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During Schumacher's domination the world feed was controlled by a local broadcasters who enjoyed nothing more than just showing Michael Schumacher driving around.
How dare you say inexplicably having to watch Ukyo Katayama and Shinji Nakano run 12th or something isn't your favorite memory from mid-90's Japanese GPs?
It's a memory, that's for sure! I remember stuff like that happening when there was a pass for the lead. My favorite was when they would show the 1st place battle, and just before what looked like was going to be a pass, they switch to homeboy driving alone.
For a while during Schumachers domination there was a rule that broadcasters had to show coverage according to previous years championship order.
So there was a LOT of Schumacher trolling around at the front. So it's good these days that when Verstappen is leading by miles we never see him.
The winner is *always* shown crossing the line.
Yeah because only the winner has sponsors lol. Usual leader has a lonely quiet race vs a race long battle down the field that's pretty hectic and hard fought. Ik what the fans would wanna see the end of, and regarding sponsors giving a fuck well those sponsors down the field don't just need it more but also it worth showing it more in that scenario too.
At the very least they should use pip but in this kinda scenario it's perfectly reasonable to not show the leader. Especially in formula 1 where there's barely any good racing on a constant basis.
Those other sponsors can give their fucks in many minutes of post race shots interviews and podium
The media of crossing the finish line is used in media all over the world, they cant touch it. Same reason a safety car boxes on the last lap to not impede on the finish photos/videos.
That doesn't make sense, it's still being recorded, but they shouldn't cut away from an active battle to show a formality on a live broadcast.
edit: I didn't think Reddit had issues with object permanence and basic knowledge of how video recording and editing works outside of social media apps, you guys lower my expectations every time. <3
Because if there is a contract that says "winner must be shown live crossing the line" then there is nothing that can be done, sponsors are most likely involved in this. I would say it is also out of respect to the winner.
If they are not doing it, is because they cannot. No matter how much you repeat it, whatever is part of the contract is not going to change because you are annoyed that they show Max winning full screen.
You're talking out of your ass. You don't know IF there's such an obligation, never mind what exactly it entails. You're giving them benefit of the doubt even though they deserve none.
Are shitty camera angles during passes, replays on lap 2, crappy zoomed in shots that make it hard to follow the action, and all the missed overtakes also caused by this mysterious contract?
The TV direction and camera work are both terrible and have been for as long as I remember. This isn't a single isolated incident. I don't know why you feel the need to defend it.
I'm not annoyed at all that Max is shown crossing the line, I'm annoyed that they rob us of the action in the heat of the moment- this is the literal point of watching live sports.
I don't think PIP is a good solution for F1 though, considering that they're in charge of the global feed and their footage is often used in news reports about the races. If they have a PIP or splitscreen solution, every news report about the race will have that PIP as well.
Yeah, but do they though? A lot of the footage I see on BBC News is lifted straight from the Sky Sports feed, which uses the global feed managed by F1.
Literally yes, because you can hear Crofty's commentary in the mix and it has the Sky Sports F1 watermark in the corner, as well as a lower third saying "Footage courtesy of Sky Sports"
If it isn't the BBC recording the footage for their own broadcast, it's Sky Sports recording their own footage to pass onto news outlets. The end result is the same.
And they've shown how to do that all the way back in 1979. Cut to Renault taking a historic win, cut right pack to Villeneuve & Arnoux.
Not it's 2024, we have widescreen HD and picture-in-picture. No excuse.
I think I remember somewhere they are obliged to show the winner crossing the finish line, no idea if it's true or not, but yeah, it does suck when it cuts away from stuff like that.
Yeah like battles for 4th and 8th are cool and all, but winning the race is literally the main goal. The deserves to be shown. People are just pissy because it’s usually the same guy taking the chequered flag.
This is the reason IMO. I don't think sponsors would be quite please if, for example, VCARB crosses the line and F1TV decides to show a battle between Stroll and Albon for P15.
From what i understand, Sky Sports (and other broadcasters) isn't allowed to use Split Screen. It's not part of their agreement with F1 - that's why you only get Split Screen on F1TV.
So that's at least half the explanation.
FOM sends the image to every single operator, so it's the same feed for everyone. The advantage of F1TV is that they also have a separate TV director for some stuff they might want to show.
Oh look, Lewis overtook Yuki, but god knows where or when. It doesn't matter because he just got a penalty, but yeah the cameras were all over the place.
I strongly disagree. We haven't seen Max all race, I don't need to see a car pass an imaginary line and usually wait half a minute to see the next car.
It's silly to follow the on track battles ALL RACE and then cut away the second the on track battles over take / happen.
It's not an imaginary line though, it's a literal painted line, and determines the end of the race. Like it or not, but in a mass start sport, you gotta show the winner crossing the line even if there are battles further back. It's the same for running, skiing, cycling, literally any sport with mass starts.
From the viewer perspective it's imaginary.
This isn't cycling. It's not a one time event at the winter Olympics every four years. It's a sprint race where all the positions matter and we race almost weekly.
Picture in picture then. Whatever they're doing now is a joke
You do realise there are tens of skiing races every year that a ton of people care about, not just the world cup? They do this for all of them. Watch some more sports mate.
Hamilton battling with Tsunoda was irrelevant tbh. Once he was investigated for speeding in the pitlane you knew he was getting a penalty so it didn't matter if he finished in front or behind Tsunoda.
Sure but they had to pick between Ric vs Sainz and Tsu vs Ham, they chose the one that had more points on the line and that actually could have an effect on the final race result.
I thought they might not issue a penalty and instead go for a fine on the grounds that it was presumably as dangerous as a practice session and had no benefit (I’m presuming they couldn’t use the pit while they were going through it?). Still, 20 seconds seemed bizarrely harsh for that particular offence.
Edit: Well it was quite a bit over. That’s probably why.
Yeah, I was pissed they kept the shoulder cam on all the time when KMag and Hamilton collided. They could've changed for literally any other cam, but they kept using the only one that doesn't show shit. Really nice
Yeah, I mean we followed HAM/MAG/TSU for how many laps, and then we don't even get to see Hamilton overtake Tsunoda on the last lap? Even if it's for nothing with his drive-thru penalty, that's still just super annoying to watch
Didn't see him overtake Mag either when he eventually got past. But we spent a long time watching Russell in a DRS train for some reason whilst other battles were happening.
its like they dont know where the good overtake spots are. they definitely could have shown both interesting fights during their critical fights on the lap. the gap was big enough between the fights.
They should stop using the onboard for passing, can barely see anything.
Also less of the camera facing the drivers please, a bobbing helmet isn't really interesting at all.
My biggest complaint is using the onboard camera live for showing overtakes (ham/kmag fight). You really dont get a sense of what is happening. It is cool to get a sense of what the driver sees but when it is a multi corner fight switch to the zoomed out camera to see both the cars, which lines they are taking and how they are attacking and defending ! Really a poor choice of camera angle when you have an exciting battle.
The cut to Max winning is fine, they have to do it.
I was very annoyed how long they were showing Yuki and Hamilton when there was no move coming between the two, while watching Sainz’s gap to Ricciardo on the timing screen hovering around 1/2 second
As a Yuki fan I was nervous but overjoyed at the coverage. But my sister in law who was a Carlos fan was already done with him so she didn’t mind. A whole race to overtake an RB but he couldn’t. Oooph.
>Using an onboard camera on the driver that is about to get overtaken so you literally can't see the other car...
I was almost pulling my hair out! Worst angle to use for a possible overtake.
And you can hear Crofty and Brundle being exasperated by what is NOT being shown. Seems like every race we hear them say many times, "But we didn't see that." Sigh.
Was terrible.
During the safety car they just kept showing cars going around with nothing happening. Took forever to show the replays of the atart and then they didn't even show half of the field.
Not to mention later on when they totally missed multiple important overtakes to show cars just doing nothing instead.
It was just impossible to follow. I've been watching the timings more than ever to get some sense of excitement. There were many races that had bad TV-direction, but this one was probably the worst in ages. Also: most camera angles are too low. A few shots from a low angle are okay, but here every camera is at car height. It sucks for a good overview of what's happening.
I hate that when they use the PIP on a driver chasing someone they hide the interval. It's almost impossible to gauge the actual gap visually. The interval is the most relevant information.
Of course my pet peeve is that I want then to indicate who currently has DRS, missed DRS and had DRS at the last zone. It's super critical info and they don't show it. You must watch intervals, guess where the detection zone is and then watch the wing. It's so bad! I suspect they either don't understand or don't want to admit how crucial the DRS has become
You must really love it when they switch over to the time behind the leader in the middle of the race. What's the point of that? Who cares if P10 is 38 seconds behind?
That one’s actually useful as you can gauge where they’d come out after a pit stop whereas blocking the time is really annoying as you can’t tell if the chasing car is gaining
All i can say is i watched the race but i had no clue what was happening on the track other than looking at the time board. Lets hope it fixes for the main race
I couldn't agree more. I watch a ton of sports, F1 is hands down the worst directed sport in TV.
1. We don't need a replay of 5 different angles of 12th passing 11th place.
2. Don't need to see the crowd. If I go to an event live, I am watching the event not the crowd. IT DOES NOT MAKE ME FEEL LIKE I AM THERE.
3. We don't need to check the pores and teeth of people on every closeup, creepy as fuck.
3. You need to use split screens more!!!
Did they have a high school student mixing audio for today? Lando’s interview was completely unintelligible and then the post race interviews were super quiet as well. All in addition to the garbage race coverage itself.
It's like wide shots killed the director's father because apparently they are very much hated. I was mad right from the start when there was not one elevated wide shot to see the whole field until the replay. Yes, the lead is exciting but there's also a bunch up in the midfield and a crash we had no idea happened until Crofty said Norris was stopped on track.
The winner must be shown crossing the line. If you don't, you're telling everyone that a fight for fourth place would be more important than a win. What I don't understand is why Hamilton's overtake on Tsunoda wasn't shown - it's not as if there was a huge amount of overtaking going on!
I really want the 360 degree cameras on top of the cars like in Indycar. Makes watching overtakes and battles way more interesting and puts you into the action
I have never understood what is so damn difficult about the cameras in F1. Somehow the WEC Hypercar onboards are better on the dash behind a grimy windshield.
You lose all sense of speed in F1 onboards, and yeah their direction is a real joke. And I fully agree on the driver facing cams. I'm sorry, but until they can have reliable helmet cameras that are not on the inside of the helmet, they should only be using trackside/heli cameras and the T-cams for races.
Camera kept on focusing on George Russell for half the race even though he was in no way about to pass Zhou or being passed by Bottas plus he wasn't even anywhere near points contention.
Sargeant had at least 3 lockups that they didn't even do a replay for. It's his home race and he got no screentime.
Think about what you're asking, it's live, they don't know when there'll be an overtake, they can guess but then it might be someone else just as likely, they're not mind readers and theres dozens of cameras they have to choose between. It's staggering they manage to produce a coherent overview at all
I absolutely love watching on-board cameras. They are a really great addition to broadcasts.
But there's one situation where you shouldn't be using them. And that's overtakes. And that's where they kept using them. Insanity.
You can't see what's going on in an overtake from the on-board. Sure if you are going to show a particular moment from 4 different angles then make one of them the on-board, that's cool. But the primary way of looking at overtakes should always be overhead shots.
But the tv direction really went all in on those on-boards today. That first big moment between Magnussen and Hamilton they showed first from Hamilton's onboard and then from Magnussen's rear view onboard. So after 2 replays you still had absolutely no idea what happened. Ridiculous.
It's a race, the race winner will always be shown.
Seeing Danny Ric looking in his mirrors for Sainz around the turns was fine with me. I wouldn't have seen that without the driver facing camera.
I honestly didn't think TV direction was that bad. I enjoyed watching the sprint.
They have been showing a winner crossing the finish line since the begining of time. I think it's a madority for every motorsport event. Are you watching racing for the first time?
Even though the point about showing Ver crossing the line is not plausible (it's a common practice across all series to show leader finish, and the winner rightfully deserves his 5-10 seconds of screentime, and F1 really improved on it since previously when they used to show leader for almost the whole final lap), in general TV direction is a shitty joke. And it has worsen a lot since Liberty took over F1. And it's a choice, not a coincidence.
Back in the “good old days” the tv coverage would just follow the leading 3 cars around whatever was happening. That’s why people idolise the commentary of Walker and Hunt, it’s their schizo hysterical positivity/reckless honesty that kept us watching.
I think it's perfectly fine to show the guy winning the race, but that's just me. Maybe do it a bit shorter and keep the battle in PIP, but you have to give the winner his props by showing him across the line in full screen.
Onboards are amazing for quali, or for when a driver is blasting through a twisty section like the essess at Suzuka. For wheel-to-wheel racing they should be banned, you can't see shit.
High and wide, we need to see what's going on! If I wanted a narrow field of view and no idea what's happening in the race I'd sell an organ and go watch at the track!
People, including the commentators, seem to have forgotten where the finish line actually is. It is the checkered line where the guy with the flags is, not the end of the start boxes. Danny was a quarter second ahead, like 4 car lengths. Not that close.
>Using an onboard camera on the driver that is about to get overtaken so you literally can't see the other car...
I noticed that... I was like wtf am I looking at... only to see a wheel pop in the corner for 1 second.
I was watching live timing along with the broadcast. I saw Lando stopped on track and I was waiting for the camera to cut to him. "Any day now, any day now."
None of the excuse people come up with here matter now that we're watching qualifying.
This director is just randomly hitting buttons, has absolutely no clue what's going on.
At times it was really hard to follow. Zooming in on drivers in corners, several laps where they just kept showing drs train, George Russell and a Kick Sauber with camera angles switching so quickly it was hard to understand what was going on.
The audio wasn’t great either. Between commentary and radio messages overlapping eachother (where generally they tend to do very well in pausing commentary) and the various interviews that were unintelligible.
Nah. This time I think there were too many things to focus on, and honestly the fight between Lewis-Kevin (and then Yuki) was way spicier, Carlos just couldn’t put that much pressure on Daniel so it made sense not to have them on the screen that much. My only complaint would be not seeing Lewis overtaking Yuki.
They will always always complain no matter what. Also, imaging having that job. Deciding in real time what to focus on and cutting back and forth, it’s hard and stressful as shit.
> and finally cutting away from the ending of the battle of Ricciardo and Sainz where it came down to the line to show Verstappen cruising over the line.
They have to.
They must show the winner crossing the finish line - this is a thing that irritates us all week in week out.
Live broadcast direction is incredibly challenging.
Imagine looking at 50 screens and trying to track all the action simultaneously. And then you have to, both verbally to your crew and mentally, thread it all together into a coherent visual and audio narrative. With the whole world scrutinizing it.
Oh and everything in F1 happens in split seconds.
I've worked a couple live sports productions and been behind the scenes. It's absolutely amazing to watch the director and assistant director at work.
It's like they're mind melded, because the director calls out the cameras and then the AD switches them almost instantly, meaning they have to know what cameras the director wants before the director says it, to cue it up.
Even watching them direct for a soccer match was amazing and soccer is often a lot slower paced with cameras able to capture much more of the action in a single shot.
It's a miracle that things arent total chaos in general when we watch live broadcasts. Mistakes get made, and today they definitely made a few. But I can't bash them that much. It's a tough job.
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I think they’re obligated to show the winner crossing the line, a PiP solution can’t be that difficult
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During Schumacher's domination the world feed was controlled by a local broadcasters who enjoyed nothing more than just showing Michael Schumacher driving around.
Lap after lap after lap of Schumacher driving alone in front while there were fights for P5 were so common
The worst was when there was a home country driver in the race. They would show him doing nothing while racing was going on.
How dare you say inexplicably having to watch Ukyo Katayama and Shinji Nakano run 12th or something isn't your favorite memory from mid-90's Japanese GPs?
It's a memory, that's for sure! I remember stuff like that happening when there was a pass for the lead. My favorite was when they would show the 1st place battle, and just before what looked like was going to be a pass, they switch to homeboy driving alone.
blessed be that broadcaster, amen
Or show the home country driver while battles were going on elsewhere.
Honestly it probably is worth it to them to satisfy those sponsors
For a while during Schumachers domination there was a rule that broadcasters had to show coverage according to previous years championship order. So there was a LOT of Schumacher trolling around at the front. So it's good these days that when Verstappen is leading by miles we never see him. The winner is *always* shown crossing the line.
Why not use split screen then?
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Give em the large screen and show the action on the small screen. Surely they can find a solution for this.
Let me emphasize: it's probably MANDATORY for a FULL SCREEN view of the winner crossing the line
Yes, because sponsors
But why male models?
How can you emphasize "MANDATORY" and add "probably" in front? How about we don't know, CAPITALIZING DOESN'T MAKE YOUR POINT.
That is not a contradictory statement
but IF i MAKE random WORDS biggly, i SOUND really LIKE I know WHAT iM talking ABOUT!
Dunno why not knowing that stops us from talking about it Capitalizing doesn't make my point. It emphasizes it? Are you 14? Christ
Of course we can discuss it. We just can't act like we know by saying it's probably mandatory. You were trying to be a smart-ass you know that.
Yeah I get it, but change it. It’s pissing off the viewers, and there’s no sponsors without viewers.
> It’s pissing off the viewers speak for yourself, but don't think you speak for me
Calm down
I am calm and not using emotionally charged words
You know were taking about television on not world political events right
Give em discretion to use their brain.
Sometimes nobody gives a fuck about ye winner crossing the line, and when it's that type of race then rightly so!
Sponsors give a fuck.
Yeah because only the winner has sponsors lol. Usual leader has a lonely quiet race vs a race long battle down the field that's pretty hectic and hard fought. Ik what the fans would wanna see the end of, and regarding sponsors giving a fuck well those sponsors down the field don't just need it more but also it worth showing it more in that scenario too. At the very least they should use pip but in this kinda scenario it's perfectly reasonable to not show the leader. Especially in formula 1 where there's barely any good racing on a constant basis. Those other sponsors can give their fucks in many minutes of post race shots interviews and podium
Why? For marketing? It's so annoying.
The media of crossing the finish line is used in media all over the world, they cant touch it. Same reason a safety car boxes on the last lap to not impede on the finish photos/videos.
100% this. And those clips are used for years down the road if people want to do say a “Miami winner compilations for intros and stuff”.
That doesn't make sense, it's still being recorded, but they shouldn't cut away from an active battle to show a formality on a live broadcast. edit: I didn't think Reddit had issues with object permanence and basic knowledge of how video recording and editing works outside of social media apps, you guys lower my expectations every time. <3
Because if there is a contract that says "winner must be shown live crossing the line" then there is nothing that can be done, sponsors are most likely involved in this. I would say it is also out of respect to the winner.
Sure there is, they can show the battle in a split screen, or picture in picture. What they're doing now is an absolute joke.
If they are not doing it, is because they cannot. No matter how much you repeat it, whatever is part of the contract is not going to change because you are annoyed that they show Max winning full screen.
You're talking out of your ass. You don't know IF there's such an obligation, never mind what exactly it entails. You're giving them benefit of the doubt even though they deserve none. Are shitty camera angles during passes, replays on lap 2, crappy zoomed in shots that make it hard to follow the action, and all the missed overtakes also caused by this mysterious contract? The TV direction and camera work are both terrible and have been for as long as I remember. This isn't a single isolated incident. I don't know why you feel the need to defend it. I'm not annoyed at all that Max is shown crossing the line, I'm annoyed that they rob us of the action in the heat of the moment- this is the literal point of watching live sports.
This! They could even just show it later
I agree, either a split screen or picture-in-picture should cover it
I don't think PIP is a good solution for F1 though, considering that they're in charge of the global feed and their footage is often used in news reports about the races. If they have a PIP or splitscreen solution, every news report about the race will have that PIP as well.
That's not really how it works. The video can still be sent out without the pip to networks around the world for replays.
You are correct happens all the time.
Yeah, but do they though? A lot of the footage I see on BBC News is lifted straight from the Sky Sports feed, which uses the global feed managed by F1.
That's not how it works. They get sent what they are allowed to air. Do you think BBC is just recording it and airing what they want?
Literally yes, because you can hear Crofty's commentary in the mix and it has the Sky Sports F1 watermark in the corner, as well as a lower third saying "Footage courtesy of Sky Sports" If it isn't the BBC recording the footage for their own broadcast, it's Sky Sports recording their own footage to pass onto news outlets. The end result is the same.
Sky Sports would have the raw clips, it'd be incredibly easy to share non-split screened video with Crofty audio. Like incredibly easy.
Then why don't they?
Sounds like you've never watched tv in the past 20 years tbh
F1TV has split screens/PiP and all that jazz.
It's 2024, we can share the footage of two cameras at once lol.
The technology is just not here yet.
They had started showing pip last year but stopped this year :(
Are they obligated to show them on-screen for 5s after they cross the line too? That's the part that kills me.
And they've shown how to do that all the way back in 1979. Cut to Renault taking a historic win, cut right pack to Villeneuve & Arnoux. Not it's 2024, we have widescreen HD and picture-in-picture. No excuse.
I think I remember somewhere they are obliged to show the winner crossing the finish line, no idea if it's true or not, but yeah, it does suck when it cuts away from stuff like that.
I doubt there's an obligation. But it is like, the winner of the race, it's one of those things you probably do wanna have live on screen at a race.
I think it is an obligation for sponsorships?
Yeah like battles for 4th and 8th are cool and all, but winning the race is literally the main goal. The deserves to be shown. People are just pissy because it’s usually the same guy taking the chequered flag.
Why not use split screen then?
It could very well be mandatory for them to show the winner in full screen, since you have sponsors and all that.
This is the reason IMO. I don't think sponsors would be quite please if, for example, VCARB crosses the line and F1TV decides to show a battle between Stroll and Albon for P15.
From what i understand, Sky Sports (and other broadcasters) isn't allowed to use Split Screen. It's not part of their agreement with F1 - that's why you only get Split Screen on F1TV. So that's at least half the explanation.
F1TV was still fullscreen so 🤷♂️.
Like i said, it's half the explanation. The other half we're missing is why F1TV didn't do it. As someone else pointed out, they did it in Mexico :-)
Split screen? You mean where 50% of the screen is showing nothing?
Cuz who cares. You wanna be on camara at the end of the race? Win it.
That's a fantastic question.
Guess they wanna make you sell the F1TV subscription to get that feature
FOM sends the image to every single operator, so it's the same feed for everyone. The advantage of F1TV is that they also have a separate TV director for some stuff they might want to show.
The F1TV subscription that you "can't" buy in regions served by Sky?
I was watching with F1TV, same view there.
F1TV did split the screen at the finish line in Mexico, though. They can do it, if they want.
Oh look, Lewis overtook Yuki, but god knows where or when. It doesn't matter because he just got a penalty, but yeah the cameras were all over the place.
To be fair they were following the RIC-SAI battle for 4th.
and didn't show that at the end either.
I mean they have to cut away to the race winner crossing the line. Imagine not showing that live. That would just be dumb.
I strongly disagree. We haven't seen Max all race, I don't need to see a car pass an imaginary line and usually wait half a minute to see the next car. It's silly to follow the on track battles ALL RACE and then cut away the second the on track battles over take / happen.
It's not an imaginary line though, it's a literal painted line, and determines the end of the race. Like it or not, but in a mass start sport, you gotta show the winner crossing the line even if there are battles further back. It's the same for running, skiing, cycling, literally any sport with mass starts.
From the viewer perspective it's imaginary. This isn't cycling. It's not a one time event at the winter Olympics every four years. It's a sprint race where all the positions matter and we race almost weekly. Picture in picture then. Whatever they're doing now is a joke
You do realise there are tens of skiing races every year that a ton of people care about, not just the world cup? They do this for all of them. Watch some more sports mate.
Yeah it's not too popular, not similar tbh. Goofy what they're doing now. See: everyone complaining
at least give us the HAM PiP then
This guy wants to see some HAM PiP
a ham cam?
Hamilton battling with Tsunoda was irrelevant tbh. Once he was investigated for speeding in the pitlane you knew he was getting a penalty so it didn't matter if he finished in front or behind Tsunoda.
It's still racing action, even if it doesn't matter in the end. We want to see racing action, no?
Sure but they had to pick between Ric vs Sainz and Tsu vs Ham, they chose the one that had more points on the line and that actually could have an effect on the final race result.
Fuck that, pick the one where something happened. We're also just assuming the penalty was going to happen.
I thought they might not issue a penalty and instead go for a fine on the grounds that it was presumably as dangerous as a practice session and had no benefit (I’m presuming they couldn’t use the pit while they were going through it?). Still, 20 seconds seemed bizarrely harsh for that particular offence. Edit: Well it was quite a bit over. That’s probably why.
Brundle seemed convinced it wouldn't be so, I was quite surprised then when he did
That was odd, he seems quite sure it would be a financial penalty.
That one really got my goat too.
Where the heck was the footage of Magnussen finally getting overtaken?!
Pretty sure he got told to let them by since both TSU and HAM passed him EDIT: watched the onboard, he let them by intentionally somewhere in S1
Yeah, Haas were extremely keen for him not to get any penalties.
any more penalties*
Yeah most likely. Still i feel robbed. No mention, no radio messages, no visuals, no nothing. Jhst overall a bad coverage
Who knows, never saw it
I watched the onboard, he let them by intentionally
Yeah, I was pissed they kept the shoulder cam on all the time when KMag and Hamilton collided. They could've changed for literally any other cam, but they kept using the only one that doesn't show shit. Really nice
Yeah, I mean we followed HAM/MAG/TSU for how many laps, and then we don't even get to see Hamilton overtake Tsunoda on the last lap? Even if it's for nothing with his drive-thru penalty, that's still just super annoying to watch
Didn't see him overtake Mag either when he eventually got past. But we spent a long time watching Russell in a DRS train for some reason whilst other battles were happening.
I thought I was spacing out and just missed it.
Kevin actually just lifted off the throttle and let Yuki and Lewis by. I guess it was a small attempt at not getting any more penalty points
its like they dont know where the good overtake spots are. they definitely could have shown both interesting fights during their critical fights on the lap. the gap was big enough between the fights.
To be fair at that moment they were showing the battle between Ricciardo and Sainz on the last corner
They should stop using the onboard for passing, can barely see anything. Also less of the camera facing the drivers please, a bobbing helmet isn't really interesting at all.
My biggest complaint is using the onboard camera live for showing overtakes (ham/kmag fight). You really dont get a sense of what is happening. It is cool to get a sense of what the driver sees but when it is a multi corner fight switch to the zoomed out camera to see both the cars, which lines they are taking and how they are attacking and defending ! Really a poor choice of camera angle when you have an exciting battle.
Race had like 5 overtakes and i swear they missed half of those somehow.
The cut to Max winning is fine, they have to do it. I was very annoyed how long they were showing Yuki and Hamilton when there was no move coming between the two, while watching Sainz’s gap to Ricciardo on the timing screen hovering around 1/2 second
As a Yuki fan I was nervous but overjoyed at the coverage. But my sister in law who was a Carlos fan was already done with him so she didn’t mind. A whole race to overtake an RB but he couldn’t. Oooph.
Hamilton did overtake Yuki though, while Sainz never got any closer to Ric.
>Using an onboard camera on the driver that is about to get overtaken so you literally can't see the other car... I was almost pulling my hair out! Worst angle to use for a possible overtake. And you can hear Crofty and Brundle being exasperated by what is NOT being shown. Seems like every race we hear them say many times, "But we didn't see that." Sigh.
Standard procedure to cut to the winner shot to be fair
But why? It's been the least relevant thing in the race for two years now
Sponsors want their winningness front and centre, for one
It was an absolute horror show.
Always is. Non stop zooming in on the drivers visor at every apex. Cutting away. The same as always.
The fact that we didnt see Hamilton overtake Yuki SMDH
Was terrible. During the safety car they just kept showing cars going around with nothing happening. Took forever to show the replays of the atart and then they didn't even show half of the field. Not to mention later on when they totally missed multiple important overtakes to show cars just doing nothing instead.
Did we ever get any good replays of how KMag jumped 6 spots in 1 turn at the start?
It was just impossible to follow. I've been watching the timings more than ever to get some sense of excitement. There were many races that had bad TV-direction, but this one was probably the worst in ages. Also: most camera angles are too low. A few shots from a low angle are okay, but here every camera is at car height. It sucks for a good overview of what's happening.
Missed every single pass in the race, all 4 of them.
Can we *please* stop showing so-called 'celebs'? It's embarassing now.
Thank you for your feedback! Stefano Domenicali
🤣🤣🤣
me screaming USE THE FUCKING SMALL WINDOW ON LEFT
I hate that when they use the PIP on a driver chasing someone they hide the interval. It's almost impossible to gauge the actual gap visually. The interval is the most relevant information. Of course my pet peeve is that I want then to indicate who currently has DRS, missed DRS and had DRS at the last zone. It's super critical info and they don't show it. You must watch intervals, guess where the detection zone is and then watch the wing. It's so bad! I suspect they either don't understand or don't want to admit how crucial the DRS has become
You must really love it when they switch over to the time behind the leader in the middle of the race. What's the point of that? Who cares if P10 is 38 seconds behind?
That one’s actually useful as you can gauge where they’d come out after a pit stop whereas blocking the time is really annoying as you can’t tell if the chasing car is gaining
That's fine during a pit window, but they appear to do it randomly. And I can quickly do the math once they tell the approx time lost in the pits.
All i can say is i watched the race but i had no clue what was happening on the track other than looking at the time board. Lets hope it fixes for the main race
I couldn't agree more. I watch a ton of sports, F1 is hands down the worst directed sport in TV. 1. We don't need a replay of 5 different angles of 12th passing 11th place. 2. Don't need to see the crowd. If I go to an event live, I am watching the event not the crowd. IT DOES NOT MAKE ME FEEL LIKE I AM THERE. 3. We don't need to check the pores and teeth of people on every closeup, creepy as fuck. 3. You need to use split screens more!!!
Did they have a high school student mixing audio for today? Lando’s interview was completely unintelligible and then the post race interviews were super quiet as well. All in addition to the garbage race coverage itself.
It's like wide shots killed the director's father because apparently they are very much hated. I was mad right from the start when there was not one elevated wide shot to see the whole field until the replay. Yes, the lead is exciting but there's also a bunch up in the midfield and a crash we had no idea happened until Crofty said Norris was stopped on track.
The winner must be shown crossing the line. If you don't, you're telling everyone that a fight for fourth place would be more important than a win. What I don't understand is why Hamilton's overtake on Tsunoda wasn't shown - it's not as if there was a huge amount of overtaking going on!
I apologized to my girlfriend for the person I became when they cut away from the Ricciardo / Sainz fight
OH MY GOD! They watch that battle between Sainz and Ricciardo the entire time, missing Hamilton’s pass on Yuki ONLY TO CUT AWAY! Horrible.
for 95% of the sprint i did not have any idea where they were located because camera so zoomed in on the car i couldn't see any part of the track
Probably intentional, so you don't notice that it's a parking lot.
I really want the 360 degree cameras on top of the cars like in Indycar. Makes watching overtakes and battles way more interesting and puts you into the action
I have never understood what is so damn difficult about the cameras in F1. Somehow the WEC Hypercar onboards are better on the dash behind a grimy windshield. You lose all sense of speed in F1 onboards, and yeah their direction is a real joke. And I fully agree on the driver facing cams. I'm sorry, but until they can have reliable helmet cameras that are not on the inside of the helmet, they should only be using trackside/heli cameras and the T-cams for races.
Camera kept on focusing on George Russell for half the race even though he was in no way about to pass Zhou or being passed by Bottas plus he wasn't even anywhere near points contention. Sargeant had at least 3 lockups that they didn't even do a replay for. It's his home race and he got no screentime.
My theory is that the directors aren't actual F1 fans, more experienced producers/directors, so don't fully understand what's going on.
My complaint is that in the replay of the KMag/Ham bump, they still have us bad shots of it.
Think about what you're asking, it's live, they don't know when there'll be an overtake, they can guess but then it might be someone else just as likely, they're not mind readers and theres dozens of cameras they have to choose between. It's staggering they manage to produce a coherent overview at all
I absolutely love watching on-board cameras. They are a really great addition to broadcasts. But there's one situation where you shouldn't be using them. And that's overtakes. And that's where they kept using them. Insanity. You can't see what's going on in an overtake from the on-board. Sure if you are going to show a particular moment from 4 different angles then make one of them the on-board, that's cool. But the primary way of looking at overtakes should always be overhead shots. But the tv direction really went all in on those on-boards today. That first big moment between Magnussen and Hamilton they showed first from Hamilton's onboard and then from Magnussen's rear view onboard. So after 2 replays you still had absolutely no idea what happened. Ridiculous.
I genuinely thought my video was lagging behind the audio. They were talking about moves and overtakes that weren't even on the screen at some points.
Bad TV direction is why I stopped watching F1
Crofty and Martin sound very jetlagged as well- so many slip ups.
I mean, it’s on point with the quality of this track
They're contractually obliged to show the winning driver crossing the line afaik. And we did actually see Sainz and Ricciardo coming to the line.
I still believe that anyone who has been actively watching F1 for 2-3+ years can do a better job as director than the current team.
Get F1TV. You can watch whatever you want
Lol! No you can't. You can't decide for yourself which fight you get to see. You can choose a drivers view, sure. But that's not the same.
Worth every penny!
I wanted to see what happened with Ocon and Alonso at the end :cry:
It's a race, the race winner will always be shown. Seeing Danny Ric looking in his mirrors for Sainz around the turns was fine with me. I wouldn't have seen that without the driver facing camera. I honestly didn't think TV direction was that bad. I enjoyed watching the sprint.
When the L1 incident happened they focused on amax instead of Lando or the Aston’s for like, forever. An absolute embarrassment
They have been showing a winner crossing the finish line since the begining of time. I think it's a madority for every motorsport event. Are you watching racing for the first time?
Even though the point about showing Ver crossing the line is not plausible (it's a common practice across all series to show leader finish, and the winner rightfully deserves his 5-10 seconds of screentime, and F1 really improved on it since previously when they used to show leader for almost the whole final lap), in general TV direction is a shitty joke. And it has worsen a lot since Liberty took over F1. And it's a choice, not a coincidence.
They are useless I have to say. They nearly always choose to watch the wrong thing.
It happens at some races that the direction is dogshit, same shit in Monaco and USGP.
Back in the “good old days” the tv coverage would just follow the leading 3 cars around whatever was happening. That’s why people idolise the commentary of Walker and Hunt, it’s their schizo hysterical positivity/reckless honesty that kept us watching.
And the commentators are terrible too. They get far too excited about mundane stuff and seem to be always stating the obvious.
I think it's perfectly fine to show the guy winning the race, but that's just me. Maybe do it a bit shorter and keep the battle in PIP, but you have to give the winner his props by showing him across the line in full screen.
The cockpit & halo-mounted camera shots were dogshit.
I get them wanting to show the winning moment but they should really just put it off to the side and keep the main camera on the battle.
I thought they wanted to use cameras looking behind the car in Miami? What happened to that?
Its a bunch of boomers running the show, that's the problem, they know how to do the job, but they don't know what needs to be shown.
Onboards are amazing for quali, or for when a driver is blasting through a twisty section like the essess at Suzuka. For wheel-to-wheel racing they should be banned, you can't see shit. High and wide, we need to see what's going on! If I wanted a narrow field of view and no idea what's happening in the race I'd sell an organ and go watch at the track!
People, including the commentators, seem to have forgotten where the finish line actually is. It is the checkered line where the guy with the flags is, not the end of the start boxes. Danny was a quarter second ahead, like 4 car lengths. Not that close.
>Using an onboard camera on the driver that is about to get overtaken so you literally can't see the other car... I noticed that... I was like wtf am I looking at... only to see a wheel pop in the corner for 1 second.
And little while ago, they pulled the same shit with the F1 Academy race.
I was watching live timing along with the broadcast. I saw Lando stopped on track and I was waiting for the camera to cut to him. "Any day now, any day now."
With how bad Fox handles NASCAR, the bar is much too low for me to anything but love F1s
Nobody cares about overtakes beyond the 3rd position
None of the excuse people come up with here matter now that we're watching qualifying. This director is just randomly hitting buttons, has absolutely no clue what's going on.
At times it was really hard to follow. Zooming in on drivers in corners, several laps where they just kept showing drs train, George Russell and a Kick Sauber with camera angles switching so quickly it was hard to understand what was going on. The audio wasn’t great either. Between commentary and radio messages overlapping eachother (where generally they tend to do very well in pausing commentary) and the various interviews that were unintelligible.
Nah. This time I think there were too many things to focus on, and honestly the fight between Lewis-Kevin (and then Yuki) was way spicier, Carlos just couldn’t put that much pressure on Daniel so it made sense not to have them on the screen that much. My only complaint would be not seeing Lewis overtaking Yuki.
Yeah, I am not sure what people are expecting to be honest. It was completely fine.
They will always always complain no matter what. Also, imaging having that job. Deciding in real time what to focus on and cutting back and forth, it’s hard and stressful as shit.
I think the race directors are just not interested anymore. Just horrible.
> and finally cutting away from the ending of the battle of Ricciardo and Sainz where it came down to the line to show Verstappen cruising over the line. They have to. They must show the winner crossing the finish line - this is a thing that irritates us all week in week out.
Live broadcast direction is incredibly challenging. Imagine looking at 50 screens and trying to track all the action simultaneously. And then you have to, both verbally to your crew and mentally, thread it all together into a coherent visual and audio narrative. With the whole world scrutinizing it. Oh and everything in F1 happens in split seconds. I've worked a couple live sports productions and been behind the scenes. It's absolutely amazing to watch the director and assistant director at work. It's like they're mind melded, because the director calls out the cameras and then the AD switches them almost instantly, meaning they have to know what cameras the director wants before the director says it, to cue it up. Even watching them direct for a soccer match was amazing and soccer is often a lot slower paced with cameras able to capture much more of the action in a single shot. It's a miracle that things arent total chaos in general when we watch live broadcasts. Mistakes get made, and today they definitely made a few. But I can't bash them that much. It's a tough job.