of the corner as I initially thought. However, if anything this is because it was further along in the corner than I thought. If Sébastein Bourdais is not right on the inside of the corner it is because he is exiting the corner.

Sure, he could have backed off more. But as Le Seb himself has pointed out, that would have been tantamount to rolling out the red carpet for Massa to accept. This is racing. F1′s not supposed to work like that. Massa is the one who came steaming in from behind and made a total hash of the corner.

All-in-all, I’m glad to see that FOM have released these videos to give fans a clearer idea of what happened on the track. It brings us closer to the sort of views the stewards are given, and this is a step in the right direction.

It’s clear, though, that the only reason they have done this is because of all the furore surrounding the penalties. I still think it is sad that F1 has come to this. In my view, these are three racing incidents, and there is no doubt in my mind that had any of these incidents happened, say, ten years ago, no-one would have raised an eyebrow at the incidents, far less felt that they were deserving a penalty.

Check out another view on FOM’s decision to release these videos from Keith on F1 Fanatic.

Incidentally, I am busier this week than I had originally expected, so I may not be able to analyse the Japanese GP until after China. I’ll see what I can do though.

6 comments

Is ITV actually run by numbskulls?

18 September 2008 13:03

Categories: Opinion

One new facility that F1 fans have this year is ITV’s new Catchup service which allows you to watch ITV broadcasts of Formula 1 for 30 days after their original transmission. It’s great if you want to watch a race again or if you missed the race for some reason. My brother (who sometimes writes here as Onebrow) has missed the past two races and has relied upon ITV Catchup to, well, catch up.

The problem is that ITV Catchup itself is a dreadful, dreadful service. It is very flaky in Firefox and doesn’t even work all that well in Internet Exploder. You can’t move to different parts of the programme, and it shows the same adverts over and over again.

But all of this pales into insignificance compared to the crime ITV have committed with the Italian Grand Prix. Imagine managing to avoid the result of the race only to be presented with the following image when you sit down to watch it:

ITV Catchup gives it away

Of all the races this could have happened in as well! Is ITV run by actual monkeys or something?

“I was angry,” my brother said. I can well imagine! I think he’s going to write to them to complain about it. I certainly would.

8 comments

How I watch Formula 1

5 August 2008 22:53

Categories: Admin

Last week Ollie at BlogF1 wrote about the set-up he uses at home to watch Formula 1. He threw the question back to his readers: how do you watch F1? Here is my answer.

How I watch Formula 1

If you click through to the photo’s Flickr page you will see the notes I have written to explain everything. But I will describe my set-up here as well.

As you can see, I squeeze everything on the one screen — even the ITV television broadcast! It’s a pretty big monitor (the same as Ollie’s, if I’m not mistaken), so it can handle it. It is a bit of a squeeze, but it’s the most convenient way for me to do it as there is not a television in the line of sight of where I sit at the computer.

Going clockwise from top-left, we begin with the ITV live video feed. I only fire this up after the chequered flag because during the race it essentially shows the ITV1 London feed — adverts and all. After the race though, it switches to the FOM World Feed. After the race, the world feed contains a nice montage of replays from during the race as well as the press conference, which ITV do not always show during their television broadcast.

While I’m watching the FOM feed, I pause the television (which I watch via Windows Media Centre). When the FOM programme finishes, I start watching ITV again to watch all of the post-race analysis and interviews.

Beneath the television I have FOM’s own live timing system. As far as I’m concerned, this is an indispensable tool if you want to know what’s going on all the way through the grid. I notice that it is a ubiquitous presence among the other photographs / screenshots I have seen.

Finally, we have the F1Fanatic liveblog in the bottom left. Lots of top chitty-chat goes on in there and it’s sometimes a great way to get advance warning of some news as people from around the world report what their commentators have told them. Some eagle-eyed viewers also spot stuff that I would otherwise miss.

The green mug contains my coffee. This sits on a coaster with a photograph of David Coulthard in action in his MP4-13. The clear mug contains an emergency supply of apple juice in case I get thirsty during the race. Peering behind this is a 1:43 scale diecast model of Damon Hill’s Jordan 198.

Not in the photograph, a digital radio sits to my left on another desk. I use this to listen to the Radio 5 Live / Sports Extra commentary. This way I avoid James Allen’s plonkery. One problem with this, though, is that the radio is a couple of seconds ahead of the television. This means that I hear the action before I see it, but that is just a small worry.

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