Actually they have onboard cameras too. And I really am curious to know what good a zoom would it make.

Only two or three? From Bahrain:

- both Ferraris (Alonso)
- both Mercedes (Schumacher)
- both McLarens (Hamilton)
- both Red Bulls (Vettel)
- Bruno Senna
- Robert Kubica
- Timo Glock
- Heikki Kovalainen

Thanks to various people for screenies

There was probably one or two more which I've forgotten as well. But to say there was 2 or 3, is, well...

No. It's clearly the so called 'races'/processions themselves. The commentators are doing their best to keep your interest. They appear to have their work cut out.

By TV coverage in my opening post, I meant FOM, I wasn't really on about the commentary etc.

Niko Hulkenberg Several times actually, we even got to see his stunt from onboard camera. And I'm only at lap 4, can't be bothered to watch the entire race. It really was boring.

PS: Ok, I watched some more. Sutil passing Kovalainen. Guess what, live onboard. Silly TV director, how could he do that...

Sorry, got the wrong end of the stick.

A few onboards were captured live, yes. But not all.

Oh comeon.... They can't gamble on one live onboard hoping that someone will pass someone eventually. It's better business to just keep cameras on interesting spots and replay onboards if they're interesting. The fact that the director caught that passing live shows flair. Afterall we're in lap 5 and there aren't any clear duels so they can focus. Thumbs up to him.

Yea it was more then 2 or 3 but it was still less then NASCAR has and the broadcast sound, inserts, picture quality, amount of cameras on cars... overall the F1 broadcast still is behind NASCAR and it shouldnt be because F1 should be the pinnacle of motorsports and has a worldwide audience while NASCAR has only the US mainly.

Once you will see a Formula 1 car in all its glory in High Definition, you will understand what the fuss was all about.

Well, I know about the track differences and sure it is more difficult in F1. But it doesn't take rocket science to figure out Turn 1-2-3 complex and Turn 4 in Bahrain are the places where any action will happen with the highest likelihood.
Anyway, look here and you notice what was present at Bernievision ten years ago. OK, multichannel is gone but they are talking about the right camera angles and live-to-air-buttons and stuff. Why don't they use it as well as HDTV? IIRC last year FOM produced all the TV coverage (bar Monte Carlo) itself to assure high quality. Did they change it and hire uncompetent locals again? Or is it Bernie who wants to feed us with shit and then ask zillions for proper coverage as he did with Bernievison?

The F1 TV Coverage was shocking back in the days when F1 was real racing, i.e. before the mid 90's. Even in the late 80's there were hardly any onboard cameras, we missed a good deal of overtaking manoeuvres, there were no on screen graphics, no gaps. Yet we still regard that time as one of the golden ages of F1.

TV Coverage nowadays is a hell of a lot better, replays everywhere, on screen graphics, pit strategy analysis, interviews with retired drivers etc etc etc. The problem is just there is nothing of interest to cover.

It wouldn't hurt, once the race settles down, to ride onboard w/ one driver for one whole lap. But noooooooooo, what FOM do is cutaway before any onboard shot gets interesting.



I hate that too.

Yep. I think this chart says it all: http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/9221/f1...eslineardry.png

I think the biggest problem is that the cars are too similar now, and everything is too strict. Even just bringing back competition between tyre manufacturers would help enormously with the refueling ban. With no refueling managing your tyres should be a difficult thing, but these tyres are way too durable apparently.

There are many problems (aero sensitivity, bad tracks, etc) of course. Making the cars nearly identical in pace makes for close racing in theory, but when the aero prevents anyone from passing (unless they are 2+ sec faster) and they are all wearing out the tyres at the same rate, there is never going to be a lot of passing.

Yes the TV coverage is partly if not mainly responsible.

If they can make the Tour-De-France interesting anything is possible !!!

The coverage over the last two or three years has been much better than previously

Prior to this only the front 6 cars would been shown, thats it, only those cars regardless of what else went on around the track. I put it down to people who are very good at their job but know nothing of the event they are broadcasting.

"Oh Schumacher I've heard of him , make sure show we show a lot of him and show a lot of the ferrari , I've heard of them as well." Next week they will be filming a nature documentary.

Any body remember the famous race at France a few years ago when they showed Alonso in the Renault, individually, for 75% of the telecast.

There have been exceptions but recently they have been willing to show any racing that was going on regardless of position on track.

I would have made it more interesting if I had been doing it.

I totally agree, in theory the GP Masters series had all the ingredients for great racing.... top class drivers in identical spec cars, but in practice the racing was dire, the drivers couldn't pass because the cars had no speed difference and there wasn't much between the drivers. Virtually the same problem as with current as with current F1 in that even the biggest 'advances' are just evolutionary rather than revolutionary and the race is usually won in qualifying, largely due to the stringent regulations within which the teams have to operate.

The budget cap in exchange for technical freedom seemed a great step forward, perhaps a way to recapture the excellent racing of the 1970's where teams ran on tiny budgets but had huge technical freedom. A tyre competition would be another step forward and personally I'd love to see pits-to-car radio comms banned to put more onus on the driver when it comes to tyre and race management. Its terrible to think that clever drivers like JYS, Lauda, and Prost would have no advantage nowadays over fast but half-witted drivers who can follow instructions

Sadly the chart does say everything, the TV coverage is superb now, but the racing is rubbish and even the flashiest TV coverage can't disguise that....

Just look at the coverage that NASCAR gets, hours of bulid up, all support races etc, NASCAR's coverage might seem excessive but it does enthuse you about the sport.

Totally agree. I'd like to see all electronic data collection abolished. No lap traces, no tyre temperature gauges, nothing. The car is set up by the driver's feel and requests alone.

Oh, and can we get better coverage of the starts? The most exciting moment in sports - a 24 car drag race! - and most of the time we're stuck watching it through heat haze because the big zoom camera is a half mile away from start line.

All the cars have cameras but having turning cameras and in lots of different places would surely be too heavy for the F1 cars and change their COG?

Yeah and then you watch a race like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgRPjFvFz4Q and realise you enjoyed a couple of laps of moto GP more than an entire season of F1.

TV isn't the problem, the fact cars can't get within 1 second of the car infront without suffering a loss of performance is the problem. If two cars at the front of the field were duking it out, passing each other on the straights, cutting inside each other in corners and then being re-passed on the exit, the cameras would capture every second of it. But.. they don't, because they can't. That is the problem.

Fix passing, and the cameras will capture it. I think most directors probably fall asleep on the job with F1 these days.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5h-HTv9d4c - that is what we need, drivers being able to slipstream other drivers, get along side them and make a good attempt at outbraking into a corner. At the moment they can't even slipstream.

ABSOLUTELY YES.

For example: There are no cameras in the start-finish line in a perpendicular view in which you could see, for a tenth of a second, the real speed of the cars PASSING BY. I don't understand why anyone didn't think about this.

No cameras in a slow corner covering all the angle-movement of the car passing the corner. Sorry that my technical English is not that good, but there's a hundred of ways to make a F1 race really brilliant since the point of view of someone watching television.

No cameras on the car settled in the left or right side on the central on-board camera "watching" the audience in the live track... I mean: The people is watching the cars. But the cars are also watching the people. A camera on the left side of the car, in a perpendicular vision, could give us the vertigo of the speed when you can't see nothing but things passing by at 300 kms/h.

Drivers could wear, too, on board cameras in their shoulders or in their helmets, so you could be in their shoes while they're driving, passing a turn, etc.

I think there's not a lot of imagination in TV editors in F1. Just cameras with a big deep field that gives us the sensation that the cars are dancing a slow waltz or something...

all the cars either have camera's, or fake ones of the same weight and size etc

indycar and ALMS have moveable camera's too. and NHRA

id like all the cars to have camera's, would be good for safety aswell, for crash analasis , even if its just a go hero one

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLitRm6WwH0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZh_rYFWHuk...feature=channel

helicopter shots arent bad

music in the second one is by a band called slaughterhouse, btw

it's not their fault that nothing happens in the race :/ the before and after coverage on the bbc is brilliant, the races are the boring bits and thats something they can't change.. well.. they could get rid of legard but im not going into that one haha.

the only thing i can really think of is adding a few different camera's but thats about it. with no overtakes even the camera shots will get boring.. maybe they could turn up the engine noises too

this is a feature that has got far too little attention

the consistant comment from those who go to their first gp is how tv doesnt do it justice.

there is little ability to convey the intensity of the noise in particular of a gp. how often are we watching a car only to be hearing the noise of a car going down the front staright. in fact the only time to get a better impression of the noise is action from the testing sessions from the pits or the very beginning when only one ccar on the circuit. this will be difficult to solve but isnt this meant to be the pinnacle of technical sport?

nor close action at the hard breaking points which convey the enormous kinetic energy involved.

why if an overtake from the pits is possible arent we switched to onboard from the overtaking car as well as watching the action from a normal camera with a split screen? why have we not got the possibilities of digital tv seeing as most of us are watching on digital screens(rhetorical question) the use of local producers is just a tragedy and could easily be overcome. bernie gets his way when he wants to - question is whether he really wants to.

is it not too much to ask that we also add computer generated crowds and noise seeing as crowds are getting so small out of europe(tongue in cheek)

I would suggest that few sports are so poorly televissed as ours. americas cup is so well portrayed with the graphics, on board etc. it has really helped to make it a dramatic sport to watch. f1 lags well behind.

well bernie??

I heard it was possible to turn goat shit into honey. Hell look what they managed with NASCAR (with apologies to our US board members)! Great TV, really plastic competition with carburetted standardised lumps that only occasionally need the wheel to be turned to the right. There's far better oval racing available at your local half or quarter mile that run sprintcars.

But more on topic - when the racing on camera isn't captivating you need INFORMATION. The FOM graphics are light years behind Nascar and even obscure race events provide greater on screen statistics. It's the only serious beef I have with the TV of F1 even if that guy Legard is a waste of space and a total bore.

The product we must remind ourselves varies greatly in terms of the spectacle. I thought Spa last year was gripping while Suzuka (normally a great track) was terrible. Bahrain almost reached a new low this year but it is quite possible that (say) Monaco could be a vintage event this year. Much is up to circumstance. But the aero packages represents the biggest limitation to the spectacle. Strip the levels of downforce and allow greater technical freedoms elsewhere then keep on top of it every year.

Further to my previous post, I can say on some authority that the TV directors are doing a reasonably good job. Some of the angles could be improved IMO but the tracks make that difficult - the long straights can really only be covered end-on which foreshortens them - in other words make them look slow on a long lens. On shorter tracks we get round that by offsetting the camera to the outside or inside of the centreline as much as possible.

"We" to explain, I have worked as cameraman on (mainly) motorsport events (100s) and more recently, director (10s) of 2 and 4 wheeled events. My other qualification is I have been a motorsport junkie since the late 60s so carry that passion across a wide perspective of how things have been and perhaps should be. (Doesn't make me right BTW, just gives me a good start point to the criticism).

Most large OB (outside broadcast) events have the director insulated in a truck watching all the monitors deciding where the action is. Other information comes from a variety of sources (incl radio comms from cameramen) but it has always been that some "incidents" happen off camera. Now it's easy to say that NASCAR gets them all but with the TV resources plus the simplicity of an oval layout, there is literally nowhere to hide from the tV cameras. At Spa (for example) it's a little more complex. There aren't (and should never be) fixed cameras but real cameras panned and zoomed by real cameramen acting largely on the command of the director. There will always be off-camera incidents which miss the show and nobody is to blame. Our crew celebrate those who get the "money shot" whether by design (by direction) or by accident, intuition or whatever. It usually follows one camera operator/position. Next time at that circuit it will be another location.

My point is, the TV coverage given the antiseptic new circuits will be limited by the "boringness" of those tracks. Monaco will always look exhilarating even if there is little overtaking, because the angles accentuate speed, because the angles are wider and less "long lens". The HD issue is another one but technically the FOM footage is decent enough. The other stuff that adds to that to make the show need looking at. The BBC seem to me to be an improvement to ITV but in our country that has resulted in us getting practice coverage. We don't get the Brundle pitwalk though which is pretty good at times. Jake is an excellent young addition to F1, well prepared and good humoured. The other guy is showing no sign of growing into the job an is a liability.

Bernie has a soft focus view of TV - "it helps drive the rating but as long as it's OK it's good enough". That appears to be his attitude because it has failed to ever become a TV sport leader despite the number of fans worldwide. He has failed to grasp how important the TV show is to the ratings and therefore the income. He is really the biggest impediment to improving the show whether it be on TV or live from the stands. IMHO, F1 shouldn't be racing at the places, let alone the ridiculous tracks, that they are in 2010.