So, are you satisfied with your TV F1 commentary? *Monza spoilers*

Seeing on British forums, lots of people seem to complaint about ITV commentary, it makes me wonder how do folks feel about the TV commentary from their countries on this forum?

Personally, being from Slovenia here's my take on it(on ours):

In the 80's and early 90's there was a very knowledgeble guy on who use to do the broadcast, however he spoke in very monotonous tone and even when there was action was on the track, didn't get excited much.
Quite frankly, he bored the hell out of me, he is now doing the commentary for Indycar, and he still knows lots, but I am sorry to say is dull.

In mid 90's commercial television got the rights for F1 and someone else took over, and he's still doing it, very pashionate about his F1, not that knowledgeable, however he's got great contacts and behind the scenes info, but instead of talking about what's going on the track, he gives us the latest scoop on the gossip.

I swear you'll he get the latest info on who's getting married during qualifying Once you get by his slightly annoying voice, you'll like him, but not to enjoy the commentary as such, least not me.
He doesn't supply enough info about the race or technical issues ., and I switched to the another channel really quickly.
Here he is getting all excited in Interlagos 2007 in his commentary boot.



I don't hold it against him by any means, at least he's passionate, however the said lack of wanted commentary makes me not watch it.

And further more, even if he got it right, I think Croatian commentary is the best I've heard, the two guys (Ivica Blazicko and Neven Novak) are well informed about technical stuff, funny, entertaining, pashionate and allround world class broadcasters IMO.
So I watch F1 races on Croatian national TV and I enjoy it.

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Edited thread title for spoiler warning

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GPGSL career;
Current team: Team ShadowSubaru, Previous teams: MPR, Minardi
starts:100 Wins: 12, Podiums: 34, Fastest Laps: 14, poles: 12 Points: 708
winner of Belgian GP (s1), Australian GP (s1), Canadian GP (S1), Brazilian GP(s4, s5), Hungarian GP(s3), Italian GP(s3), French GP (s5,s7), Monaco GP (s4) and USA GP



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 09/19/2008 02:01PM by BAR#10.

here in wet, windy britain, i think the commentary's fine. i think murray would just be the best, if i'm not very much mistaken, (geddit..) but appreciate what we've got.

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I'm content with the commentary we get in Britain, but Murray won't be doing it any more, he's in his mid-80s and we need to give him a break!

On the subject of commentary, having watched a couple Indycar races this year, I nearly fell asleep through both, the commentators (dunno who they are) musta been sending sleep waves over the air; they just didn't seem interested. Watched a couple races from the mid-90s, and Paul Page and Derek Daly had me hooked every time, even though the races were mostly processions. Page is doing the NHRA along with his mate in the pits from the Indycar days, but he should be doing the Indycar commentary full-time again.

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i actually dont happy with the f1 commentary.

i enjoy the f1 races in STAR SPORTS channel and the commentators often supply many wrong information like they sometimes cant identify the difference between MCLAREN and FORCE INDIA ....also they cant differ the no.1 or no.2 driver of a team ..like they say "hekki is in the pit"...where there is hamilton actually and vice versa.

in total they are not bad but they should improve a lot i believe.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/04/2008 05:32PM by sunny1304.

Watching NASCAR and Indy Car perhaps means I am spoilt, but I can't stand the British F1 commentary (apart from Brundle).

NASCAR is a redneck sport. The cars are simple and a lot of people look down on it. Yet the races are broadcast in HD surround sound, online, with picture in picture and a whole host of other features which F1 doesn't have. The commentary team perhaps don't have the best grasp of the English Language (but they again, could you claim Allen and Mark Blundell do?) but they treat the fans with respect and talk about technical items.

F1 on the other hand is still struggling along with its HD coverage and its net coverage is terrible at best. The ITV commentary team treat the fans like morons and seem to take joy in explaining every session why the tyres have a white stripe down them.

Why does the redneck sport talk about technology and show respect for its fans, and the "most advanced motorsport in the world" talks about painted stripes and treats the fans like idiots?

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DaveEllis Wrote:
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> F1 on the other hand is still struggling along
> with its HD coverage and its net coverage is
> terrible at best.

don't worry dave, bbc are back soon!!!!

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It is a joke the premier motorsport has yet to move to HD. For us britons next year its up to FOM. BBC have it just F1 does not.

Commentary isnt that bad. Its quite funny on occasions. James Allen is a cock but thats because he plays the cock. He has to play the stupid man so Martin can clean up after him. I would much rather he be himself because I bet he has alot to offer. Mark Blundell is the one I cant stand. Apart from being fat he cant talk and all the f*cking time in the press conference it cuts to him speaking rather than 2nd or 3rd place finisher! I dont care what he thinks!!!!

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"Trulli was slowing down like he wanted to have a picnic" LOL

I agree with Dave that the information feed we get in the UK is poor, even from the brief experience I have of watching NASCAR for 2 weeks whilst on holiday in America.

However, the thread asks about the commentary, and I actually don't find it that bad. James Allen has improved considerably over the past few years IMHO. I know everyone loves Murray Walker, but whilst Murray was more verbose and emotional than James, he was also terrible at telling you what was going on with any accuracy.

What makes ITV's coverage so poor is that they feel the need to interview Lewis Hamilton about every single thing that happens in F1, regardless of whether or not he has any right to comment on it. We never get news on the other drivers. It's always about what Lewis is doing, has done, will do and might do. If you class the pre-race show as part of the "commentary", then yes, that part is awful (someone sack Mark Blundell, for goodness sake!) but for me, the in-race commentary in the UK is fine.

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btw something ive noticed, but since the BBC have announced they will take over from 2009 the itv team seemed to have stepped each weekend with providing something interesting, maybe for a seat at BBC? The practice session analysis was quite good from Ted Kravitz.

Locke - agreed about Murry, a great character but his accuracy was terrible and sometimes even annoying.

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"Trulli was slowing down like he wanted to have a picnic" LOL

Me being a student, I can't afford to buy Premiere (German Pay-Per-View channel which broadcasts F1), so I have to watch on RTL, which is free... but God almighty, those commentators have to be the worst in the world!

Christian Danner, himself a former F1-driver (late 80s, Zakspeed and Arrows I believe), at least has some knowledge on the technical/strategical/physical side of it, but he doesn't understand what's happening way to often. Further than that, he hasn't a decent grip on German, he makes quite a lot of mistakes and never seems to learn, he still makes the same mistakes he's made years ago.

Then we have Heiko Wasser, who still seems to know jack s**t about F1, talks rubbish for the whole race, keeps repeating himself and what's more, seems to miss about every interesting thing happening on track unless probably it's something as obvious as a crash. I remember at this year's German GP I started counting how many times both of them completely overlooked stuff (position changes through pit strategy at several occasions (Vettel/Alonso one of them) for example or Kovalainen overtaking Kubica), but I gave up after a while...

In holland we've got Olav Mol, and I am quite satisfied with him. He's quite enthousiastic, but always objective. Sometimes, he misses some major things, but it's not easy to see it all as a commentator.

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In Italy we have two commenter: one from the Italian State TV (RAI) and the former Ferrari driver Ivan Capelli. Not bad, but a bit boring sometimes.
In the pit-lane there is a journalist who speaks a good German and a not-so-good English, but it's enough to be understood by the drivers. I remember they used a stand-in journalist for the pit lane once, it was in hungary, maybe last year, and he did a terrific mistake in English saying "What did it happen?"!
Also an engineer is with these guys this year.

i love the way that blundell is always given a yes/no question, its so ruddy pointless.

Usually it goes like

Steve Ryder: So Hamilton won today by quite a bit didnt he?
Blundell: Yes he did blah blah.

The rest is ok. In my opinion James Allen is no where as bad as people make out, there is major rimming with all commentators, just look at Hansen in the football whenever Liverpool play.

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I reckon Allen would be better if he was in England (while the race was in Belgium). He seems to get distracted by what is going on on the track in front on the commentary box rather than on the screen at the time. This causes him to miss things which are obvious to the people at home. E.g In Canada I remember a Toyota blowing up near the start finish line. This was shown on the telly, but Allen didn't notice until the driver was shown walking back down the pit lane. Even my dad who wasn't paying much attention shouted at the TV at that point.
The best commentary by far is the five live commentary of practice sessions. They know that only F1 fans are listening and so they chat casually about the issues effecting the sport at the time. They have ant davidson who is AMAZING at explaining the technical details and knows exactly what is happening from a few seconds on in car footage.
With the TV coverage on free to air TV they know they have to appeal to a wider audience and so can't get too in-depth, however completely missing things that the people at home can clearly see is just un-professional.

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Cool, lots of oppinions, various countries, keep it coming.
sunny1304, which country?

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GPGSL career;
Current team: Team ShadowSubaru, Previous teams: MPR, Minardi
starts:100 Wins: 12, Podiums: 34, Fastest Laps: 14, poles: 12 Points: 708
winner of Belgian GP (s1), Australian GP (s1), Canadian GP (S1), Brazilian GP(s4, s5), Hungarian GP(s3), Italian GP(s3), French GP (s5,s7), Monaco GP (s4) and USA GP

Well, here in Portugal, since F1 started to be broadcasted in a pay per view network the coverage started to be more intensive, which is a good thing, and the commentaries are not so bad, the commentator has lots of experience, and there's usually a driver co-commentating, like Tiago Monteiro, but at times there are some drivers there co-commentating that were never in F1 or are still working to get there one day, that, along with the commentator himself, sometimes don't know what they are talking about.

Sometimes the thing that annoys me the most is when the commentator is talking about the track. He starts to guess what a certain corner or section of the track should be, when he never tried at least to run a lap in an F1 simulator, like rFactor or something, to at least know a little more about the track.

But, in general, is not so bad.

If want the worst of all kind, you should hear the guy who does the comments for the IndyCar Series. The guy doesn't know s**t about what he is talking about. Therefore, he starts making up things. The most recent I can remember was during the Detroit race when he was telling that the IRL changed its name to IndyCar Series this year, when CCWS merged with ICS. How come you let guys that never heard or saw anything of a determined series commentate a race of it?

And there's lot more...

here in quebec it's RDS: they suck so bad
first of all they describe from studio in montreal unless it's the canadian gp witch is the only one they actually are there; they have a reporter there witch is Christian Tortora and he is always spoiling what happens before you actually see it on tv because they delaying the diffusion of 5 to 10 seconds to find what to say, and mostly they just translate word for word what other channels are saying
sometimes they even bring back old drivers; like nakano looks to be driving for williams this year, witch is nakajima, just an example, they aren't really good and makes you fall asleep easily

speedtv has the best commentator imo, david hobbs is so funny, bob varsha and peter windsor; great team

PЯuИNИ



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DaveEllis Wrote:
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> F1 on the other hand is still struggling along
> with its HD coverage and its net coverage is
> terrible at best.

From what I've heard too, A1GP is supposed to be in HD on Sky Sports next year, the series which is supposed to be inferior than F1 Problem with A1GP is I've got a bad feeling that if Ben Edwards gets the nod for F1, James Allen will move to Sky to commentate on A1GP >_<


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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/07/2008 11:49PM by Ianwoollam.

Here in Spain (I'm lucky I can see 2 broadcastings at the same time + ITV Stream) we have two poor commentators called Antonio Lobato and Gonzalo Serrano. The only thing, De La Rosa is with them... in Tele5.

Also I can se TV3 (Televisió de Catalunya) with good commentators (with Gené's brother with them...) and 16:9 image... also, ITV for me are good commentators, better than the Tele5 clowns (except De La Rosa).

I'm satisfied with ITV and TV3.

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Ianwoollam Wrote:
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> James Allen will move to Sky to commentate on A1GP >_<

David Croft will get the Beeb job. I'm certain of it. As I've said in today's race thread though, he's worse than Allen.

It's just another Hamilton fanboy, yet this one doesn't know anything, whereas you've got to hand Allen that compliment - he knows his stuff (even if he does play the dumbass most of the time).

This weekend Croft kept describing Les Combes as "the chicane". BLASPHEMY! (if technically probably correct). Why not go that bit further. Call Eau Rouge "the chicane". Turkey turn 8 "the curve". He shouldn't be allowed near a microphone for TV. He usually works on the radio because you can't see his cockups.