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Having watched it again I think it was a 50:50 incident.
Vettel just presumed the HRT would slow down, and get out of his way. He just continued on his line towards the curb ( the racing line) on the outside of the track. He should have given the HRT more room, but obviously wasn’t aware that the HRT wasn’t going to brake on the straight.
Karthikayan could have braked to avoid Vettel in front of him, but he probably didn’t think Vettel would cut in front of him so sharply until he they touched.
However I really didn’t like Vettels attitude, both his gestures during the race, and probably worse, his attitude after the race. I expected him to be at least professional and show a reasonable amount of respect to his fellow driver after the race, even if he felt it was entirely the other drivers fault. I hope his recent success hasn’t gone to his head and he now thinks any driver not fighting for the championship should automatically ruin their own race just to let him through.
I had the free app last year which I downloaded so I could keep track of positions and times when not at my pc. This app was basic but thats all you needed to keep an eye on times and what was happening away from the pictures on the tv feed.
I downloaded the free app, but to say that its basic is an understatement! From what I could tell it offers no functionality whatsoever and is simply a demo for the paid app.
Not having Sky this year I decided to get the paid for app as I’ll be listening to half the sessions on the radio and I thought having the app would give me a better understanding of whats happening.
The app itself I think is fine. It gives you the timing like last year, with a few different displays available if you want. The app shows messages from the race director, which I find useful, and the circuit map with the driver tracker is well done too. (Though I think the cars positions are governed by sector times rather then their actual position using gps). The tyre info is useful too and thats not available on the the formula1.com website timing screen, though it is on occasion wrong. eg. it said VET and WEB started the race on P and O tyres when they were on inters.
There are 2 things I don’t like though: firstly every time I minimise the app to look at twitter etc the app closes and has to be reopened, which can become annoying. Secondly and most importantly the app is very expensive. Thats especially annoying as most of the data is freely available on the formula 1 website. I don’t mind paying for an app but £19:99 is very expensive and I’m not sure its worth that much. I think £4.99 would be acceptable considering its advert free and is very slickly put together.
I eventually justified it to myself my thinking of it as £0.20 a session which doesn’t sound like a lot really.
Overnight figures suggest Sky averaged 874k viewers for the live race, and the BBC highlights averaged 2.73m viewers.
Figures taken from digital spy tv forum, post 235In total thats 0.5m less then the combined race and re run viewers last year which got 2m and 2.1 m respectively.
So lets make some presumptions…
Half the “live” 2011 BBC audience watched the 2012 race on sky.
Most of the rest of the 2011 live race audience listened on the radio / stayed in bed and joined with the 2011 re run audience in watching the BBC highlights show.That leaves half a million people who simply didn’t watch at all. Of course that might not be entirely down to the sky deal but it probably played a part.
Plus you can’t tell from those figures how many people watched both early morning and afternoon shows last year or this year (probably higher this year due to people comparing sky and bbc) and just how many viewers new to F1 the sky channel has brought.
Overall the BBC’s coverage of the race was better then I expected or feared it to be.
I liked the brief intro before they got into the race and no time wasted wandering around on the grid. The race itself was well edited, I barely noticed the bits that were cut, though there wasn’t much cut apart from the safety car period which will always be cut out in a highlights show. I think Ben Edwards and Gary Anderson will improve and relax into their roles in time and I definitely prefer Anderson’s input to Ted Kravits’.
Finally I liked the in depth analysis at the end and they seemed to cover as much as they would after a race they had live.
In the end I was impressed with the quality of the highlights and I think they got it about right though I would still obviously rather watch all the races live on the BBC.
Overall I was pleasantly surprised by the highlights show.
Firstly I liked the introduction bit with the song and that it looked as if links between bits showing them in the pit lane were shot ‘live’. By that I mean the pre qualy section was actually shot just before qualy started and they included the piece to camera were some guy walked in front of DC staring up in the sky at a plane that flew over and drowned out the end of the link.
I think the build up section was just about right, but I think features with a single driver should be left for the build up to the sessions they show live when they’ve got more time to fill.
The actual highlights were edited well. Only the red flag period and the first part of q1 appeared to be left out, which I can cope with. I think Ben Edwards and DC will work well, Ben should be able to provide a better narrative then MB did, just so long as in the future he learns not to talk as much. I liked his BTCC commentary so hopefully his f1 commentary can be just as good.
I think Gary Anderson could provide some excellent pieces in the future. On the radio he came across well I thought, but I think he looked very uncomfortable doing his race strategy piece at the end of the show in front of the camera. Hopefully he’ll get better with time.
Finally I really hope that the race show follows the qualy show in only having a short build up (15-20 mins) as knowing that time is being wasted when we could be watching the action really annoys me. I also hope that we get to see most of the race and only have to lose safety car times and a few laps mid race.
I think it depends on the exact nature of the deal as to whether MB and DC jump ship to Sky. If both have separate teams and the BBC still send a full team to each race and the BBC show full reruns of each race then I think Martain Brundle and David Coulthard will stay as their jobs will hardly change really. If Sky and BBC pool resources and share a commentary team then I really hope Coulthard and Brundle get the job as I can’t see Sky finding anyone better.
If sky choose their own commentators or use the Speed Tv commentators (presumably their American) the coverage will be awful and I’ll be glad I can’t afford Sky. I also need David Croft and Ant Davidson to stay on 5 live, since I’m not getting Sky I want some good commentators at radio 5 live for the practice sessions, qualys and races that I can’t see live.
This is difficult because I think the BBC need to:
1) balance giving an overall narrative to season (not just showing european races that may give the best viewing figures) and have a fairly even spread throughout the season. This is because they need to get casual viewers “hooked” on tuning in every few weeks for a race and hardcore viewers will go and watch Sky if they can afford it or can’t live without every race live.
2) Include what I think are the classics, 1st race, Monaco, Britain, Spa, Monza, Japan and final race. Possibly USA too since it’ll be the 1st race there.
3) Get as many viewers as possible for their races and include popular races such as Canada, Singapore and maybe Korea and India and avoid races that clash with the things like Wimbledon and the Olympics.
So my recommendation would be:
1) Australia. (Early morning start, but its the 1st race so important to the narrative and I love the anticipation of getting up early for the first practices of the season).
2)India. (Depending on how this years race goes, if badly then China to fill the gap between Melbourne and Monaco.)
3)Monaco (Just has to be included.)
4)Canada (often produces good races and on during prime time so will get good viewing figures)
5)Britain (Home GP, so no expensive flights for the production crew.)
6)Belgium (Classic race, and large gap since Britain won’t be missed due to Olympics)
7)Singapore (Racing under lights!)
8)Japan (Classic circuit.)
9)USA (Penultimate race, 1st at a new venue and prime time so not to be missed.)
10)Brazil (Final race, classic circuit.)
I would like to include Malaysia, India, Spain, Germany, Italy, Korea and Abu Dhabi but I can’t so that’s my reserve list. Hopefully I’ve got most of the classics, and they’re reasonably spread out through the season to help maintain a “story” of the year, and I’ve only got one back to back, which is hopefully when the title is decided.
Unfortunately I think I’ve read that Sky get to pick some races for exclusive coverage though which may completely ruin my choices, but at least I’ve got a long reserve list to pick from. In reality I’d like to pick them all for live coverage and pay the BBC to cover them, but if I could afford that I could also afford to pay for a Sky subscription…
I think Shell have track side advertising at most if not all races too.
The track side advertising at GP’s is all organised and controlled by FOM I think so its probably down to the cost that more companies don’t do it, or it could be that FOM only have a limited number of ‘packages’ for businesses to buy so the track side doesn’t get too cluttered with lots of different names.
Do Fosters still sponsor the Aussie grand Prix? I think they do. Their lack of presence is certainly not to with an aversion to alcohol advertising. Just luck at the Force India Car. They have Kingfisher and White and Mckay.
Crap. Forgot to come and visit yesterday.
1) Not that it counts now but I’ll predict that all 3 remaining sessions are rain affected. (P3, qualy and race)
2) 4 (2 Force Indias, a sauber and a lotus)
3) 0.723 (Liuzzi ahead)
The combination of 2 ex drivers is better then I expected it to be. Though I was a little dissapointed this weekend when they either forgot or hadnt learnt the rules regarding the red flag, safety car and drs, and at Barcelona when they kept being surprised every time a leading car left the pits on hard tyres instead of softs despite the drivers having already used their 3 sets of softs. Despite that though they are doing a much better job then last year.
On a slightly different note I thought the post race forum was terrible on sunday. There was far too much hanging round the red bull floater home and having fun joining in the red bull pool party rather then far more interesting analysis and debate. They didnt even show the post race press conference because they were that focussed on helping out the red bull marketing people.
I’m not sure (off throttle) hot blown diffusers will survive till the end of this season. The limited weight distribution was only for this year, so that will be going too I presume.
Other than that I can’t see anything changing that will shake the order up as everything is working pretty well as it is and the teams won’t want to have to invest in a major redesign with the big 2013 changes coming up.
I’m enjoying watching the races this year much more then last. Last year we ended up with large parts of races where the main action was watching a train of cars tour around behind a slower car unable to do anything about it or a brief flurry of activity whilst everyone pitted a third of the way through the race for hard tyres.
I don’t mind Vettel winning all the races as long as he clearly has to fight for it (like today), though part of the fun is watching the ebb and flow in the championship battle, and obviously with one guy winning all the races that isn’t happening yet. (I’m still hopeful it might).
I do agree with the criticism of the world feed director. He/she has a bad habit of cutting away just when something interesting is about to happen and showing far too many irrelevant replays and lingering slow mos of cars that add absolutely nothing.
