Legards problem isn't always what he says, but the way he's trying to come across as an authority figure by mimmicking a football commentry "accent".

Brundle got a few things wrong yesterday, but he acknowledges them, appologises, and clarifies what actually happened, or what the running order actually is. He isn't trying to come across as an infallible guru. He just sounds like a bloke enjoying the race with you.

Legard on the other hand, made similar mistakes, but just ignores them to try and save his superficial guru persona for anyone stupid enough to not have noticed.

I can't remember which drivers were involved, but there was a moment whereby a significant overtake took place, I think it may have been Button on Hamilton, Brundle brought attention to it, Legard acknowledged it, then Legard decides now would be a good time to run down the order.

He does this by seemingly looking at the same live timing screen we get, and he said something like:

"So it's Glock from Trulli from Hamilton from Button..."

Where only half a second before, he acknowledged that Button had just gone past Hamilton.

Later on Brundle almost made the same mistake, but stopped himself halfway through, had a bit of a think, said sorry and then read it again correctly.

It's like Brundle enjoys the race, and is himself, and Legards priority is trying to sound like a commentator.

That said, asking for Allen to replace him weakens the argument against Legard. Allen seemed just as in love with his own voice.

Final thought: It's like Brundle face-palms along with you, and that's what makes him cool

Couldn't agree more.

Legard is both a twit and a tosser!!

Completely agree.

I can just imagine the outrage here if the BBC were to hire James Allen.

I think the problem here is not short-memories, but a general lack of knowledge. So you don't like Legard? Well, you're not alone. But to insist the BBC replace him with The Cock? Now you're just having a laugh! There are better commentators out there who would be more than happy to take the F1 job, so there's really no need to subject the rest of us to that greasy-haired dickhead.

I was following the Oxford rules of English.

Silence is bad because it's F1, not genteel golf or snooker. I want to be entertained and informed, not suffer silence or have what I'm seeing described over and over. There's a difference between description and commentary.

Legard describes, he doesn't commentate.






I understand a lot of people didn't like Allen. Personally I thought he was excellent and never quite understood the criticism. But I think descending into swearing at him is a bit unfair.

It's not an either/or situation: there are plenty of options other than Legard or Allen. Such as David Croft, who has the advantage of already working for the BBC. Although that would make watching the darts even more surreal.

Alert the mods! There's someone on the board with morals. This kind of behaviour must be quashed!

Calm yourself, Alexis. You may like Allen, but he was even more unpopular than Legard. ITV had to close down their forum because he was so unpopular and people said worse things about him than I just did. Even Brundle couldn't hide a snigger when someone asked him about Allen at a book signing.

I would much rather David Croft took the job. I just downloaded the Radio 5 Live commentary and he really is far, far superior.

On radio. He could be very lost on TV (GP2 in 2008). He was a bit like the other guy who went from radio to TV. That Legard fella.

He was bad on GP2 last year, and yet he's been excellent this year again. And he sounds less of a radio commentator than ever: it sounds like he's commentating for TV. Even Davidson made a mention of seeing something before correcting himself and changing it to hearing.

I agree, I just think there is only so much information that can be brought to the commentary and that I'd rather have the gaps in between those times filled with silence than drivel or description.

What's the point of having Lee in the pits when Ted Kravitz is there and is far more experienced?

Pushing on now
round the corner
making hay
w from a from n from k from e from r

supposed to be grabbing drivers the second they are out of their cars. Ted is there to get strategies and tech stuff.

She didnt have much to do in Bahrain then, 1 retirement...

LOL. Poor old James.

I like David Croft though - I wish Anthony could get a drive for next year and then we can have Croft and Brundle together on TV.

Martin Brundle and Ben Edwards, my dream combination

I don’t think much of Legard, but he is doing a better job than Brundle IMO.

I appreciate that Brundle is well thought of, and I felt the same way for a long time, but he now spends far too much time talking and not enough time thinking. Between the two of them, they took over half the race to work out that Button was going to win, when in fact it was fairly obvious from the early laps what was likely to happen, if you looked at the data.

At least Brundle was honest enough to admit that he misunderstood a radio message about the prime being slow, but if he could just shut up a bit more and spend more time looking at data and thinking, he could still be as good as he was a few years ago. At the moment, he's just trying to do Legard's job and neither of them is doing Brundle's job.

James Hunt's classic catchphrase 'well actually Murray' perfectly encapsulates what Brundle should be doing. Walker babbled, Hunt came in from time to time with considered insights.

One thing that really annoyed me was neither Brundle or Legard talked about how bad the Toyota strategy was. I was amazed the neither one of them said that putting the hard tyres on for the second stint compromised their race.

He missed the single key moment of 2008 though. The much maligned Allen did not.

i'd say winning it for hamilton's win in canada 2007 was even more insane-pre race was absolutely nothing special, nor the commentary, they had no control over pictures, and they barely had time to show them spraying champagne on the podium, with absolutely no press conference and from memory no analysis either, more just a 'well done to lewis winning his first race' type comment

That's my point really - that is Brundle's job.

It was amazing that he confused the meanings of the terms primes and options in that radio message, but surely that shows that he talks without thinking first. And because he didn't get that right, he didn't see the relevance of it to Toyota's stupid strategy, which in the end held Vettell back almost as much as Trulli.

Have the Allen haters turned into Legard haters by default of hating who talks over the F1 or is it the other way round?

Possibly.

Still, I think on one hand you have someone that is annoying and doesn't, really, love the sport like most fans do. I.e. Legard.

On the other hand you have someone, Allen, who is every bit as annoying, and maybe more so, but is just as passionate, or perhaps even more so, about the sport as you are.

Both are annoying, me, I'd prefer to be annoyed by the latter.

I agree completely. I generally really like Brundle, but he seemed all over the place on Sunday. I called the top 4 (assuming no problems) within the first half dozen laps based on the relative quali weights and track position. 2/3 into the race Brundle was still talking about Rubens as a possible winner?!

The whole team seemed to miss a lot of the action thoughout the race - Massa's wing, Toyota's strategy - esp. the length of Glocks first stop and so subsequent weight, the BMW damage, Piquet's speed/position relative to Alonso, etc.

I am sure the commentators rely heavily on the pit team and other support staff to feed them detail of what is happening, and other talking points, and that seemed to be really lacking this weekend.

I still prefer it to JA and ITV though, and am prepared to give them some time to grow the relationship. I'll put this one down to the heat!

I think Brundle is short of time and attention now to look at things, with having to talk nearly all the time. Legard is a dead weight, Brundle is on his own up there.

Did you not spot that on your own?

Allen is more annoying and forces emotion into his voice, any passion he has is overridden by the horror of hearing him try and make it sound like he's interested.

I think they’re in different areas; Ted is in the Pit Lane itself to comment on and observe the pit stops etc and Lee is in the Paddock, the area behind the pits with the team transporters to grab drivers and team personnel transiting between the garages, transporters and hospitality suites.

If Legard grinds to a halt - they can cut to the paddock and have her overalls fall off.

I'll copy and paste a comment I made on Digital Spy last night:

---------------------------------------------------

The forum was good, as was pre-race, really enjoyed the Ferrari bit, even though I'm a Ferrari fan. Now.....

Legard and Brundle were both as bad as each other today, several mistakes from both today:

- At the start failure to mention Glock in the lead (mentioned by several posters)

- Raikkonen 8th/9th confusion (again; already mentioned)

- Button coming out of the pits, the two NEVER even tried to convey some excitement, it seemed dull and drab, if I was the commentator, I'd be like: "Button coming out of the pitlane; where are the Toyotas? (brief pause) There they are coming down the start finish straight, and Button is back out in front of the Toyotas; Button benefiting hugely from the Toyotas being held up by other cars....." - they FAILED to convey excitement, same with Glock/Trulli. A key thing to get Mr Joe Bloggs involved is the action by conveying EXCITEMENT, unfortunately Mr Joe Bloggs seemed like a lost bunny I'm afraid.

- At one point in the lead stages it shown Massa coming on the start finish straight, a graphic was on the screen showing his times, it clearly stated he was in the 1:36s (I think the leaders at this point were in the 1:34s). A few seconds later Brundle says we are looking at Raikkonen, when it was clearly Massa, do commentators fail to look at helmets when commentating, that's one of their first points of reference right? Brundle went off on one about Raikkonen, when we weren't even looking at him, and no REFERENCE WHATSOEVER regarding the laptimes and why he was lapping that slowly (even though I'm a Massa fan, it'd be nice if they actually referred to it on air, if I was commentator, Jonathan Legard should have said: "There's Felipe Massa. The graphic there showing he's lapping in the 1:36s; the leader's for comparison are lapping in the 1:34s, he's lapping TWO SECONDS off the pace, TWO SECONDS! Martin, why could this be, do you think he's struggling from the damage caused earlier?" (inviting discussion in Brundle's direction as to why it could be)

I know it wasn't the most interesting race in the world, but even by my standards I found the commentary shockingly drab, poor and abysmal.

Rant over.

Brundle is co-commentator. He is there for additional facts, insight and background and to support the main commentary guy.

At the moment Legard runs out of things to say and doesn't go beyond describing what's on screen. So Martin has to step in and act as main commentator a lot of the time, which isn't supposed to be his remit. So his commentary suffers as his role changes.

Notice that the 60:40 Allen/Brundle talktime split is now 50:50 and often 40:60 Legard/Brundle now.

Not taking into account the 5 / 10% dead air time we now get.

Not only did they fail to convey the excitement they failed to inform what had actually happened till over a lap later which is even worse. Luckily I was on live timing and knew what happened before they said anything to place my bets.

I think I know why this is now. I think its so the countries that have BBC commentary can go cleanly into a commercial in dead air time.

Yes that's good, i would suggest anyone else giving that a go, don't expect love and kisses from loved ones missing your attention though

Shes used to it. I earned a tenner laying in bed with my laptop, live timing and betfair to buy her lunch after the race.

Signatures not coming in particularly 'thick and fast' as Legard would say...

Is that ROLF's one or has he started his own?

I'd be surprised. That would mean that each and every other broadcaster would have to have the same amount of breaks, for the same length and at the same time.

I would agree, but will it ever happen?

Not if Ben wants to keep A1GP and BTCC commitments.

Even worse, in China, something like: " you don't mind a processional race if that (Hamilton winning) is the result". Obscene!

I noticed on the the Bahrain practice commentary (i can't remember which session - maybe P1) when Croft started banging on about how he had spoken to someone from FOM TV and complained about the quality of the Brazilian TV coverage: that they should have done a better job of showing what was going on with Glock and Hamilton. Bit of a bit of sore point, eh David?

Particularly loving number 17.

And number 23!

and 22...


Nice to see they whichever moron it was couldn't spell my s/n

That wasn't you? Man, I thought you were being all sarky and brilliant.

This is fantastic .....

Here I am, Jonathan Legard, talking rubbish, Record broken for holding breath underwater... Jonathan LEGard.... Waffling on, here is a corner, reminds me of a similar corner in 1981, I'm really waffling on now, here I go, driving people round the bend, and then the next bend, followed by another, 51 degrees track temperature, Jonathan Legard, really testing peoples patience now, Jonathan Legard, round 4 of the Formula Lun season, and I'm in real trouble now.

The final word in that sentence should have alerted you that something was wrong.

Instead???

Edit: Oh! Brilliant.

*facepalm*