In this round-up, the first piece of the 2015 Formula One broadcasting jigsaw has moved into place, and the 2014 Formula One champion has been doing a few bits of a media…
Hamilton visits BBC, on multiple occasions
It has been a very busy week for Lewis Hamilton, following his title victory at last Sunday’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. Monday started bright and early with media interviews from the likes of BBC Radio, NBC Sports and Sky Sports. 24 hours later, and Hamilton was up in Salford. Hamilton was live on BBC Breakfast and BBC Radio 5 Live, in the latter piece, he surprised a nine year old go-karting champion, which was a nice bit of radio to listen to!
On Thursday, Hamilton was on Nick Grimshaw’s Breakfast show on Radio 1, transforming the live lounge into a Scalextric track! He later dropped by ITV’s This Morning programme. Currently, he’s in Stuttgart for a Mercedes publicity event. So a very busy week for the world champion. One programme he was not on was The F1 Show last night due to the Stuttgart event, but I was happy to see Daniel Ricciardo as guest on the show, although admittedly this fact was not promoted too much. Nevertheless, it is nice to see F1 get a lot of publicity with Hamilton doing the media rounds.
Perry staying with BBC F1 for 2015
The first Formula 1 broadcasting announcement of the off-season is that Suzi Perry is definitely staying with the BBC F1 team for 2015, as announced on her Twitter account in response to a fan question. In terms of timescale, expect the 2015 BBC and Sky scheduling details to be confirmed just before Christmas, probably Friday 19th December based on previous years. If there are any major changes, I’d also expect that to be confirmed before Christmas as well, although its worth noting that Gary Anderson’s departure from BBC F1 was not publicly known until after the festive period.
Any broadcasting changes are likely to surround whether Jenson Button is in fact retiring, and if so, whether he wishes to stay in the paddock, but as a broadcaster. If the answer to both of those two questions is yes, then we could see some movement depending on whether Button wishes to join BBC or Sky. One suggestion that I have read is that David Coulthard could join Sky. That would free up a space on BBC’s team for Button to fit into. That would benefit both broadcasters in my eyes. We should get some idea of where things are heading in the next week or so, assuming McLaren do not hold off their driver announcement much longer.
Movement in World Superbikes
Over on two wheels, Steve Day and Gregory Haines have been confirmed as Dorna’s World Feed commentators for the World Superbike Championship. Day moves across from covering bikes for Eurosport since 2011, whilst Haines switches from the MotoGP paddock, where he was World Feed commentator this year alongside Nick Harris.