Suzi Perry is to join BT Sport’s line-up, it has been officially confirmed.
Perry, who presented BBC’s MotoGP coverage from 2003 to 2009, and then their Formula 1 coverage from 2013 through to the end of 2015, confirmed last month that she would not be part of Channel 4’s F1 team. The BT news was first reported by Charles Sale last week. Perry will be part of their MotoGP presenting line-up alongside Craig Doyle.
The press release states that Perry will “showcase her knowledge across BT Sport’s coverage, including the FIM MotoGP™ World Championship, FIM Speedway and the World Rally Championship.” Perry will present other strands on the channel, which will be announced in the forthcoming weeks.
Commenting on the news, Perry said: “I’m really excited to be joining BT Sport and working with their tremendous team. Motorsport continues to be massive in the UK and I can’t wait to bring BT Sport viewers all of the action from in front of the camera.”
Simon Green, Head of BT Sport, added: “Suzi is an extremely popular and well respected TV presenter and I’m delighted she is joining our team. Our viewers will really benefit from her vast motorsport knowledge and experience across our growing portfolio of motorsport.”
It is a great move by BT to bolster their MotoGP line-up, and a logical move given that Perry became a free agent with no Formula 1 to occupy her time. Perry and motor cycling are a natural fit as we have seen in the past. Notably, BT Sport’s press release omits Iwan Thomas and Abi Griffiths from their MotoGP presenting team.
It appears Thomas is remaining part of BT’s output, as he is listed as presenter for The Chequered Flag (also staying) following the first race of 2016 in Qatar. It looks like Griffiths has had her role reduced, or she has been dropped altogether from the MotoGP presenting team. I hope it is not the latter, as it was Griffiths improved significantly across the year and a half that she was part of the team.
Update on March 12th – I note that Thomas is no longer listed as presenter of The Chequered Flag on the TV guides, so it seems his status is unclear.
Update on March 16th – Both Thomas and Griffiths are no longer part of BT’s team for 2016.
Motorsport Broadcasting 
She’s gone back to MotoGP this time with a new broadcaster
Think she missed the leathers and so did all the fans 🙂
Good luck to her.
I felt F1 fans gave her a hard time but in my view she did ok there.
Do remember a few of her ride and drive slip ups at the beginning.
Glad to see she’s back in her comfort zone.
Nice to see her back with bikes.
From the statement it states ‘Other motorsport on BT Sport includes exclusively live coverage of Formula E, NASCAR, DTM and IndyCar’. Exclusively live NASCAR? Where and when?! I thought it was Premier only? I’d love a repeat of the 1h highlights Sky Sports used to show a few years back. And Formula E is exclusively live on ITV4 isn’t it?
That’s a mistake. Will inform them
No nascar on bt sport that i have seen. Its on that Premier American channel that shows hockey all the time, they had a freebie the other weekend and nice to see Nascar again, but not worth paying £12.99 + multiscreen fees for, just for that. Read also it does not work with the sky q mini either. Why another channel could not get highlights, Im not sure.
Formula e is not on itv this weekend, they chose snooker instead. The formula e website says its free and live to uk people on youtube and dailymotion for this weekend.
Very glad she’s back in her comfort zone!! As long as she doesn’t drop her tablet, or let the battery run down, (or smudge her lipstick) meow, sorry, but I never felt she had much knowledge, depended too much on tablet, and other people. I know they have to bring in women, but let’s try harder to find some that are interested, and have at least a basic knowledge of cars and F1 rules, teams, etc. Very glad they’ve got Lee McKenzie, she’s everything Ms Perry is not, imho! Well done ch 4 on that one, particularly. Like all the others except young Hamilton, and I have probs hearing the lovely Bruno’s deep voice, can’t wait to see if I can ditch my Sky F1 boost, so expensive!
The tablet was introduced by Jake and quickly became a standard that type of sports presentation so I think that’s an unfair comment – I’d bet any money Steve Jones will be carrying one! It’s mainly notes around the contents and in and outcues of features afaik.
Suzi did get a raw deal – yes she really struggled in year one with some rabbit in the headlight moments particularly in the free flowing forum show, but by the end she was very smooth indeed and the perfect foil to EJ. And her first love may not have been F1 but at least it was motorsport unlike Steve Jones and Simon Lazenby (Rugby) and Jake Humphrey and Steve Rider (Football). I don’t think we’ve had a true F1 fan host on TV since Murray Walker on the BBC (and like Suzi his first interest was bikes!)
Did not actually mean that using a tablet is not useful, better than having to flick through scribbled notes, I just felt she always looked uncomfortable handling it, she seemed to look to her colleagues too much for prompts and leads, just generally lacking in F1 knowledge. Actually preferred her to Lazenby, whose tries too hard to be a ‘bloke’! Not a very good presenter, not a patch on Jake. I fully agree with the comment about Murray, no one has ever come close. As for bikes, my first love was bikes from a very young age, (a family thing) as a sport to follow, but from about ten, (60 yrs ago) when I put dolls aside, cars have always fascinated me, and I’ve followed motor racing since then. Roll on Australia!!!