[adouglas]

That does happen. Gotta admit that we've seen some great stuff this year, though. Ricciardo's drive in China was epic, as was the team's performance in getting him out into qualifying.

And the drama in Baku.

Re the commentators... well, if you can't understand English and Scots accents there's always NASCAR....

In case you hadn't noticed, the ESPN coverage isn't generated by ESPN or Liberty Media. It's just a straight-up rebroadcast of the UK Sky Sports coverage.

Here's what's really good about it (and much better than the NBC coverage last year):

1) They send the whole team to every race. NBC had Diffey (Australian accent, ahem), Hobbs (English, ahem) and Matchett (ditto) sitting in an office in Connecticut watching the world feed. They'd go to a couple of races a year, and that was it.

2) The on-air team is large and has current knowledge. NBC's on-air staff was four people total, and the only one with driving experience was in F1 40 years ago. Sky has FOUR drivers, including a guy who was in an F1 seat just a couple of years ago. Plus two (or maybe three, still working out the voices and faces) commentators.

3) They have good feature segments that inform, like Davidson's analysis of key moments using a big screen. And during practice in Spain they sent Brundle down to the last chicane and had him point out what the drivers were doing as they went past. That was really cool.

4) The on-screen graphics are far better. Segment times, personal bests, important gaps, etc.

5) Starting with this last race, they come out of commercial break exactly where they went in. You don't miss a thing (this is huge).

6) They're not constantly having to dumb down the coverage by explaining the same damned stuff over and over. Yeah, we know how qualifying works. We know that at one end of Spa it'll be raining while the other end is sunny.


What did I like better about NBC?

1) Buxton. I never appreciated what he does so well until I saw Brundle floundering his way down the grid trying to find people to talk to. The guy was relentless and always had something to say.

2) Matchett. I loved his technical insights and focus. Really enjoyed the F1 "chalk talk" segments they used to do. All of that's missing now, though we do have a lot more insight into driving than we used to.


Liberty does appear to be trying. Its hit-or-miss in a lot of ways. Grid kids? Okay, great, let's not objectify women. But the replacement is a line of anonymous children who are seen once per race and add absolutely nothing. And don't get me started about the professional wrestling pre-race bullish*t at COTA last year ("A prodigious talent.....")