The weekly Sky Sports F1 magazine show appears to be on the move, schedules released today show. The edition after the Malaysian Grand Prix is provisionally scheduled for Thursday 28th March at 20:00 live. The show throughout 2012 aired on Friday’s to low ratings.

It is a wise move by Sky to move it to Thursday’s, even last week, for whatever reason their testing ratings had the lowest ratings on the Friday. The other possibility is that they are adding in an extra live show on Friday, but the schedules do not suggest this – all that is in Friday’s 20:00 slot is a repeat of the Thursday F1 Show.

Update on March 13th – Sam O’Sullivan on Twitter points out that Friday 29th March is Good Friday, which may explain why it is not on the Friday. The following weeks schedule have it back in the Friday slot.

Following the announcement that Sky Sports F1 will be showing five Classic F1 races before every round, it appears it will be going beyond that and heading into “strands” of races. In the original piece towards the end of February, I said how there will be five races before every race weekend.

While that is true there will be more than that. The first “strand” will feature debut wins, with schedule times as follows:

Thursday 28th March
21:30 to 23:45 – 2003 Hungarian Grand Prix
– commentary from James Allen and Martin Brundle
– Fernando Alonso’s first win

Friday 29th March
21:30 to 23:45 – 2007 Canadian Grand Prix
– commentary from James Allen and Martin Brundle
– Lewis Hamilton’s first win

Saturday 30th March
21:00 to 23:15 – 2009 German Grand Prix
– commentary from Jonathan Legard and Martin Brundle
– Mark Webber’s first win

Sunday 31st March
21:00 to 23:15 – 2008 Italian Grand Prix
– commentary from James Allen and Martin Brundle
– Sebastian Vettel’s first win

I suspect there may more more on Saturday 30th March and Sunday 31st March. As of writing, schedules do not go that far to reveal what races they are, but given the strand, I expect 2008 Canada and 2008 Italy to both turn up somewhere.

Update on March 28th – I’ve updated the above with the full details now, and some timing changes as well thanks to last weekend’s events in Malaysia. Note that as far as I can see these are not repeated, so record them while you can!

In the build-up to the new GP2 season, Sky Sports F1 are replaying last year’s GP2 season. The schedule times are as follows:

Tuesday 5th March
15:30 – Malaysia, Race 1
16:55 – Malaysia, Race 2

Wednesday 6th March
15:30 – Bahrain, Race 1 (Round 1)
16:55 – Bahrain, Race 2 (Round 1)

Thursday 7th March
15:30 – Bahrain, Race 1 (Round 2)
16:55 – Bahrain, Race 2 (Round 2)

Friday 8th March
15:30 – Spain, Race 1
16:55 – Spain, Race 2

Saturday 9th March
07:00 – Monaco, Race 1
08:25 – Monaco, Race 2

Sunday 10th March
08:00 – Europe, Race 1
09:25 – Europe, Race 2

Monday 11th March
15:00 – Britain, Race 1
16:25 – Britain, Race 2

Tuesday 12th March
15:00 – Germany, Race 1
16:25 – Germany, Race 2

Wednesday 13th March
15:00 – Hungary, Race 1
16:25 – Hungary, Race 2

Thursday 14th March
15:30 – Belgian, Race 1
16:55 – Belgian, Race 2

Tuesday 19th March
14:45 – Italy, Race 1
16:00 – Italy, Race 2

Wednesday 20th March
14:25 – Singapore, Race 1
15:55 – Singapore, Race 2

For 2013, Will Buxton has confirmed that he will be commentating on both the GP2 and GP3 World Feed’s for FOM, which will be shown on Sky Sports F1. His co-commentator has yet to be announced.

With the schedules now out, a new raft of programming has appeared in the schedules leading up to the Malaysian Grand Prix. At the moment, here are the new things that are listed:

– Ted’s Notebook listed as a standalone 15-minute programme for Australia. First airing is on Saturday 17th March at 17:45 for the Qualifying Notebook and at 12:30 on the Sunday for the Race Notebook.
– Inside Track: The Full Interview is a 15-minute programme with an interview with someone from the race weekend. First airing is on Monday 18th March at 18:45.
– The Malaysian Grand Prix Classic F1 races are 1999, 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2007. These will air from Tuesday 19th March through to Thursday 21st March. As with the Australian Grand Prix Classic races, these will be repeated throughout the week and into the weekend.
– Martin’s Grid Walk and Natalie’s Track Parade. This is a bit odd, because there are two separate titles, but it is listed under one 15-minute programme. Either way, the second description indicates that Sky will be covering the Drivers’ Parade more in their pre-race build-ups.
– Gear Up for Malaysia. The programme title sounds generic in that it will be on for every race, but it first premières on Thursday 21st March at 13:30. This looks like all the Thursday interviews being combined into one programme.

And in terms of existing programming:

– Fast Track remains, but Weekend in Stills and Weekend in Words appear to have been dropped.
– The programme lengths for Practice, Qualifying and the Race are the same as last year
– Sky Sports will be covering every session of GP2 exclusively live again in 2013, as first revealed last December.

I won’t do this every week as the programming slate should remain the same, but this is the state of play at the moment. As always, things could change, programmes could disappear and re-appear. I’ll update the blog if that happens.

Update on March 8th – Weekend in Stills has now been added to the schedule, airing on Wednesday’s at 19:00. Gear Up for Malaysia is indeed a programme that will be on air every Thursday before each weekend as Gear Up for Australia has now been added – although both times are different to the 13:30 time I published above.

Update on March 15th – For some reason it appears Sky are not showing the 2001 Malaysian Grand Prix. The timings have changed, so 1999 and 2002 are on the Tuesday, 2003 and 2007 are on the Wednesday, with 2010 now on the Thursday evening.

The testing season comes to a conclusion this week, beginning on Thursday, with the third and final test from Barcelona. But this time, for the first time ever, testing will be live. Viewers in both the UK and Italy will be able to watch the test via their respective Sky Sports F1 channels, whilst coverage will also be shown in 3D on Sky 3D. The 3D action will be a Sky production, whilst the 2D production will come from Formula One Management (FOM) cameras.

Simon Lazenby will front the coverage, with David Croft providing the commentary alongside a series of guests, whilst Ted Kravitz will be down in pit-lane – in essence, this is ‘Round 0’ for the Sky team. Rachel Brookes will be there for Sky Sports News, so she may pop up occasionally in the live coverage. As a general guide, all of the live action is in 3D, along with The F1 Show. The only live action that is not in 3D is the last 35 minutes on Sunday, as from 15:55, Sky 3D will be showing Tottenham vs Arsenal live.

On a side note, as FOM are producing the 2D feed, I wonder if Sky Sports have ‘exclusive’ access to that feed for United Kingdom viewers? If not, then it is always possible that the feed could turn up live on the BBC F1 website for each of the four days in the afternoon too. Personally I don’t think it will, but it is worth noting I feel. Another thing we don’t know is whether Sky’s coverage will have commercials, I suspect that like the practice sessions, there will be regular commercials at 15/20 minute intervals.

Over on The F1 Show, the show will have highlights of the Motor Sport Magazine Hall of Fame ceremony which takes place this Monday (25th February). Unlike with the first two test schedules, I’ve only labelled the first repeat for each of the day’s live action below as the live action is repeated a lot over the course of the four days, so if you miss the live testing, it is repeated multiple times.

Thursday 28th February
14:00 to 16:30 – Day 1 Live
18:30 to 21:00 – Day 1 Repeat (R)
21:00 to 21:35 – Day 1 Highlights
– 15-minute round-up at 21:00
– Ted’s Notebook at 21:15

Friday 1st March
14:00 to 16:30 – Day 2 Live
16:30 to 17:30 – The F1 Show
17:30 to 20:00 – Day 2 Repeat (R)
21:00 to 21:15 – Day 2 Round-Up

Saturday 2nd March
14:00 to 16:30 – Day 3 Live
18:30 to 21:00 – Day 3 Repeat (R)
21:00 to 21:35 – Day 3 Highlights
– 15-minute round-up at 21:00
– Ted’s Notebook at 21:15

Sunday 3rd March
14:00 to 16:30 – Day 4 Live
18:30 to 21:00 – Day 4 Repeat (R)
21:00 to 21:35 – Day 4 Highlights
– 15-minute round-up at 21:00
– Ted’s Notebook at 21:15

Times above are in BST. Italian readers, Sky Sport F1 will be live on air at the same times with their own presentation.

As always, if there are any schedule amendments, I will update this blog.

Correction – Contrary to what I have written above, Sky are in fact producing both the 2D and 3D feeds. The 3D cameras can output in both 2D and 3D, so everything live next week will be a Sky production.

Update on February 25th – Marc Priestley confirmed as one of the guests alongside David Croft in the commentary box this weekend.