“The Official Review” – 2001 F1 season DVD review

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The 2001 season review DVD, again produced by Sony, is something of an oddity. It is not available as a commercial retail DVD, but was given away with early copies of the Formula One 2001 Playstation 2 game.

And it’s definitely worth hunting down because, although still blighted by the same clunky interface as the 2000 DVD, the footage quality is better and the manner in which it is assembled is vastly superior to the dire 2001 video. The races get proper reviews and there’s the usual plethora of video angles to choose from.

As with the 2000 video there’s no ‘play all’ option, nor is there much by way of introduction to the season or the individual races. The commentary is more functional than entertaining, but not as informed as it might be, and there’s rather too much footage of pit stops. But then, 2001 was hardly a gem of a season.

All in all a decent package that was inexplicably not given a full release, and there is no official DVD at all for the 2002 season, which is ridiculous. As you can pick this up for a small price online it’s definitely worth hunting down.

Best bit: Juan Pablo Montoya’s move on Michael Schumacher at Interlagos – a star is born.

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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3 comments on ““The Official Review” – 2001 F1 season DVD review”

  1. Ah! I just realized something: this was Ben Edwards’ first stint as the F1 season review presenter. As far as I know, the VHS presenter was different, as Ben was only on the DVD. But FOM picked Ben over the VHS dude for 2002, and they’ve stuck with him since.

  2. John Bergqvist (@)
    1st March 2012, 16:07

    You’re wrong there, Ben Edwards is on the VHS, he comments on the bits that are the same on the DVD, i.e. just the track action. The buildup and in-between race items that aren’t on the DVD but are on the VHS have the commentator you mentioned. Personally I prefer the VHS as it links it all together, and the DVD feels too dis-jointed for me.

  3. Is there a decent jump in quality from the VHS to the DVD? Even though it’s missing the interplay I’d still buy this if the quality is an improvement. You can find the 2-disc game on eBay for under 5 pounds so I’d consider picking it up.
    ~Steve

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