Scheduling: The 2015 Monaco Grand Prix / Berlin ePrix

Next weekend sees two of the three blue riband events take place in the form of the Monaco Grand Prix and the Indianapolis 500! The Monaco Grand Prix is exclusively live on Sky Sports F1, with the Indianapolis 500 exclusively live on ESPN. For those without the F1 channel, qualifying for Monaco is also live on Sky Sports 1.

Over on the BBC, their radio output is depleted due to Test Match cricket on 5 Live Sport Extra meaning that practice commentary will be via the website only. I know it is the luck of the draw sometimes, but I’m mildly amused that BBC’s qualifying highlights show is longer than their race highlights show, which is certainly a first since their current deal came into effect at the beginning of 2012. In terms of supplementary programming, Sky are airing their first Tales from the Vault programme of 2015 looking back at past Monaco races.

The Indianapolis 500 is being broadcast live on ESPN from 16:00 next Sunday. As noted earlier, it appears that BT’s output has been reduced with less studio coverage. If that changes, I will update the schedule, but it doesn’t appear that way at the moment. Over at Formula E’s Berlin ePrix, Mike Conway will again be alongside Jack Nicholls in the commentary box with Andy Jaye presenting the coverage for ITV.

Below are all the details you need for the blue riband events, plus much more…

BBC F1
BBC One
23/05 – 17:10 to 18:45 – Qualifying Highlights
24/05 – 17:05 to 18:35 – Race Highlights

BBC Radio
21/05 – 21:00 to 22:00 – Preview (BBC Radio 5 Live)
23/05 – 13:00 to 14:00 – Qualifying (BBC Radio 5 Live)
24/05 – 13:00 to 15:00 – Race (BBC Radio 5 Live)

Supplementary Programming
22/05 – 18:45 to 19:00 – Inside F1 (BBC News Channel)
23/05 – 16:10 to 17:10 – F1 Rewind (BBC Two)
23/05 – 18:45 to 19:00 – Inside F1 (BBC News Channel)

Sky Sports F1
Sessions
21/05 – 08:45 to 11:00 – Practice 1
21/05 – 12:45 to 15:00 – Practice 2
23/05 – 09:45 to 11:15 – Practice 3
23/05 – 12:00 to 14:15 – Qualifying (Sky Sports 1)
23/05 – 12:00 to 14:45 – Qualifying (Sky Sports F1)
24/05 – 11:30 to 16:15 – Race
=> 11:30 – Track Parade
=> 12:00 – Pit Lane Live
=> 12:30 – Race
=> 15:30 – Paddock Live

Supplementary Programming
20/05 – 14:00 to 14:30 – Driver Press Conference
20/05 – 20:45 to 21:00 – Paddock Uncut: Monaco
21/05 – 16:00 to 16:45 – Team Press Conference
21/05 – 17:00 to 18:00 – The F1 Show
22/05 – 17:00 to 18:00 – The F1 Show
22/05 – 18:00 to 19:00 – Tales from the Vault: Monaco Special
27/05 – 20:30 to 21:00 – Midweek Report

GP2 Series – Monaco (Sky Sports F1)
21/05 – 11:00 to 11:50 – Practice
21/05 – 15:10 to 15:50 – Qualifying
22/05 – 10:10 to 11:40 – Race 1
23/05 – 15:05 to 16:20 – Race 2

World Series by Renault – Monaco (BT Sport 2)
24/05 – 10:00 to 11:00 – Race

Formula E – Berlin (online via FIAFormulaE.com)
23/05 – 07:10 to 08:10 – Practice 1
23/05 – 09:25 to 10:10 – Practice 2

Formula E – Berlin (ITV4)
23/05 – 11:00 to 12:15 – Qualifying
23/05 – 14:00 to 16:30 – Race
24/05 – 08:30 to 09:30 – Highlights

IndyCar Series – Indianapolis 500 (ESPN UK)
24/05 – 16:00 to 21:00 – Race

Speedway Grand Prix – Czech Republic (British Eurosport 2)
23/05 – 18:00 to 21:00 – Race

World Superbikes – Donington Park (British Eurosport 2)
23/05 – 11:45 to 13:00 – Superpole
24/05 – 11:15 to 16:30 – Races

As always, if anything changes, I will update the above schedule.

Scheduling: The 2015 Long Beach ePrix

After a three week gap, Formula E is back for round six of the inaugural 2014-15 season. Round six takes place at a familiar location for motor sport fans as the paddock heads west to California for the Long Beach ePrix! It is a star-studded back-to-back, with the Monte Carlo ePrix following in five weeks time. There are three practice sessions for Long Beach, looking at the live streaming page, it appears all three sessions will be streamed live, but I’ll update the schedule below if that is not the case.

Formula E is not the only motor racing series on offer during the Easter weekend, as BTCC makes its 2015 debut live from Brands Hatch. It really is a big weekend for ITV4, with BTCC offering eight hours of action alongside Formula E’s action on Saturday night. The ITV line-up for both series are the same as usual, Jennie Gow will be presenting the Formula E race, with Steve Rider and Louise Goodman presenting the BTCC coverage. David Addison remains lead commentator for the BTCC races, Tim Harvey is alongside Addison in the commentary box. Elsewhere, British Superbikes begins with round one at Donington Park on Bank Holiday Monday.

Formula E – Long Beach (online via FIAFormulaE.com)
04/04 – 16:05 to 16:45 – Practice 1
04/04 – 17:15 to 17:55 – Practice 2
04/04 – 18:25 to 19:05 – Practice 3
04/04 – 19:45 to 21:10 – Qualifying

Formula E – Long Beach (ITV4)
04/04 – 23:00 to 01:30 – Race
05/04 – 09:25 to 10:30 – Highlights

British Touring Car Championship – Brands Hatch (ITV4)
05/04 – 10:30 to 18:30 – Races

British Superbikes – Donington Park (British Eurosport 2)
05/04 – 15:30 to 18:00 – Qualifying
06/04 – 12:30 to 18:00 – Races

As always, the schedule will be updated if anything changes.

News round-up: A Question of F1; Sky looking for new sponsor

Alongside the big Premier League news from earlier this week, there are a few bits of other news worth reporting on this blog, including Sky Sports looking for a new sponsor for 2015.

Sky Sports F1 looking for new sponsor
Thanks to Jon Wilde over on Twitter for the tip here, alerting me to the news that Sky Sports F1 are looking for a new sponsor for 2015. Santander and BlackCircles.com were their sponsors for 2012, with Rolex and Shell taking over for 2013 and 2014. No idea at this stage who will be sponsoring their programming this season.

There’s a few statistics over on the Sky Media PDF for anyone interested, including a few viewing figure predictions for 2015. The headline one is that they predict a Individual 4+ TVR of 0.98 for their race day programme, equivalent to around 572,000 viewers, which looks incredibly low to me, although it presumably includes Paddock Live and the Track Parade.

Pre-Australia schedule takes shape
Sky Sports F1’s schedule, up to and including Friday practice for the Australian Grand Prix, has been revealed. It is not much different to last year, so isn’t a worth a piece on its own, until the finalised version is released. Either way, The F1 Show is definitely back from Friday 6th March, Classic F1 races are back and everything else is as you would expect.

If you were hoping for a completely new batch of Classic F1 races, you’ll be disappointed to learn that three of the first six races being broadcast are from 2014 (Bahrain, Hungary and Britain). Out of the other three, two have been broadcast before (1990 US and 1996 Australia), which leaves only the 1995 Pacific Grand Prix as a new classic race to the channel.

Over on the BBC, a special Formula 1 themed episode of A Question of Sport was filmed today, presumably for transmission in the lead-up to the Australian Grand Prix. The guests were David Coulthard, Suzi Perry, Kevin Magnussen and Christian Horner.

British Eurosport announce Superbike commentary team
Tom Gaymor will be stepping up to lead World Superbikes commentator on British Eurosport for 2015. Gaymor will be commentating alongside Steve Parrish for the rounds that clash with the British Superbike Championship. Jack Burnicle and James Whitham will commentate on the World Superbikes when it does not clash with the British Superbikes. The channel will also be broadcasting the FIM Endurance World Championship live in 2015.

Over on BT Sport, no official confirmation on their MotoGP line-up, but it doesn’t appear that there will be any changes. I did ask Abi Griffiths about their coverage this season, and the response was that “all will be revealed soon.” So, we shall see.

News round-up: Hamilton visits BBC; Perry staying with BBC

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.

BT Sport screening MotoGP testing, Macau Grand Prix this week

Although the MotoGP season comes to a conclusion this weekend, BT Sport’s motor sport coverage continues into this week and next weekend with both MotoGP testing and the Macau Grand Prix being screened live by BT. As noted by Keith Huewen on Twitter, BT Sport 2 will be covering MotoGP testing live on Monday 10th and Tuesday 11th November, eight hours in total. Like last year, I imagine coverage will be the Dorna World Feed with no input from the BT team.

Alongside this, BT Sport will be airing an hour long show covering the FIM Awards Ceremony on Monday 10th November as Marc Marquez et al. pick up their trophies. The channel will also be airing live coverage of the the annual Macau Grand Prix next weekend, along with the final round of the 2014 World Rally Championship from Wales. Lastly, they are airing eight hours of their Motorsport Tonight show, with season reviews of several series. I don’t think it will be airing live, but it will feature many guests alongside the best action from the year. Elsewhere, British Eurosport and Motors TV will be covering the penultimate round of the World Endurance Championship from Bahrain.

Motorsport Tonight – BT Sport 2
Saturday 15th November – 16:30 to 20:30 [Part 1]
Sunday 16th November – 16:15 to 20:00 [Part 2]

MotoGP – BT Sport 2
Monday 10th November – 13:00 to 16:00 [Live Testing]
Monday 10th November – 21:30 to 22:30 [Awards]
Tuesday 11th November – 10:00 to 12:00 and 13:00 to 16:00 [Live Testing]

Live Macau Grand Prix – BT Sport 2
Saturday 15th November – 05:45 to 06:45 [F3 qualifying]
Saturday 15th November – 07:30 to 08:30 [Motorcycling]
Sunday 16th November – 01:00 to 02:00 [GT Cup race]
Sunday 16th November – 07:30 to 08:30 [F3 race]

Live World Endurance Championship: Bahrain
Saturday 15th November – 11:30 to 18:35 [Motors TV]
Saturday 15th November – 16:00 to 18:00 [Eurosport]

Live World Rally Championship: Wales Rally GB – BT Sport 2
Sunday 16th November – 11:45 to 13:15 [Day 3]

I will update the above throughout the week if anything does change.