I've only watched the highlights on Sky Go but it seemed like it was a pretty good race. Having more choice of tyres definitely makes it more interesting and unpredictable. As for Haas and Grosjean, damn.
That was a very enjoyable watch, hopefully a good sign of things to come. I don't think we'll see many surprise podiums aside from weather affected races, but the midfield looks very tightly packed and should see some good racing. Glad to see Alonso get out in one piece as that was a bad accident, don't see either driver being at fault, was just what they'd call a 'racing incident'.
So the C4F1 coverage was ok... a bit ad-heavy in places but Jones is a massive improvement over Perry [and nowhere near as annoying as I remember him to be...] Had a bit of a chuckle watching Murray Walker trying to play The Chain....
I know it's early days yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if Haas ended the season with more points than McHonda Alonso's crash was stomach churning, worst I've seen seen since Kubica's in Canada in 2007(?)
We only get the audio over here in India (Star Sports) but I thought it was very good. The unfamiliar voices took some getting used to, but there was nothing jarringly bad, so the strong start is encouraging.
A bit ad-heavy? There was a serious amount of ads. I'd like to know the ratio of minutes of ads vs content in the first hour of their coverage. Luckily it eased off after the red flag. Been blessed with BBC coverage for a while, it will be hard for me to get used to 5 mins of adverts every 20 mins. Jones was quite good, surprisingly to me.
As I understand it, the live races are supposed to be continuous, without breaks. I imagine the pre and post-race coverage will be saturated to make up the difference.
Used to be Sky (Brundle, Crofty and Kravitz) but it's now Channel 4, with DC and Karun as the only voices I can recognise. Maybe Lee McKenzie (sp?) also for a moment there – I think she had a chat with Ron Dennis about Alonso's shunt.
C4s highlights coverage is not so great. Hopefully a race will be better. Ad heavy is a understatement. DC is a bit less Anti Lewis so maybe it wont be as bad as the bbc version was. Why Ferrari did not match Merc strat we will never know. It cost Vettel the win thats for sure. Hamilton second after that first lap not suprised hes delighted could of been alot worse. Alonso so lucky to walk away from that, When you watch it in slow mo his head is inches from cracking into the fence as it spins over, If it did we would be talking about a different event. If he had Halo device he would not of been able to get out of the car if it was on. The McLaren looked like it had been hit by C4 explosives nothing left of it outside of the drivers shell. All in all a decent race that with heavily tyre influenced overtakes. Cars on the same tyre will still never pass one another unless you have a huge advantage, The Aeros wreck any overtaking that will naturally happen. Do Fear for 2017 season that with them going even more heavy Aero we could see basically 0 real overtaking. Quali format got adandoned was never a good idea in the first place.
It might be selective memory... as ad-heavy as the C4 stuff was... It didn't seem as bad as the ITV coverage was when they had it...
They couldn't beat Merc with equal tyres, simple as that. Sticking with supersofts for Vettel at the restart was the only way to protect his lead given that his time advantage had been wiped out. The moment Alonso crashed, Ferrari had to have known it was all over for P1, and minimising how badly they'd get ****ed was all they could do. I suspect they were hoping that the mediums would begin to fade toward the last 2-3 laps, allowing Vettel on fresher, softer rubber to try some closing-stage overtakes. That's exactly what he did, and he very nearly had Hamilton on Lap 56 before locking up and nearly binning the car.
Mercedes let Hamilton sit behind Verstroppypants for too many laps, they should have put him on a much racier strategy, the undercut was begging, yes he would have come out behind Hulkenberg but I doubt he would have been stuck behind the soft/medium shod Force India as long as he was behind the Toro Rosso. Even the Redbull/TAG didn't have too much trouble dispensing with the supposedly faster Merc shod FIs and Williams.
So the C4F1 coverage pulled in a peak of 2.7m viewers... not sure how it compares to the beeb's coverage, but it remains to be seen how much of that audience sticks around... Edit - Apparently it's a 30% drop from what the beeb got last year... though apparently sky's live coverage was down ~20% on last year too... Edit the second - [Source]
Good race and hard to place the teams. I reckon development will play a huge part with the likes of Red Bull, Renault and McHonda having the development throughout the year. Will Haas, Force India and Williams be able to continually build and who is possibly already looking to 2017? In terms of viewers I was never gonna watch that before today due to spending the weekend in Liverpool. Going forward I can see me recording more or using All 4 app to watch stuff. It'll be interesting what figures where like for streaming with that being how many consume their media now
Interesting both Manor drivers have taken four sets of the mediums with only four sets of super softs, they hoping to try an do some long runs?