Lee McKenzie
- This topic has 14 replies, 12 voices, and was last updated 13 years, 8 months ago by
.
- Posts
The Telegraph is reporting that Lee McKenzie will anchor the BBC’s FI coverage for the Japanese Grand Prix while Jake Humphrey will be on Commonwealth Games duty:
What do other British viewers make of her F1 work? Aside from Legard (and if you want to bash Legard please go to that thread to do so) I think she’s the weak link in their output.
She has a very limited set of stock questions – ‘Tell us what happened’ and … err … that’s about it. I appreciate her role is to get on the spot comment from the DNFs mid-race, so there aren’t a great variety of questions for her to ask. But, a stronger presenter would make more of the role and find different ways of asking the same thing.
I also find her in-depth pre race features rather insipid. No doubt the teams’ PR people love them but I take them as a cue to start making my sandwiches for race-time viewing.
A lot of people have questioned the loss of James Allen from TV F1 commentating, I think the BBC dropped the ball when they didn’t take on Louise Goodman. If nothing else, she certainly had a good relationship with Jenson Button, which would have facilitated privileged access during the year he challenged for the title and again this year while he is world champion.
I like Lee. Sure she’s vague with her questions most of the time but the best thing I think is for the driver to explain what happened to their knowledge and from their experience. Loads of reporters go “so tell us what happened”. She could ask some more precise questions after mind.
She knows most of the drivers pretty well though and watches them come through the different series which I think helps.
To be fair, the pit lane reporter role doesn’t really leave room for much else besides asking what happened and looking pretty
Lee is actually well experienced in interviewing drivers, and has run PR for some of them in lower series. The “Tell us about your race” question is generic, but as she has pointed out before exerience tells you that you don’t get mroe information out of a driver by playing jeremy paxman when they’ve just got out of the car, not unless there’s a definite reason.
Her interview with Schumacher after the last GP was great, she allowed him to tell his side, then needled the contrary point of view, and got some good stuff out of him. I think she’s woefully underused, actually.
Having said that, Legard is ****ing awful.
Cringe. I’m not a fan and don’t thing she has a hope in hell controlling EJ and DC.
She doesn’t seem to even do anything, they should get Holly Samos in instead of her if they need a girl on the team.
“She has a very limited set of stock questions – ‘Tell us what happened’ and … err … that’s about it.”
You forgot “You must be bitterly disappointed”
Louise Goodman was an aberration, I’m not Lee McKenzie’s biggest fan but dear god I am elated not to have to hear Ms Goodman’s cat call.
I agree with Kapow and Hairs, I’m not sure there’s a lot she can do besides asking ‘what happened’. One moment that was rather cringe-worthy, though, was in the last race when she asked Alguersuari how much oil he’d dropped on the track after his engine blew. How on earth is he supposed to know that? “Oh, about half a litre, I think, maybe a little less…”
I think it’s only when she does get the chance to try the anchor role that we’ll be able to judge her fairly.
I think they should get Martin Brundle to do it, he was awesome that time in Fuji two years ago when he did it for ITV. It was the one time ITV wasn’t hopelessly jingo-istic and he actually made Blundell look inteligent. Having said that I’ll reserve judgement until after the it happens.
I like Lee McKenzie simply because she’s not Louise Goodman.
Goodman… she was extremely embarrassing. She reminded me of the middle aged ladies who served you your food at school… remember them? She did not need to be presenting F1.
I’d like to see how she gets on.
I like her pre-recorded interviews but we’ll see how she copes with the live situation.
To be fair to her, she only ever gets a couple of minutes witht the drivers after they’ve retired or whatever.
Im more surprised they didnt ask Ted to do it as I think he would have done a great job. They probably did ask Martin so I guess that means he didnt enjoy doing it in Fiji too much.
I will hold judgement until the race weekend as I think everyone should, her role now is very different to what she will be doing in Suzuka so i guess we will just have to wait and see.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.