ITV just won the BAFTA for their coverage of Brazil 08.

I know Allen wasn't well liked, but his experience as a pit reporter meant he had a good handle on strategies (most of the time). Brundle, I think, is missing Allen's assessment in calling strategies.

Example of this was Ruben's second stop - too far from the end of the race to be last stop and obviously not mounting the prime tires for the last stint. Brundle was not sure if this was going to be his last stop.

I prefer pretty much every aspect of the BBC's coverage to ITV last year.

The build up to qualifying and the race always seems interesting and informative, while the puff pieces on ITV seemed to be designed simply as a way of filling the gap between ad breaks. The post race coverage (including the forum) has also been excellent, including proper analysis of the actual racing (rather than some rather obvious interviews where the drivers who did well were happy and the drivers who did badly weren't).

Legard hasn't been terrific yet, but he hasn't been awful either and I'm optimistic that he'll improve. He's been far better during the races than during qualifying. I miss the days of Murray Walker - I think that the British audiences were so spoiled by getting to hear him for years that Allen and Legard never stood a chance of being loved by the audience!



I keep meaning to listen to the CBBC commentary to find out what it's like... Has anyone given it a listen yet?

All power to the people.

http://www.PetitionOnline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?f1legard&1

NB: This is not my petition.

They got it in 06 for Button's first win and 07 for Hamilton's first win.

The common denominator in all three of these awards is how little ITV had to do with the coverage. They were 'events' because of what happened on track and the footage was provided by the local broadcaster. They weren't noteworthy for their coverage. Hell Canada 2007 wasn't even that good a race.

Not your petition, but presumably you think these petitions achieve anything?

5 million (according to Martin on his gridwalk) viewers, and (atm) 15 voters. Doubt the DG is looking through a list of CVs just yet.

We'll see.

This is great because as we all know online petitions are always effective.

@wewantourdarbyback; Not really; you are giving me too much of credit for nothing. Go back to the race as I have done, and compare post race comments from Seb, and the japping from those two artists during race. Sometimes I think that they do not know much more than just an average onlooker.

I know, the only part of the awards I've seen (happened to walk through the lounge while housemates watched. Gary Lineaker presenting it didn't seem overly chuffed.

Wow this really is turning into a vendetta for you isn't it.

Well at least now you have your own thread for your moans maybe the BBC thread can get some sort of perspective and discuss other aspects of the BBC coverage.

Edit: Shame it has been merged in.

No, your attempting to find something that isn't there, they are a lot better than ITV, and incomparably more impartial than other nations commentators.

Ungrateful spoiled brats!

Most viewers in the world can only dream of the good and elaborate coverage you guys have in the UK.
Legard may not be perfect, but overall the BBC is putting on a great show.

How ridiculous.

He's head and shoulders above James Allen and I think is settling in nicely, give him a break, he's been working in Radio for years and TV is a different discipline. I think he's better and better every race.

I find the opposite actually.

I found ITV always broadcast interesting and informative features which had been well thought out to give their show pace.

On the other hand the BBC relies way too much on talking heads who drone on and on and on. I mean, hearing from Jake, DC and Jordan is interesting, but not for 30 minutes of a 50 minute preshow.

It is getting less tortured than in Melbourne, but I'd rather have quality pre-recorded content than non-stop talking. The same old characters are going to get pretty tired by Abu Dhabi...

Legard: waste of space. Does not know a fraction of what he need to. Still.

Jake: getting into that awful media-person arrogance of finishing each interview by telling the interviewee what to go and do. I hate that .

I think/hope it will improve now they are back in Europe as they will be able to visit factories etc.to put together features. I am sure DC will get them great access to RBR and I get the impression they have built up a great working relationship with Brawn and Force India.

A big plus for me over ITV is that they do not repeat the same prerecorded features on both Saturday and Sunday. Always hated that.

I've enjoyed it so far, but if they do start to struggle for content they should shorten the preshow. I always thought ITV had it backwards - 1 hour prerace filled with repeats, drivel and guesses what would happen and then 10min postrace at analyse what actually did happen, a chunk of which was advertising upcoming football coverage. The BBC has got the balance way better generally, but particularly so with the forum.

They could easily do it under 30 minutes. Cover the main stories, the grid, a brief gridwalk, and away we go. Cut out most of the three amigos and we'd be fine. They offer very little in a pre-event sense and are better for the gaps between qualifying sessions and post-race.

Well I think the Beebs coverage is head and shoulders above what ITV produced. There's nothing major I can think to criticize. I must admit the little bits on understeer, oversteer etc have been a bit short. It would have been more informative for them to show us good examples of actual race situations to demonstrate the actual effect in real life so to speak.

Overall though I think the air time given to different teams, drivers etc is quite balanced. Also the feedback from the pit reporters during the race has been great too.

Also I missed the Forum after the race because I had to go out, but how brilliant it was to be able to watch a whole replay on the red button when I got in. Top drawer.

Personally I stopped watching ITV's build up, it became tedious, Lewis-centric and Blundell was bad to listen to. I like the BBC's pre and post race stuff.

I'm massively enjoying the post-race Forums. Listening to them waffling on for an hour, while you get to people-watch the paddock go about it's business seems to be the perfect way to wrap up the weekend. ITV too often felt like it was BAM-BAM-BAM though a standard ten minute schedule then exit to a montage. Whereas the Forum feels like you're actually getting to digest what's gone on.


I disagree. Far too much of ITV's build-up was filled up with pre-recorded material that, while professional done, felt time-wise as generic. So getting Brundle to drive cars from five different eras was great TV, but it told us nothing about the current race weekend. It could have been filmed at any time and shown at any time. By contrast, the BBC build-up feels fresh-off-the-press; giving us a bit more knowledge about that's going on up and down the pitlane during the build-up.

And I've moaned about it before, but I'll keep mentioning it: if you watched ITV on Saturday, there was nothing new for the first 30-40 minutes on Sunday. Just repeated features and a superficial retelling of qualifying. For me, the show didn't start proper until Brundle's grid walk.

It is weird because now the BBC seem almost Lewisphobic.

Tell that to MiPe

The only thing that needs to be better about the BBC coverage is the commentary, once they've got that sorted then it'll be like "the perfect package". The pre-race show is damn good in my view, as is the post-race show, its just the actual race commentary that needs to be better.

BTW, for those that never seen the Interactive Forum, well you'll be glad to know that the BBC have decided to put it online: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport...one/8019755.stm

It's undoubtedly Eric Clapton singing, but Idon't know where it's from.

I wondered if it's actually a Delaney & Bonnie track. It sounds like it's from that era.

There I was pondering over fuel strategies, the respective performance of tyre compounds, the possible overheating issue with the Mercs in the back of the Brawns, Webber's early charge, the robust pace of the Force Indias, the tactical self destruction in the Toyota camp, the relegation battles being fought by Piquet and Bourdais, the apparent failure of KERS-equipped cars, Kubica's anonymous performance and the fate of Ferrari... and then Legard's insightful commentary provided me with the info I'd been seeking all weekend - both Glock and Trulli were driving red and white Toyotas - stunning.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport...one/8019558.stm

This is fantastic

Great driving from Webber, endplates flying all over the place, lockups, wheel bashing with no accidents. The cars were driving double file one behind the other for corners at a time. I think a combination of the aero rules, slicks and the tilke track made this possible.

This is what we've been asking for in F1 for a long time and we've got it. Some great racing in the opening laps today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwCf8UNWX2M

Like swintex, I thought it was Eric Clapton, with him having been interviewed on the grid, but it was Ray Charles - never noticed before how similar they sounded. It was written by Johnny Nash and also covered by Jimmy Cliff, among others. You need oldies to tell you stuff like that!

Allen just had a WAY BETTER read ont he race, he sorted knew what was coming.

thought JL was better this race
mind i came down late for qualy and it sounded like horse racing

the from thing was painful

Reads like a SQL query.

Are there two James Allens? I can only imagine you must have been listening to a different one. The one I put up with for years wouldn't have seen a bus coming if it was 6 inches from his nose.

I guess there must be two, then: the one that you had and the knowledgeable, if excitable, one that the rest of us had on the feed.

I'm surprised at some of the comments in this thread.

Legard is now so dire he is dragging down the entire BBC broadcast. He's ruining Martin's role and seriously ruining the whole experience for me.

Yesterday was quite processional - the first one of the year really and the ultimate test for Legard because of his 'say what you see' style.

And he failed. He failed miserably.

Long periods of silence made it toe curlingly awful to watch. Martin's role, previously to speak around 40% of the time and add insight to the main commentary has now been turned into the role of rescuing Legard.

Legard says what he sees, gets stuck and goes quiet. Martin grimaces and has to step in, meaning he now has to speak around 60% of the time. That's not his role and he is not a main commentator. Excellent though he is, the poor guy is carrying struggling Legard now.

He also still interrupts. It's as if he can't think of anything to say, something happens and then a thought pops into his head. If Martin is talking at the time, he just talks right over him, as if his thought will be lost if he doesn't get it out straight away.

His skills as a commentator seem non-existent full stop, let alone an F1 one.

It is literally "Here is such and such, coming round the corner, over the hill. He's on a charge" over and over again.

Conversely, the David Croft/Davidson team is superb. The BBC lost them in Q3 and halfway through the race, which I was furious about (complaint submitted), but there are no silences, the excitement of F1 is conveyed and the commentary is wide and varied. There are about twice as many words spoken on the R5L feed and the difference is night and day.

The sooner that twit Legard is gone the better, for ours' and Martin's sakes.

Ok, whilst I admit to being slightly disappointed in Legard for the first few races, I am still prepared to give him a bit more time to settle down and adjust to the TV style...if he has not improved by mid season then yes, i'll start to get worried.

However, i'd take him over James Allen any day....I think some people here are either wearing rose tinted glasses or have very short memories!!!

I was annoyed about the drop out of the Croft/Davidson commentary too. Clearly it wasn't the most exciting race of our times, but the 5 Live guys have a great connection and carried the commentary easily until their feed cut out, and instantly it felt like it was a different race.

My wife was in the other room and not paying any attention to the race, but came in asking what happened after the 5 Live commentary dropped: she said she just sensed that something had gone wrong.

I've always liked James Allen.

Yes, so have I.

I actually found Legard a lot more tolerable this week than last. Because of the long periods of silence.

You speak as if I am the only one who does NOT want James Allen to return.

Read this thread. I am not alone.

And neither am I, clearly. Seriously, the James Allen haters seem to think they're the only ones who have the right to an opinion.

And what did you do to that quote?

Have you read the comments from the Legard out camp?

'anyone who think otherwise is a moron'

'how can people not see it'

'allen was better FACT'

etc etc

Can we refrain from calling commentators "twit" and "tosser"? It's not nice.

You know that putting quotation marks around some words doesn't make them actual quotes, right?

I don't understand why silence is seen as a bad thing anyway; it's TV, we can see what's going on. Almost all other sports have times where there is not much talking—football, tennis, snooker, figure skating, and even F1 in the past; watch any old race from the '80s and often Murray won't say a thing until the cars are round the first corner and all sorted out, and then just say something like 'Piquet leads' (something we won't be hearing again, I suspect), the only reason we expect constant jabbering is because towards the end of his career he began to play up to his own stereotype, and then James Allen tried to copy him. Silence is golden.

Those who say that Brundle is being dragged down are just saying this because they've changed themselves to having a very critical mindset involving listening out for mistakes instead of enjoying the race they're watching. In actual fact, Brundle has been getting progressively worse for years, which is to be expected because he knows less about how to drive these sorts of cars and how they behave than he used to. Anthony Davidson knows far more and provides so much more insight into the cars and reliability aspects as required, usually being extremely specific about what he believes a problem to be, or a mistake that's been made, whereas Brundle is vague at best. Not that it really bothers me, but what does is the constant talk that somehow someone's 'Brundle enjoyment' is being affected by his co-commentator, when in actual fact he has been making mistakes for years now; it strikes me as rather odd.

Not as odd though as someone who thinks that Legard is worse than he was in Australia. Now that is odd.

As for ITV winning the BAFTA for their Brazil 2008 coverage, that's the most bizarre thing I've ever heard. The only input ITV had in their coverage was the intro Lewismania and then their decision to end the programme after the (delayed) race had only just finished and while celebrations were barely beginning, let alone ending, to avoid them having to start Coronation Street 5 minutes late, and to me, that is most definitely not grounds to win an award.

It does when you look for them first (followed by a paraphrase)

To say that the anti Allen mob (anthill mob) are behaving in anything like a worse manner than the Lose Legard Lot (I dunno.. Penelope Pitstop?) is ludicrous.

Actually, I thought their coverage was very good, will never forget when Kravitz waved a British flag towards the Brazillian grandstand.

They actually overran by 15-minutes and had suitable post-race discussion, don't forget the conditions were absolutely appauling for the post-race.

'We're not going to hide who we're supporting today'

*sigh*