F-1 in one hour.
 

On CBS :(

Now we can find out where the steering wheel is on an F-1 car.

Hoping for a fun race.

On networks no less, what a shock. Real racing on TV! Nice to see that everybody isn't busy trying to kiss up to the rednecks.

Not expecting much from the CBS f1 team. Speed is broadcasting it, I think next week sometime.

Shuie on pole at Ferrari's home race! And maybe Rubens finally got his car dialed in.

The lackluster qualifying of McLaren and Renault has me preplexed ... I guess they are running heavy, figuring Ferrari would go light to get the pole at home ...

Good race, actually. Who's the idiot broadcaster they found (not Derek Daly)?

Coverage was wprse than expected. For a while there we got to see 2 laps and watch commercials for 2 laps over and over again.

It was not until the end that they stayed with the race for more than 2 laps.

Yes, that announcer was in over his head. I wish they would use the speed announcers. The Camera work was bad too.


S

Honestly the banter between the two was far from technical. The other guy Sheenan? tripped on his tongue as the MS and Alonso passed Klein. Sounded like Sheenan was yelling ...the wieners? my wife thought he said race meters, even race winners is stupid as most races only have on winner. I think he meant leaders?
Sheenan also meantion the fascinating fact that all 3 left hander tracks start with the letter I. :eek:
It felt like they were not even at the event, like a couple of guys just watching it on TV while chugging red bull.:rolleyes:

So Alfonso raced a good race to keep ahead of 2nd and 3rd in the points race. Wonder if the Massa vs Montoya battle was better?

Yeah, the coverage sucked. They didn't even try to figure out why Michael was so slow after his first stop.

Daily did briefly venture into seemless shift transmissions. But no technical details.

And worst of all it was delayed so I couldn't keep up with the live timing on formula1.com.

They were clueless. It was obvious MS was having problems and way off the pace he should have been on at that point. When Alonso is lapping 1.3 seconds a lap faster there is a problem.


Did you see now much front wing they added to MS car during his last pitstop. Even then it seemed like he was struggling for about 10 more laps, then suddenly he took off and strted to get a rythem again.

All of this is happening and the announcers are oblivious.

I cried when I heard them announce they are covering Monoco.

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.

Where's the driving skill? It all seemed like a game of follow the leader to me. But, racing is racing, and since NASCAR was last night, I tuned in. :rolleyes:

Opinions please....was it Jensen's loliipop handler's fault or the fuel man's fault?

I'm thinking the lollipop handler screwed the pooch by flipping it over prior to the fuel nozzle removal.

I dunno, Michael holding off Alonso despite having a clearly inferior car (slower by 1.2 - 1.3 sec per lap) for the entire second half of the race--that's not just luck.

And for Button: lollipop man's fault, all the way. He's not supposed to lift the thing until all four corners are on and the refuelling team is clear.

I might be wrong, but I don't think even the Speed guys travel to the venues. I think they call the race from the feed. And do a heck of a lot better job than CBS did today :(

f cbs.....i halfway through i muted the tv.
they spoke without commas....meaning halfway through a comment they'd switch the subject.....morons.....poor brodcasting, not even figuring in their lack of F1 knowledge.

and rodeo......speed sends a single broadcaster (hobbs or windsor?....i forget) to the venues with a skeleton crew, which is how they interact pre-race on the grid......i believe this is the first year they've done that (not counting the close to us races)

I fell asleep about ten minutes into the race. I couldn't stand the comentary nor the camera work. Who won?

Apologies guys...I was 100% tongue in cheek with the above post. Really, I do believe that the F-1 lads are indeed the world's best driving talent. Since I don't have cable or dish, I was glad to see the See-BS coverage. As poor as it may have been, at least I saw a bit of F-1. I do wish the track was one that allowed more passing opportunities though...You know, less fuel strategy, more driving?

I dunno how each team does it, maybe the sign man gets a wave or radio call from someone else and changes the sign to green and off the car goes.
But clearly it was too early.
But to correct himself the sign guy drops the sign down again but with the green side to the driver? He should of at least displayed the red side.
Oh yeah not sure if that was a good technique to then drag the sign the length of the nose and ram it into (decapitate) the driver's visor. Scratched visor? I bet Button was looking for a visor tear off after that.

So last race "oh no Ide" #ock blocked Barrichello this time he rams Albers on the first lap. What a disgrace and expense to bring those guys out and do so poorly. I know it was a generous effort to keep them racing but it's gone terrible bad for that team.

At the link below you can read here more of what the CBS guys don't know.;)

F1 recap.

I think viewers should applaud CBS for broadcasting the race in America - at least someone out there believes NASCAR isn't the be-all and end-all to auto racing in this country. Plus, it gives people without a dish or cable the opportunity to see an entirely different form of racing with arguably one of the greatest drivers of all time (Shuie). The NASCAR boys are good, but Shuie is like the Michael Jordan of F1. I couldn't believe that stat about he potentially being worth a billion dollars once he retires.

The commentary was layman stuff - an intro to the unindoctrinated into the sport, which I think worked very well. You had the sort of milquetoast American who's sort of gah-gah over the speed, noise and violence of F1 racing, and the old pro (Daly, right?), speaking with his great accent as he spoke tech-speak.

He did go into some detail about the seamless transmission, saying all that anyone really knows about it, which is Ferrari will have it and no one else.

Oh, and the Ferrari V8 is more powerful than the Renault - MS fought off Alonso even as he went wide and apexed deep. That was because of the F-car's V8 power.

All-in-all, a good race, and great for the American racing fans.

One thing I noticed...the "stop"side of the paddle held in front of the driver was a convex mirror for the Ferrari team. I suspect this was so the driver could see if the fuel nozzle was out before taking off? Sweating the details is good. Especially at that level of competition.

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. . .

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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