As I indicated in my previous post, I did not get to watch enough Le Mans to really get into the action. It is always fun to watch this type of racing, where we see a ton of cars, and lots of different types on the track at the same time. I guess the rain made things interesting, but all in all I was just a casual observer. Would have been nice if the Corvette could have chased down the Aston Martin, but the final Safety Car ended all hopes for the US.
The FOX US Grand Prix broadcast was very nice. I read earlier today that it was not going to be in HD, but it was showing up as 1080i on my TV, and looked great. Maybe not as clear as the TNT NASCAR race at Michigan, but still very nice. It was interesting to see that the pseudo HD broadcast was about 1.5 seconds behind the SD broadcast. Don’t ask why I noticed. OK, I confess. I will flit between SD and HD to show my wife just how awesome our TV is when looking at HD broadcasts. I know; I am strange.
I am not sure who was responsible for the FOX broadcast, but what was up with not showing Hamilton and Alonso in the closing laps? I love Ferrari as much as the next guy (that loves Ferrari), but how do you not show the race leader for a good seven laps? Alonso looked utterly crushed. Lewis Hamilton is pretty damn fun to watch.
I did not watch much of the Michigan race; it just did not capture my attention. As I am watching the closing laps, it looks like my prediction of a non Hendrick team winning today was spot on, even if the pick was off. A Carl Edwards win, and poor finishes by most of the Top 10 except for Tony Stewart (finished 3rd), coupled with another Top 10 finish by Jeff Gordon (finished 9th), means that Gordon should increase his points led. How about Junior? He managed a 5th place finish, which should go a long way towards helping his Chase cause.
Easy – you show the Ferraris because (and here’s something I didn’t think I’d say for a long time) they were still racing, and the McLarens weren’t.
Right, and that is a first over last few years. However, I have not seen a race in a long time where you do not show the front runner for at least seven laps.
I always maintain that it is good for F1 when a Ferrari is running up front, and I do like Ferrari, but at times today, it was a little too much red.
I…sort of know what you mean. I have no idea what the Fox broadcast crew picked up on (I guess they didn’t have the normal Speed commentary team?) but some of the main events ITV picked up on here involved Ferrari so I suppose in a way it’s understandable. Kimi starting on the harder tyre, getting held up behind Kovalainen, being the fastest man on the track as soon as he changed to softs, setting fastest lap as Massa started promisingly but began to fade inexplicably until he and Kimi were on the same piece of track…a lot of the significant stuff today did involve those red cars.
If they’re not showing the front runner, then something is happening elsewhere and the director isn’t myopic enough to miss it. This, in my view, is A Good Thing. Some of the racing, notably involving the recovering Fizzycola, Button and the persistence of Alex Wurz, was great even if it ultimately counted for nothing, and there are too many directors now who focus on the leader to the exclusion of everything else and ultimate detriment of their coverage.
In other words, one man’s minor gripe is another man’s overwhelming positive. As an aside, I think Formula One Management are the host broadcaster in the USA, and certainly the coverage there always seems a cut above somewhere like Brazil so it’d make sense, but I haven’t checked that.
Adam, great points. There was a lot of interesting racing going on during the late laps, and I am glad that we got to see some of it. I loved watching Button and his factory Honda getting passed. That was a “wow … how low can Honda go” moment.
It still would have been nice to have a brief look at Hamilton in the closing laps, and I bet we would have if he was running in a red car.