Live Blog: The 2013 United States Grand Prix Qualifying session

16:50 – Following on from the success of my live blog for the 2012 Singapore Grand Prix Qualifying session, I thought I would take a lucky dip and do it all over again in 2013! So before the season started, I decided to put all nineteen races into a little bowl to decide which Qualifying session I was going to cover live on this blog. The result? USA. Unfortunately it is a Sky exclusive race, so no comparisons can be made between it and BBC F1. But hey ho. I should note that this live blog will not be a live “blow-by-blow” account of the Qualifying session, if you want that, I suggest you go to AUTOSPORT.com‘s or BBC F1‘s live text services. Basically, from 17:00 to 19:45, I will be looking at Sky’s broadcast from a broadcasting perspective, and of course the FOM World Feed too.

16:53 – Due to a dancing and singing contest on this Saturday evening, I will be watching the F1 via Sky Go. I’m happy to report though that there are no problems on that front! Sky Sports F1 on and ready to go, the channel currently showing the highlights package from the Porsche Supercup round in Abu Dhabi (alas, the only time you will hear Ben Edwards on its channel!).

16:55 – As always, the comments section is open and ready if you have any thoughts and opinions during the build-up and the session itself. Practice three looked fairly close, so hopefully we can expect the same for Qualifying.

17:00 – And exactly an hour before Qualifying, Sky Sports F1 heads to air for the penultimate Qualifying session of 2013!

17:04 – The usual foursome of Simon Lazenby, Johnny Herbert, Damon Hill and Johnny Herbert open the show, as one of the support sessions comes to a conclusion in the background. Definitely in agreement that the Circuit of the Americas is becoming one of the fans favourites.

17:06 – Unsurprisingly, the first main subject of Qualifying is the driver shuffle, as a VT voiced by Natalie Pinkham goes to air covering the events of the last 13 days.

17:10 – Quite amazing how quickly everything does, and can, change in Formula 1! Nice little summary for those that have not caught up with the news in the past week or so. This leads into Ted Kravitz interviewing Martin Whitmarsh. Not impressed with McLaren’s attitude where Sergio Perez is concerned, to be honest. It feels like he was always a stop gap between Hamilton and Magnussen now, but who knows if that was always the case.

17:14 – I have to say watching this actually that Sky have been very lucky that the drivers’ market has gone into overdrive, as critically for them it fills air-time at a time of the season where the championship has been long resolved and inevitably content dries up. A good start to the show, as things move to the Sky Pad!

17:16 – A bit pointless that was going to the Sky Pad for a quick minute to show a five second clip of Davidson blowing up, but a good start to the show as Sky head off to their first commercial break. Very much looking forward to Kravitz’s interview with Robert Kubica.

17:18 – Still slightly frustrating that Sky only go to commercial breaks when the BBC are not live on air, but alas, I guess we’ve got used to it now.

17:21 – And they’re back, with a Mercedes feature.

17:26 – Sometimes I do feel that those ‘face to camera’ features don’t work well, but I enjoyed that one. As always with features like that, where it is clear a lot of time and effort has gone into it across an entire race weekend sometimes, I wish an extended 30 or 60 minute cut goes out on the channel. Arguably, the longer, more rough cut is better, in my view. Part 2 airs tomorrow, and hopefully is just as good.

17:27 – Brundle claims that Sky have “never had access like this before”. Frankly nonsense sentence to say considering Jake Humphrey used to roam around multiple garages before and after sessions!

17:30 – Conversation turns to James Allison, as an interview with Kravitz is shown. Lazenby and Hill discuss Allison and Ferrari’s overall season.

17:36 – A piece by 1980’s TV star Michael Brandon airs on Americans’ in Formula 1. A rich and vast amount of archive footage is shown in the piece, some seen in the GP Uncovered series from various film makers. Some names in here who I have never heard of, so I am glad to see them paying tribute to the majority of them. Formula 1 needs an American name of the grid. Hopefully Alexander Rossi is that person, and hopefully 2014 or 2015 is that year.

17:37 – And one of those legends, Mario Andretti joins Lazenby! Sky need to get Andretti in the commentary box at some point for a practice session or maybe something more. From what I heard on Twitter a few months back, he was fantastic for NBC earlier this year.

17:43 – A lot of archive footage used in today’s broadcast so far, in three or four different segments. You can’t not love archive footage, can you? And a great little interview there. It feels like that Lazenby is totally different to last year, seemed completely at ease interviewing Andretti. Is he as good as Humphrey was for BBC F1 between 2009 and 2011? Probably not, but the Sky shows at the moment flow better this year than last, which is nice to see.

17:46 – Third commercial break done and dusted, and into a VT with Robert Kubica. A really strong show from Sky so far today.

17:47 – I will be honest. I miss Kubica driving a Formula 1 car knowing that one day he could have won a Formula 1 world championship. There is no point as well Kubica risking a day testing an F1 car if something ended up going well. Fantastic to see Kubica doing well in rallying though, and long may it continue.

17:52 – Off to another break, which means Qualifying is on its way soon! A bite to eat for me too, I think…

17:55 – Not as many updates in the next hour as the action gets under way, but there will be the occasional updates at 5 to 10 minute intervals in the respective sessions.

18:06 – And I’m back! Six minutes into Q1 so far. No 180 degree camera yet. Hopefully we get to see it soon. Already detected some virtual advertising in the form of a Pirelli logo. They had some here last year though so it is not an entirely new thing.

18:08 – A bit naughty from whoever that Sauber was, nearly had a Maldonaldo ploughing straight into the back of him.

18:10 – Ron Dennis in the garage at McLaren. Really surprised Sky have not interviewed him about Perez so far this weekend.

18:15 – David Croft notes again Mark Webber abusing track limits. Difficult to disagree, although thankfully it is only one corner here unlike India three weeks ago!

18:16 – An interesting thermal camera on Sebastian Vettel’s car. Still t-cam shot, but at a slight offset and angle it appears.

18:23 – Horrific for the Ferrari’s, but they manage to squeeze through to Q2. Solid direction, but disappointed that the 180 degree angle has gone AWOL for the moment.

18:31 – Q2 has began in earnest, four minutes in so far.

18:34 – Always amusing when Brundle makes a reference to ‘new viewers’. Sky bring in new viewers? Although to be fair to Brundle of course Sky’s commentary is beamed around the world to various other countries, some of which may well be new viewers. Looking competitive in Q2 so far.

18:41 – And the 180 degree camera makes an appearance! On Valtteri Bottas’ Williams as he locks up.

18:44 – Fairly major knock-out in Q2 for Nico Rosberg! The Sky commentators missed that completely, it seems. They mentioned it, but underplayed it, they did not notice it as much as they should have. Fascinating as always to see how much the track conditions play a part, the smallest of changes makes a huge difference. Q3 is up next!

18:48 – Regarding the above, Davidson brilliantly demonstrates this with Rosberg’s sector one yesterday compared with his sector one in Q2.

18:50 – Q3 has began. A Red Bull will be on pole, just a matter of which one. I hope Bottas gets up the grid, he deserves it.

18:54 – Enjoyable commentary from Croft and Brundle so far today. Five minutes to go…

18:58 – Considering the 180 degree camera on Bottas’ car, it must be an aerodynamic advantage on the Williams! Hoping he sets a competitive lap time.

19:03 – How did Vettel do that? Webber’s lap was brilliant, then Vettel beats it. Unsurprisingly, the gap between Red Bull and the rest is huge, nearly a second.

19:06 – A great Qualifying session. I am sticking around though for the next 30 minutes as Sky wrap proceedings up.

19:12 – Sky head off to a quick break, and back with the press conference.

19:17 – Onto the Sky Pad with Davidson. One thing I think would be brilliant to see tomorrow in the pre-race show is a comparison between Vettel and Grosjean in all three sectors, as the Red Bull is equal to others in sector one, but streets ahead in sectors two and three.

19:20 – Clear as daylight to see the difference between Vettel and Webber in the final sector. One mistake for Webber and the lap unravelled badly for him there. Badly, obviously in comparison to Vettel but no one else.

19:26 – Good interview with Lazenby and Claire Williams, Lazenby trying to press on the Maldonaldo issues, to his credit.

19:29 – Mostly pen interviews filling the time now as you would expect, Craig Slater interviewing Nico Hulkenberg. One good thing about 2013 is that more Sky Sports News interviews have been used on the Sky broadcast, the two sides are more integrated, with Rachel Brookes also being used on the Sky Sports F1 shows when she is around.

19:38 – A few more pen interviews are shown, including an ever unhappy Adrian Sutil.

19:41 – And that is a wrap! Highlights of Qualifying are on BBC Two at 22:30, whilst Classic F1 is on Sky Sports F1 next with highlights of the 1991 United States Grand Prix (not that they mentioned it in their various archive pieces!). Enjoy the race, and as always, thanks for reading.

F1 2013 DVD season review to be released before Christmas

Hooray! It looks like Santa will be delivering all Formula 1 fans the 2013 Formula One season review this year. The DVD/Blu-Ray will be released on December 16th, 2013, according to Amazon.co.uk. The official Duke Video website has a release date of December 18th for the DVD and December 20th for the Blu-Ray, but either way it is before Christmas.

Last year, the 2012 season review was released after Christmas. I commented at the time that sales were probably down compared to previous years as a result, so I am happy to see that this year reverts back to tradition.

Amazon currently have the length as 300 minutes, but I imagine that may change slightly. I don’t know who is voicing the review, as of writing, I have not seen any tweets from Will Buxton or Ben Edwards this year saying that they have voiced any of the DVD. I will update the post nearer to Christmas to confirm details on any extras that may be included and any Blu-Ray exclusives.

Update on December 6th – Amazon has pushed the DVD release back to December 23rd, whilst worryingly the Blu-Ray has been pushed to January 6th, 2014. I’ve asked Duke Video on Twitter if these dates are indeed correct.

Update on January 13th, 2014 – Well we’re now a week after the original Blu-Ray release date, except the Blu-Ray is not out. So, where is it? Bumped to February 10th, according to Duke.

A graphics comparison: Dorna vs FOM

This morning I, as many other motor sport fans, got up early to watch the Formula 1 Qualifying session from Japan. An early start, but one I always relish. There is always personally for me something special about Japan. But anyway, the session was fairly eventful with the other Red Bull on pole position. The coverage provided by FOM (Formula One Management), now out of the hands of Fuji Television, was largely fine, even though Jean-Eric Vergne decided to run over a virtual advert!

From there I watched BBC One wind down their coverage, and then I flicked over to Eurosport, to witness the climax of the MotoGP Qualifying session from Sepang in Malaysia. And what a session it was! Helped by a bit of rain before hand, the lap times tumbled down with Marc Marquez taking pole. Again, the coverage was largely fine, and as Toby Moody said in commentary, Dorna’s director did a stonking job when the action was going off all over the shop. So, credit to them there.

As I noted on Twitter though, the big gulf between Dorna and FOM comes with their graphics. Dorna’s graphics are head and shoulders above FOM. Whilst I praised FOM a few weeks back, their basic graphics set needs improvement. For the purposes of this post, I am only looking at the Qualifying sessions as I admit that is what made me tweet this morning.

A picture of FOM's graphics set, as seen during Q2 at the 2013 Japanese Grand Prix. — A picture of FOM’s graphics set, as seen during Q2 at the 2013 Japanese Grand Prix.

The above is just as the chequered flag has been thrown. Down the left hand side is a list of the lap times that have been set. We can also see who has already passed the chequered flag and who is in the pits. Those with no symbol are on no flying lap. At the bottom of the screen, we see two drivers current progression around the lap – in this case Nico Hulkenberg and Nico Rosberg. Already, we can see a limitation to the graphics set. We can only see two lap times at the bottom of the screen at a time, due to the lay out. There are ten drivers on laps, which shows a fairly major limitation and a bug bear for me during Qualifying.

Aesthetically, it is pleasing and easy on the eye, the slanting may feel a bit unprofessional, but I can see why they went down that route because of the style of the ‘F1’ logo. The graphics set also makes a clear differential between who is currently ‘in’ to the next part of Qualifying, and who is ‘out’. Finally, a particular drivers’ row lights up whenever he sets a personal best time for the session. How does that compare to Dorna’s graphics set?

A picture of Dorna's graphics set, as seen during Q1 at the 2013 Malaysian MotoGP. — A picture of Dorna’s graphics set, as seen during Q1 at the 2013 Malaysian MotoGP.

Like I said above, I maintain that FOM’s graphics set looks more aesthetically pleasing. On the other hand, Dorna’s graphics do not feel as cluttered, and shows a detailed amount of information. Whilst it does not have a list of everyone’s lap times, it makes up in that by displaying the current sectors on the left hand side. In FOM’s graphics set, green is simply up on whichever number is to the left of it, or orange is down. Dorna on the other hand has the more traditional red for session best, orange for personal best and grey for no improvement (although this can get confusing if a commentator says that someone has “gone purple!”).

When you look at the example above, Dorna’s graphics set definitely allows them to display more information in comparison to FOM’s system. It may not look fantastic on the eye, but the information is there, and allows you to scroll down the left and see who is setting fast times which is impossible with FOM. The only reason I can think why FOM don’t do that is because green/orange down the side may be confusing to the casual viewer.

Both sets have their positives and negatives. If you are looking for something easy on the eye, then FOM wins, but if you want a data driven set, then Dorna with their MotoGP graphics is a clear winner.

Pushing along new innovations

Occasionally, from time to time, the people who control the World Feed (Formula One Management), are criticised, for a variety of reasons. This can vary from missing that crucial race winning moment or just simply providing a stale output. By ‘stale’ I mean sticking to the same old approach race after race, such as the usual start replays which tend to appear on lap 3, typically just after DRS is activated! Camera angles is another one. Compared to the Formula 1 of past, the majority of camera angles nowadays are designed to fit in as many adverts as humanely possibly. Sometimes, I do feel that the speed, and the sense of direction is not captured as well as it could have, due to camera angles being placed specifically to fit commercial and advertising needs.

This has led to virtual advertising. For the most part, this is fine. However, on occasion, it can lead to it being too obvious.

Fly Emirates: An example from FOM on how not to do virtual advertising... — Fly Emirates: An example from FOM on how not to do virtual advertising…

The image above is from Silverstone at Luffields. My motto tends to be that, where possible, the car should be the focus of the shot. Whether it is car racing towards you, or a change of direction as I alluded to at the start. For me, I don’t think that either of the two apply in the image above. The Fly Emirates advertising dominates the image and is in fact a complete distraction away from what my eyes are meant to be looking at. Deliberate? Possibly. I’m not a particular fan of these. The virtual advertisements that are subtle are the best. Yes, it means that I still spot them, but at the same point they end up not being a dominating part of the image as is the case above.

For all the criticism though, I do feel that FOM have made some significant strides forward this season where innovation is concerned. The first main one for me is helmet cam. First seen back at the 2008 Brazilian Grand Prix on David Coulthard’s car (albeit for only two corners), the innovation has been seen significantly more this season in Valtteri Bottas’ car. As always, it is a joy to have the helmet cam to see just how much work goes on behind the wheel of a Formula 1 car, and is probably one of the more important strides forward, I feel. Furthermore, the helmet cam has made its way down to GP3 with the camera being attached to Daniil Kvyat’s helmet, which I think is important as it gives the series more of an importance if innovations are being used further ‘down the chain’.

...but for every criticism, there is a positive, this being one of them from Monza. — …but for every criticism, there is a positive, this being one of them from Monza.

The recent pit lane changes by FIA as a result of the bouncing tyre at the Nurburgring meant that FOM cameramen were restricted to the pit lane wall during Qualifying and the Race. Instead of just keeping it at that, FOM decided to attach cameras to team personnel and the traffic lights pole, in one case. This resulted in some fantastic images being beamed around the world from the Monza pit lane as viewers got up close and personal with the pit crews as they were fast and frantic at work. The two examples last weekend with Red Bull and Ferrari, so I hope that continues for the remainder of the season.

The last innovation worth a mention has to be Paul di Resta’s thermal imaging tyre camera, which was frankly fantastic last weekend. I hope that the thermal imaging looking at the tyres doesn’t turn out to be a one hit wonder, and again I hope we do see it again before the end of the year. The only thing I think that needs to be added down the line is maybe some sort of temperature gauge to show how hot the orange colours really are, for example. In the past, there have been many innovations that have been thrown to the dustbin, and I hope that doesn’t happen here.

It has been a good patch though for FOM where innovations are concerned and I think that needs to be noted. Yes, there are bits which need to improve, but overall it has been a job well done by the whole production team recently. Now all we need is for their social media team (if they have one?) to get their act today, then we will all be happy bunnies.

TV cameramen and the pit lane

The German Grand Prix this past Sunday seen a freak accident occur in the pit lane. Thanks to problems in his pit stop, the right rear tyre of Mark Webber’s Red Bull car became unattached, with the tyre rolling down pit lane and hitting an Formula One Management (FOM) cameraman. In response to that, the FIA fined Red Bull €30,000 as well as making a few pit lane changes. FOM made the move to remove cameramen from the pit lane itself and for them instead to be position on the pit stands.

Does the punishment fit the crime? Not really. It is one thing time and time again with the FIA where teams are given an arbitrary financial punishment, which in reality is not a punishment. For a team who’s budget runs into the millions, a €30,000 fine is not a punishment in the slightest. Why not set a precedent? Dock them points? Make both drivers’ do stop and go penalties? I’m not saying that just because it is Red Bull, but because with every passing decision, FIA appears to be slowly losing its grip on the championship. Similar applies with the Mercedes decision, really. Do a test and the penalty in comparison, is rather weak (this being before Britain, things have changed since).

Onto the topic in hand, and I’m going to be honest here, but for me, it makes absolutely zero difference as to who the tyre hit. Yes, it did hit a cameraman. But that cameraman could have easily been a mechanic who had just finished a pit stop, or another team personnel member. Who it hit should make little difference here. Unfortunately it appears from the FIA and FOM’s perspective, it does. FOM and Bernie Ecclestone have decided that from the next round that their cameraman are banned from pit lane and will instead be based on the pit walls. The move does reduce the risk that cameramen face. But how does it remove the overall risk? It doesn’t. It feels like a knee-jerk reaction. Tyres will still roll, and they could, although we hope it doesn’t happen again, hit mechanics. I don’t understand it. If the wheel had hit a mechanic, would FIA decide to ban mechanics from pit lane? Don’t be stupid.

The problem is with the pit stops itself, which the FIA doesn’t appear to understand. Yes, they can change A, B or C, but they seem to be running around the centre point without actually hitting it. None of the changes hit the centre point. Amusingly their changes mean that the speed limit during the entire weekend is now 80km/h, so the speed has been increased during practice sessions. If FIA were really safety conscious, why not do what we see regularly in endurance racing? Four mechanics out in pit lane controlling four tyres. That’s it. None of this 2.5 second stops where the risk factor is multiplied dramatically as errors can be made more frequently due to the fast speed of the stops. Instead, a more controlled, but just as enticing stop for viewers where skill is still required for the car to get out of the pit lane before his rival. Such a move would require six mechanics around the car instead of the fifteen or so at the moment.

Finally, as I noted earlier, the changes don’t affect any TV crew in the slightest. FIA’s announcement makes it seem like some revolutionary change has just occurred. Not really. What went down at the last race in the pit lane will repeat itself in the future. The FIA’s changes do not reduce the risk. Although FIA really want you to think otherwise, the reality is that nothing in the pit lane has changed. – see the update I have made here.