New show with unseen FOM footage coming to Sky F1

A new show with never before seen footage from Formula One Management’s archive is coming to Sky Sports F1, it has been confirmed. ‘Tales from the Vault‘ will be presented by Steve Rider with the first show based around ‘team mates’. In front of a studio audience, Christian Horner and John Watson will be guests in episode one, which will be recorded on Thursday 26th June.

This seems like an interesting concept, especially with it all being new footage, I’m all for unseen footage being used considering the rich archive that FOM has which is frustratingly being unused. Biggin Hill is basically a goldmine for Formula 1 fans, so I’m fascinated to see what footage is in the Sky show, hopefully it doesn’t disappoint. I assume that this will be a half an hour show, I can’t see it being an hour long, however, that depends on what footage they have found in the FOM archive. Which brings us to the next point: has FOM sent unseen footage to Sky, or has someone had Sky had the ability to roam around Biggin Hill looking for footage?

One thing I’m wondering too is the type of footage that will be aired. Are we talking unseen camera angles from out on the race track, or off the record conversations in FOM’s archive that have not been released before? If someone at Sky has common sense, and one assumes the footage is interesting otherwise it simply would not make it to it, before episode one airs, they’d be hyping whatever footage goes to air through online and social media. I’m not convinced either that we need a studio audience personally, I’d have thought that the footage is the draw to the show rather than having an audience. Either way, I’m very pleased to see that this is happening and I will update this post with more details when the scheduling is confirmed…

Update on June 13th – Whilst no scheduling details have officially been confirmed, Sky have confirmed that the first ‘episode’ will be taped from 11:30 to 18:00, six and a half hours. Now obviously they won’t be taping for that entire time. If I had to guess, the first ‘episode’ will actually be split into two, taping from 12:30 to 14:30 and then from 15:30 to 17:30, which would be two hours each. Conveniently, there are two blank two hour slots on Tuesday 1st July and Wednesday 2nd July at 21:00 in the build-up to the British Grand Prix, so let’s see if it ends up in there…

Update on July 25th – Confirmed on The F1 Show that it will première on Sunday 24th August at 16:15, after the Belgian Grand Prix.

Update on August 6th – Sky have confirmed that each episode will be an hour long, the first two focussing on team-mates and underdogs respectively.