Yesterdays excellent San Marino Grand Prix left me decidedly optimistic that the Formula 1 championship could finally be out of the doldrums.
These doldrums had been brought about by the domination of Ferrari and Michael Schumacher in particular. There was a decidedly ominous quality about how stunning Schumacher’s race was after the first pit stop (I just can’t get my head around how well he did to come from 12th to third). I fear that, with a decent grid position, there is still a dominance there that threatens the openness that has been the hallmark of the season so far.
One wild card in it all is reliability. Normally Ferrari are unbeatable purely because of this, as they introduce new cars and new technologies, they don’t suffer point losses through cars packing up half way through a race. This isn’t the case this season, as the form to date demonstrates. Until yesterday, Schumacher had only accumulated two points… His previous failure to finish due to car problems is counted in seasons not races.
I doubt reliability will be a problem for much longer though. Which means that if the car can pull off the sort of form it showed signs of, certainly in Schumachers hands, the other teams might have difficulty. But progress isn’t confined to the Ferrari team by any means. BAR are showing promising signs, and Renault (I still want to type Benetton) too are looking very strong. They’re certainly in the running with Alonso the friendly face. I refuse to get excited about McLaren’s Raikonnen, at least until he starts getting excited about his sport (does the man ever smile?).
All in all, I’m hoping the next grand prix in Barcelona will show where things truly stand. If Ferrari are back to form, but Renault push hard, we should - at long, long last - have a proper season of racing at its very best on our hands.
And a footnote: If ITV ever, ever, ever decide to put such a long advert break out so close to the end of a race I will be writing irate e-mails and letters to them. What ever happened to producers actually caring about the quality of what they were broadcasting? The commentators should be able to hold adverts at such a crucial moment: One of the best finishes in years and they put 5 minutes of adverts on!!? That they reran the last few laps in the post-race analysis shows they were conscious of what a mistake it was, but they’d better learn quickly from that…
Entries (RSS)
April 25th, 2005 at 2:02 pm
Bah!!! Thought better of holding off, and let rip on the ITV F1 website feedback (to the advertising section). My comments follow:
Thanks for the - as usual - great coverage of the San Marino race yesterday, but what on earth was the justification for putting on 4-5 minutes of adverts at the very end of one of the best races in years?
Surely it makes some degree of sense to use some editorial privilege to hold off adverts at such a crucial stage in an enthralling race that quite literally went right down to the line. I know the final few laps were rerun in the post-race analysis, but surely that concedes the point it was a mistake to break to adverts.
I understand that adverts are important to cover the costs, but I’d suggest that - if such a situation is repeated - the commentators and editorial team use their judgement as to whether advertising breaks are appropriate, or going to detract from the reason we fans are tuning in! I’d like to suggest a complete halt to advertising breaks (certainly at that length!) when there are less than 5 laps to go in future, and I’d be interested to hear your response.
Regards,
Richard Leyton
April 28th, 2005 at 7:44 pm
Seems that ITV have accepted they were wrong!
Read their acknowledgement and apology in full