Maybe he should have checked first?
You clearly don't understand (a) the nature of live TV, and (b) what the grid walk is...
It's not exactly the sort of thing that is scripted in advance...
Some of us love watching Formula One for the prangs and crashes – but we don't really expect them to happen before the race even begins. Yet, that's the only way to describe a live TV interview at the Chinese Formula One Grand Prix on Sunday, which went embarrassingly wrong. Former Formula One driver and Sky Sports telly …
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Are you sure about that? Back when I used to watch F1 they were often moments they tried to get interviews with people but failed, so they trotted off somewhere else looking for somebody else to grab. Granted that was quite some time ago now
> Might not look scripted, but they've prearranged the interviews and for how long in advance.
Actually you are partially right and wrong. I have worked in outside broadcast at F1. Only certain interviews are lined up. A lot is flown by the seat of the pants.
Pretty much all of the gridwalk interviews is based on spur of the moment judgement, luck and being well-known enough that the drivers want to talk to you.
Brundle is pretty much the king of the art. I do remember one (not by Brundle) where the hopeful interviewer didn't have any luck. the entire gridwalk was basically repeating "Let's go and speak to <x> ... oh, he's gone to the toliet"
Keep it light, and keep doing something. Even if it goes horribly wrong the viewer will hopefully let out a sympathetic chuckle.
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And to be fair to him, it's an international sport with many different nationalities present, in a country where you can't expect everyone to speak your language. It's not someone well known on the track, not a driver or a team boss etc.
To me it seems like a perfectly polite way to check that you can communicate in the language of the people watching on the other side of the world, before launching into a full blown series of questions that they might not understand a word of.
This feels like the result if a slow news day...
You're in ...oh wait....
And given that the average high-educated, high profile Asian might be able to handle english, and sometimes even german in the written form, *nothing* in their education system prepares them for actually speaking it.
As any Fule who' bin there learns to his embarassment..
It's trite to say that Kimi accidentally ran over his team-mate - he did nothing wrong, and went on the go signal. You might as well say the rear jack man ran over his team mate, he didn't signal the tire hadn't been changed, or whatever bright spark came up with the idea that if the wrench spins one way and then the other then the tire has been changed.
Its been like that for a decade now imho. F1 aggressively pushing a pay-for-TV model hasn't helped! In the era where Alonso joined Ferrari, Fux Sports used to show F1 races 4 times a day on race day plus repeats.
Now? Races are rarely live and even then its just once. Nascar gets a higher priority than that, and its even more of a snoozeville. Look, lets see if this season breaks the tedium as its too early to tell. Meantime, Indycar a welcome replacement... As regards Brundle's awkwardness, sign of the times!
Imagine: In parallel universes they must have had amazing F1 seasons. We learned last year Alonso had a chance to join red Bull as Newey was about to peak at car design. But Alonso or his management shot themselves in the foot by insisting on a very short non-committal contract.
And RTL, with Radio5 commentary bring rather good (far better then sky), it's delivered in sync (both available via satellite), it's enough to set up a simulcast and mute the German.
I do this every non live race, and it takes 5 minutes to setup. Well worth the £500 saving, and I'm not funding the sky media machine
Enjoy it while you can, punters. The rationale for F1* is that the technology once proven (supposedly) filters down into the marketplace. But the market is going to electric and autonomous driving. Will there be F1 in 20 or even 10 years?
* Real reason is that blokes like driving fast cars with screaming engines.**
** Real reason for declining popularity is the diminishing need to wear earplugs when watching F1 from the home straight. Now where's the fun if you cannot feel your sternum vibrate when the cars go past? Sheesh - modern pussies!
To me, F1 has been "dead" for too many decades. I go back to Sterling Moss, Phil Hill, Jim Clarrk and others of their ilk during my childhood (not to mention many of the US NASCAR, Indy Car types (though it wasn't Indy Car back then)). No computers watching every foot of travel. No radio comms. Just man and machine vs. man and machine with someone with a sheet of paper in the pits running figures for fuel and speed. Oh.. and noise. Loud those engines were.
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They do need to sort out the media rights again. Hopefully something more along the lines of what Formula E are doing - their emphasis seems to be on fan engagement and large audiences.
An next year's Formula E car looks like something straight out of the Hot Wheels factory http://www.fiaformulae.com/en/news/2018/january/introducing-the-gen2-formula-e-car/
"what Formula E are doing - their emphasis seems to be on fan engagement and large audiences"
I really want to like Formula E, but I don't. It's boring, way more so than f1. There's not enough power to make it visually impressive, the obsession with remaining charge just makes it feel like a resource management game, a load of failed f1 drivers makes it feel second class and and fan boost - really? Next year's rule change to give points for most economical lap shows that the organisers don't really care about racing. All in all it feels like a FIA PR exercise to the environmental lobby.
Formula E... The "racing" sport that's less exiting than a go-cart race, that gives a random reward to whomever manages to win that weeks social media likes competition, that races over really narrow race courses with super high fences that makes it feel like they are racing through a viaduct and hides any and all ability to view the scenery, that switches camera view every 3 seconds to make it feel dynamic and fast but only makes you nauseous, that can get away with making their cars look like they came from a "Speed Racer" comic because they are so slow the aero doesn't actually do much, that can't actually have a single car complete the relatively short race and needs to switch cars midway through a race. Yeah... No... --> The one with the driving gloves in the pocket -->
All in all it feels like a FIA PR exercise to the environmental lobby
I've said it before - there's a way out of this for F1 and the FIA and it isn't electric cars. It's HICEVs - essentially normal engines fuelled by hydrogen. It's wins for everybody; environmentally, for car makers, and for fans of racing. Doubt it'll happen because of the electric car cabal wasting everybody's time and money though.
They do need to sort out the media rights again. Hopefully something more along the lines of what Formula E are doing
.. giving it to a broadcaster that does not care about it enough to show it consistently. You have to play guess the channel does not lead to audience retention. Will the next race be on Five, will it be Spike or will they find some other channel to dump it on.
their emphasis seems to be on fan engagement and large audiences.
Fanboost needs to die in a fire. Having a popularity contest contribute directly to the available power a driver has isn't racing. Sam Bird is at a massive disadvantage, I reckon most Brit racing fans are traditionalists so he never wins the vote yet he still brings home the points.
An next year's Formula E car looks like something straight out of the Hot Wheels factory
yep, the Gen2 car looks hot hot hot. They actually designed in the halo instead of just plonking it on top like a pile of scaffolding.
I love F1, i also love FE. I don't understand the "it's slower" argument. The cars in an F1 race are going slower than in Qualy yet you don't say there's no point in watching the race. The enjoyment in the race is in watching the drivers getting very close to each other indeed and battling to get past/stay ahead through corners. there's typically much more of that in FE than there is in f1 nowadays. That said, both series were blessed with cracking races this past weekend.
I'm pretty impressed.... I had to look up what F1 was. Then I realized it was those cars from Iron Man.
I didn't realize people knew this much about people who drive around in circles over and over again.
I suppose it's cultural or something.
Is it true that these cars are meant to be as similar as possible and that the organizers strictly prohibit the teams from doing anything to modernize the vehicles beyond tuning them? Is it basically really well tuned Ford Model T technology? It's just an internal combustion engine with lots of electronics to tweak and tune them right?
From a technological perspective, are they allowed to do anything interesting outside of material sciences? Can they even do anything good with material sciences? Like could they make the body of a more advanced composite than their competition? Could they make something like a run flat tire using a carbon nanotube structure which would allow them three or four more laps without changing tires?
It disappoints me a little that AMD would spend so much money on something as wasteful as this. But I'd imagine that it helps them make sales.
You got the wrong cars. What you just described is Indy racing. Circular track, IC engine only, ...
F1 uses sports car track, like VIR or Sebring, "engine" is hybrid, bodies are to the formula but not at all similar (only in the sense that all aircraft are similar). Regarding the electronics, the average F1 car has about 120 sensors reporting to the pits and on to the factory during the race. Admittedly quite a few of these are temperature sensors but if you are going to fly a 600 kilo car at 1 cm above the ground at 320 kph using a 1000 horsepower engine, temperature is a big deal.
As for Brundle's aborted interview with the AMD CEO, it was nothing compared to when he attempted to interview Maria Carey.
Someone wrote 'what does that even mean'... Let me have another bite... In Latam, throughout Alonso's Ferrari tenure Fux Sports 3 used to show every race 'Live' as it was happening. They then repeated the race up to 4 times throughout the same Sunday, and there were repeats throughout the following week too. Whereas at the moment, its rare for Fux Sports to show any Live races, and midweek repeats, that's all over!
Can anyone else remember when some childrens' TV show or other used to recreate highlights of F1 races using Scalextric? Although I don't remember any Playmobil figures getting run over in the pit lane.
Ah, those were the days, when Ayrton Senna was regarded by at least one commentator as a talentless rich kid who'd bought his way into F1 instead of a saint.
I wouldn't recognize her or most other tech CEOs.
I read their names in articles, very rarely do I know what they look like.
And honestly, why does it matter? It's not like he was rude, he was in Asia and saw an Asian and asked if they spoke English... that doesn't seem particularly offensive and she didn't seem to mind.
"F1 yawn. MotoGP, rally cars, sidecars or the hillbilly OZ V8s offer far more entertainment"
Also more entertaining than F1: that channel that just shows a fireplace the whole time. Also, reading the minutes of European Commission subcommittee meetings. In all the official languages.
"F1 yawn. MotoGP, rally cars, sidecars or the hillbilly OZ V8s offer far more entertainment" - add IndyCar to that list. There's more excitement in the 24heurs du Mans than an F1 race - and has been for years.
After failing to find F1 highlights in Sky's EPG (a ten minute program in reality) on anything other than Sky F1 I've decided to not bother with F1 any more. Having watched the last two IndyCar races live, both with plenty of excitement, that's what I'll now watch for fast racing.
Why do French presidents of the FIA always fuck up motorsport, Jean-Marie Bastard killed Group C for a decade or so.
Then you really haven't watched any of the more interesting F1 races. Last weeks race in China didn't start out very exiting (though there were some nice overtakes) but ended up very close.
F1 isn't always exiting, and some races ARE snooze fests, but then sometimes something happens like last weeks crash between Gasly and Hartley causing a safety car and the whole race is back open. Or a race like the 2016 Brazil GP (wet race, plenty of exitement).
F1 isn't always exiting, and some races ARE snooze fests, but then sometimes something happens like last weeks crash between Gasly and Hartley causing a safety car and the whole race is back open.
It does seem F1 is getting less exciting as time goes by, that the only kick does come if there's an incident and a non-virtual safety car bunches them up and resets everything.
It's getting common that races are mostly settled after the first few laps and then it's just a tedious procession and maybe some battles for the minor placings. There's little on-track skill shown, get out in front then lead all the way to the finishing line.
When it goes pay-to-view I doubt I will miss its departure.
Uhuh, less exciting than for instance 1988, where the MP4/4 with Senna or Prost was guaranteed to win every race?
It's not the first time in F1 history that there is little overtaking and the battle is decided by strategy and pitstops. Sure the sound was more impressive but that was about it.
And little on-track skill shown?? Have you WATCHED any of the recent races? Plenty of skill shown by multiple drivers.
Yeah, F1 could be a lot better since the aero heavy cars make overtaking difficult and the sound of the V6 turbo's doesn't come close to the V12s, V10s or V8s of the past but it's still the pinnacle of racing. The speeds achieved are INSANE and only the LeMans LMP1 class comes close, even the slightest error can mean these guys miss a brake point, clip the inside curb on the apex then lose the back end on the exit ending up in the gravel or the wall (or the nice flat run-off asfalt if they're on one of the Tilke-temples). It's not for the faint of heart and not every driver can make it.
"but it's still the pinnacle of racing. The speeds achieved are INSANE and only the LeMans LMP1 class comes close, even the slightest error can mean these guys miss a brake point, clip the inside curb on the apex then lose the back end on the exit ending up in the gravel or the wall"
Yes, but that doesn't mean it's particularly interesting to watch, that's the thing. All those things are perfectly true, but watching it happen still winds up being dull as hell 95% of the time. This is not at all unusual, is it? 99% of people wouldn't want to watch the 'pinnacle' of software engineering played out in real time for two hours. Or tax accounting. Or sewer maintenance (actually that'd probably make a pretty good History Channel show...)
All of the following things can be true at the same time:
* Building a fast F1 car is insanely difficult and expensive and technically advanced
* Driving one fast is extremely difficult, dangerous and skilled work
* Watching it happen is boring
Weirdly enough for me one of the bigger blows recently was the removal of pit stop refuelling. All the arguments for it make perfect sense - remove a non-actually-driving-a-fast-car-fast factor from being able to influence race results, avoid people having to handle large volumes of highly flammable fuel at ridiculously high speeds in close proximity to extremely hot race cars, etc. etc. - but at least when we had refuelling strategies and more potential for pit stop mess-ups it gave the commentators something to talk about for the 15 laps at a time when absolutely nothing else of interest was happening and added a bit more unpredictability to keep you watching after lap 2...
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If he was a really good reporter, after he realized she was the AMD CEO, he would have asked her why she sold her company's server IP to Tianjin Haiguang Advanced Technology Investment Co. Ltd., with THATIC being a cousin of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a national research institution.
https://www.amd.com/en-us/press-releases/Pages/press-release-2016apr21.aspx
Yes, you're so right, his British audience -- the one that often makes fun of the French, Americans, and other foreigners, from the BBC on down -- cares deeply that he picked an Asian woman at random out of the crowd and assumed she spoke his British English.
I didn't see the race, I gave up following F1 when BBC ducked out of their contract and half the races went to SKY, but from how you describe it, it doesn't sound that bad. Especially given Brundle's previous gaffs.
He's in a foreign country, covering an international event, surely asking if someone speaks English is far more polite than just going up to someone and then blabbering something to them and assuming they'll speak English? There are plenty of very successful Asian business people who don't speak English who are more than well-heeled enough to have been on that grid.
As someone who has done a fair bit of living abroad in Foreign Language Land, I think it is quite possible that the scenario went askew simply because of a moment of confusion that had nothing to do with language. I've been there many a time myself, where my wondering things like "why the heck is he asking ME about THAT" causes people to automatically switch languages, even though language was never the problem. Because a look of confusion, regardless of the reason, creates false positives in the "Do they understand me?" test.
So I think it started more like this...
Brundlefly approaches Su, microphone in hand.
Su has a WTF moment, wondering why he has picked her out and what questions he will have.
Brundlefly sees Su's confused expression and assumes it is language that is the problem.
"Excuse me ma'am, do you speak English?"...
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Although Steve Jones ruins C4's F1 Coverage, David Coulthard is the undisputed king of grid walks and double enterdres - especially when he's paired up with Mark Webber.
IIRC in 2017 at Monaco he was walking backwards and talking to the camera when he walked into the Crown Prince.
In all honesty, the crew that teaches 6 to 10 year olds how to drive 4 wheel ATVs up around SWMBO's brother's place puts on *much* more entertaining races. Its honestly hysterical to watch, from gearing the little ones up, to watching them waddle over to the machines, to the chaos on the track.
This could be a new game, except no one cares, she’s a girl, does invisible work, pays for everything and is not Wazza. I recently had a conversation with a close family discussing renumeration and value to society. Who do you value more a paediatric heart surgeon who saved a family members life or Wayne Rooney? The reply; “There’s only one Wayne Rooney”. #igiveupyouwin
This is one of those results of technology that allows "on the spot" stuff and thus gets used willy-nilly to fill in otherwise dead time, or to create a false sense of immediacy in coverage. The most infamous example in the US (of the ones not involving death or injury) happened when a well-respected political reporter was inconveniently in the studio when protocol required her to deliver her spiel live in front of some gummint building. So they green-screened her in, and she paid a hefty price for simply doing what the producer droid insisted she had to do to pacify the media gods.