F-1 in one hour.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

Cool race! It's nice to finally see some decent racing on American television at any rate, even if the coverage and commentary has a bit to be desired.

Then again when your alternatives in that time slot are golf and NASCAR, it doesn't say much. . . but at least it's a start. . .

[Steve PH]

For what its worth the fuel rig destroying incident was, to the best of my understanding the guy with the lolipops fault. He controls the "pit" and is only suposed to release the car once everyone is clear. MS slowed down during the middle of the race because his second set of tyres had a graining problem.

Not a bad race but Imola is not a good circuit for overtaking and the TV director didn't seem to be interested in anyone bar Alonso and Scheuy.

[Jims5543]

Originally posted by Ronbo
They also failed to show the drivers receiving their trophies and the traditional champaigne spraying. They cut to a couple of quick interviews after the German national anthem was played on the podium.

Regarding the camera work I think the FIA provides a worldwide television feed, so that's beyond their control.

The post race was really botched. If that was the standard camera feed I would be suprised. There were too many times when it seemed the camera could not keep up with the action.

It was good to expose the USA F-1 on regular network telivision. The unfortunate part was it was not what we normally get to watch. So it was not the best foot foward sort of speak.

I too found the announcers to be very scattered and could not finish a though coherently. There was some good racing further back in the grid and it was barely mentioned.

As far as MS holding off Alonso, yes it was great driving and appropriate paybeck for last year. Last year Alonso screwed with MS braking early and taking advantage of the Renault traction control to pull away after balling up MS.

Kudo's to MS for driving hard and holding him off without any cheap tricks. It was obvious the Ferrari had more straightline speed and was struggling in the turns. I watched the front wing closely during the last pit anticipating an adjustment and man, they cranked on that wing. A LOT of turns were put in.

When Alonso pitted in, I knew it was about to get exciting. The last 15 laps were great with some good racing going on. Alonso made some mistakes and it seemed like MS got his speed back.


But I am sure Flavio will dismiss this Ferrari win as staged because it was on network television in the US.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

Originally posted by Steve PH
For what its worth the fuel rig destroying incident was, to the best of my understanding the guy with the lolipops fault. He controls the "pit" and is only suposed to release the car once everyone is clear. MS slowed down during the middle of the race because his second set of tyres had a graining problem.

Not a bad race but Imola is not a good circuit for overtaking and the TV director didn't seem to be interested in anyone bar Alonso and Scheuy.

Seemed to be pretty blatantly the lollipop guy's screw-up. How much you want to bet he's out of a job this morning? That's actually one of the more senior jobs on a pit crew too.

[Jeff Higgins]

It was great to see F1 on one of the "big three". Yes, the commentary was dumbed down so the cross-over NASCAR crowd could understand it, but it didn't detract from the battle at the front. Or from several others that we didn't get to see.

They were relying on the local feed for video. The announcers were not even there. SPEED does this as well, with only the guy in the pits actually on site. The race announcers are watching the feed just like us. At Imola, that feed will be watching Mikey no matter where in the field he may be running. In Japan it's Sato, so you get to see the back half of the field.

There were a couple of technical comments that were made in error. Right at the start they mentioned Renault's "superior launch control"; launch control has been banned this year. As far as Ferrari's work with the seamless transmission, Honda has been running one all year in their cars. Ferrari won't be the first to bring it to F1. So maybe it's best they didn't get too technical; they screwed it up most times they tried.

[oldE]

A few notes:
TSN coverage was great. The TV feed, unlike the first three races which were covered by Bernie Ecklestone's TV group, came from the Italian network. Sometimes you didn't get to see just what you wanted, but the commentators knew what was going on.

MS's lap times in the second and third stints were due to overall weekend strategy. Ferrari, knowing it was almost impossible to pass on this track (as evidenced last year) had to get on the front row. In order to do so, they used up the best laps in most of their available sets of tires. Michael got on the pole, used a fresh set for the first 1/3 of the race to build a cushion, then had to use the worn tires. If MS had made 1 mistake, FA would have won. Renault erred in bringing Fernando in before Michael. I was surprised MS could drag that understeering beast around in time to get out in front of the Renault after his second stop. The guy can deliver when the pressure is on.

The Ferrari's lap times improved a bit in the last stint, but by less than 1 second / lap. With about 10 laps to go, they (MS & FA) were about 5 seconds behind Jacques Villeneuve and there was some speculation as whether lapping him might make an opportunity for Alonso to get by. A few laps later, it was not an issue, as Villeneuve was pulling away.

The guy with the 'lollypop' did his job as he was trained. When the fuel rig man starts to haul the fitting out of the car, the sign goes up. The replay I saw, showed the fuel rig guy hauling on the fitting, but it stuck. I remember McLaren had a similar problem with rigs in hot weather a couple of years ago. (Track temp was about 40 deg C) With everyone's reaction times at hair-trigger settings, when the lollypop went up, the thumb came off the button and **** started to happen.

The racetrack is getting a major re-do for next year, to enable the cars to pass again.

Les

[David]

It looked to me like Alonso didn't change tires in his last pit stop. I know the Michelin guys have been known to run two stints on them. If this is the case, I guess they were trying to have a super fast stop so they could cycle ahead of Schumacher and it didn't work out so well. This would explain why Alonso's car went off more in the end.

It also seems like Schumacher has more "bad" sets of tires than the Michelin drivers.

[oldE]

Alonso's second stop was, I thought, a 'normal' stop for that stage in the race, about 6.1 seconds. That is enough time to change tires. I think Alonso's problems came from the extra sliding his tires would have been doing in the reduced-downforce environment behind the Ferrari. He looked pretty racy until the back end started to get loose.
As for Ide, it seems Anthony Davidson may have to haul the old Arrows chassis around in Germany.
Les

[livi]

I expect Mr Lollipop Man has done his last race.

I am awe of those drivers. Lap after lap at that speed. Total concentration. Miss the brake point with a split second and you are out. Looks deceptively easy from the helicopter view.

[pwd72s]

Anybody care to guess how long it will take for the other teams to adopt the mirrored lollipop that Ferrari uses?