Romain Grosjean, Haas, Bahrain International Circuit, 2018

“Bad communication” blamed for Magnussen’s delay behind Grosjean

RaceFans Round-up

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In the round-up: Haas team principal Guenther Steiner blamed a communication error for why Kevin Magnussen was held up by team mate Romain Grosjean at one stage in Sunday’s race.

What they say

“What the [censored by FOM] is he doing, guys, come on,” complained Magnussen on the radio when he lost time behind Grosjean. Steiner explained why:

It wasn’t intentional. I think we were a little bit late in giving Romain the information. he didn’t really see what was happening and we told Kevin ‘just go’. It’s always in between. He didn’t do it intentionally. There was some, I wouldn’t say miscommunication, but bad communication how it was done. It should have been clearer communication from our side.

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Comment of the day

@ECWDanSelby picks apart an unsuccessful passing attempt by Valtteri Bottas on Sebastian Vettel on the final lap in Bahrain:

The issue was he didn’t go for it, and he didn’t not go for it. He kind of did a bit of both, and therefore scuppered his chances.

If he went for it and took a lunge, it would be 50-50.

If he had decided against it and maintained his racing line, I think he would have got Vettel down the following straight through better traction alone.

By doing a bit of both, I think he ruined his chance of a move.
@ECWDanSelby

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Keith Collantine
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43 comments on ““Bad communication” blamed for Magnussen’s delay behind Grosjean”

  1. So C4 has 4x the viewers of Sky.
    There seems to be a need for FTA F1 coverage :p

    1. For some reason, I much prefer the C4 coverage. Less over the top, less kravitz thinking he is actually an F1 driver and that he is best friends with everyone, less anthony davidson fingering a TV trying to get it to work.

      I remember when coulthard first started and him being really wooden. He has really come into his own.

      C4 coverage just a feels a bit more down to earth. Less gimmicky and more fun.

      1. My other dream is DC replacing Brundle on Sky. I love his honesty. Far superior, imo.

        1. Ben Rowe (@thegianthogweed)
          11th April 2018, 9:53

          I don’t mind Brundle. But Brundle has gone downhill since he was with Coulthard. What we need is for them to be back together and Crofty to quit. I didn’t mine kravitz when he was on the BBC. I think he been infected by Crofty in terms of being annoying. I hate it when they both start talking about pies and curries instead of what is on the screen. They may do this much more often in practice, but it is so irelivent and they think they are funny when they are just not.

          I’m a big fan of Ben Edwards but I can understand why some may not be. He makes lots of mistakes but he sounds so passionate about what he is commentating on. When we had the qualifying knock out zone that wasn’t working well in the first 2 races of 2016 I think it was, All Brundle and Crofty did was moan rather than tell you what position the drivers were in. Ben Edwards commentated as normal, then described the big issues with this method of qualifying afterwards.
          I find Crofty just sounds like he is angry and shouting at the microphone far to often. That is my opinion though.

          1. @thegianthogweed – Not just your opinion. Can only tolerate Crofty & Kravitz with the sound muted.

            Coulthard & Brundle back together would be brilliant.

          2. imo the BBC years with Brubdle, Coulthard and Jordan where amazing, great synergy, toned down but fun and creative production, I remember sometimes being bored with the racing and watching only the pre and after shows just to watch these guys they could make the most boring race fun.

            Sky was a mess from the start, Brundle is not the same without the rest, the constant commercials are maddening, presentation looks cheap or tacky.

            I guess at BBC they had a talented director with good taste, sky is commercial in the negative sense of the word.

            Haven’t seen C4, but its hard to believe it could be worse than SKY.

        2. How about the Italian commentator from F2, he’s brilliant.

      2. @mach1 Yep. You said it less gimmicky and more fun.

        They aren’t as grumpy, as desperate and as soapy, controversial and sometimes downright bias without admission. The broadcast flows a lot better, now where’s Lee McKenzie?

        Incredible response by ESPN, unheard of in the US. Anyway as soon as the ratings go up and the online stream is set-up, they’ll reintroduce ads.

        1. Yep another vote here for C4 coverage. Just seems more genuine, a bit light hearted and fun. Reminds of of when F1 returned to the BBC after being at ITV for a while.

        2. @peartree Lee’s off doing the Commonwealth games, so they got Tom Clarkson in as a sub.

      3. Pat Ruadh (@fullcoursecaution)
        11th April 2018, 10:12

        Ted Kravitz is the one redeeming feature of Sky’s coverage for me.
        Edwards and ‘Crofty’ are both noise pollutants.

      4. I like Ben Edwards commentary, especially compared to Crofty.
        Steven Jones is better than Simon Lazenby.
        David Coulthard I prefer to Brundle, who’s just whining about everything.
        Karun Chandhok is better than Ted Kravitz.
        Mark Webber is better than Johnny Herbert, Anthony Davidson, and Paul di Resta combined. (especially when you get DC and Webber together)
        Lee McKenzie is better than Rachel Brookes
        Susie Wolff I prefer to Damon Hill (especially when C4 gets extra bits on Mercedes thanks to her)

        Basically, C4 > Sky. Such a shame that money is more important than viewers…

        1. @optimaximal Thanks, I’m relieved, until she goes off to do wimbledon.
          @fullcoursecaution Crofty and Edwards are indeed noise pollutants but Ted, Ted is just rude, and ph@nb0y5h.

          @hugh11 for one reason or the other I completely agree with you.

          The most contentious picks are Brundle and Ted, the latter who I personally detest. Brundle is a legend but he’s off form, grumpy, tired, I still remember when he tried to come up with something clever to say live back in the ITV days. Kravitz does have some inside knowledge from his unnamed sources, that technical focus is great for us viewers but he tags along with Croft to make the most f@nb0y5h stories.

          The rest is a no contest. Good point on Suzie she’s the only one coming up with inside info on c4.

          1. Brundle is a legend but he’s off form, grumpy, tired, I still remember when he tried to come up with something clever to say live back in the ITV days.

            @peartree – I did enjoy Brundle’s commentary some years ago, but yes, his tone has changed. Maybe F1 has changed a lot from his ideal/memory of F1, and that has soured him? I’m glad that in my country we get a syndicated C4 feed, so generally good commentary.

            This might come across as uncharitable, but I sometimes felt that some of the Sky crew are almost hangers-on wanting to be seen as still relevant in F1 circles.

      5. C4 for me as well.

    2. So I tuned in to watch qualifying on C4, to discover that on Freesat you can no longer get C4 in HD. SD was awful: impossible to read graphics, grainy footage. For the race I bought a weeks subscription to Now TV to watch in HD. And as I activated it just before the race, I’ll have all of the Shanghai sessions as well!

      1. Ben Rowe (@thegianthogweed)
        11th April 2018, 13:42

        That is strange. As Channel 4 ften have some of their practice sessions on more4 which isn’t HD anyway. And I watched that on a 24 inch PC monitor and I foudn the graphics easy to read. I sometimes think that Freeview must be better than Freesat on SD channels.

    3. Agree with most here. Coulthard is very quick and perceptive. Him and Brundle back again would be the best commentator pairing IMO. Chandhok as tech/pitlane. Kravitz in the pen as he is not afraid to ask the questions that needs asking.

      Pre/post: Di Resta is good and Lazenby Ok. Get Webber to be the 3rd guy. But no Hill, Herbert or Davidson please. Hill thinks he’s there to wave the British flag, Herbert serves platitudes and too often doesn’t get the questions, and Davidson will just tow whatever line is made and doesn’t contribute much of interest.

      1. @v12beard @thegianthogweed @jimmi-cynic @balue I hate Coulthard’s commentary, Couldn’t stand it when he was alongside Brundle in 2011 & don’t like him any better with Edwards.

        As a pundit he’s fine but as a commentator I think he’s awful.

        On the other side I really like Sky. I don’t mind Crofty, I like Brundle & Herbert aside I quite like there pre/post race stuff. I also love what they offer in terms of all the OnBoards & extra feeds we get over the weekend & feel there analysis is overall far deeper than what Channel 4 offer.
        It always feels to me like the C4 analysis stuff is aimed more at the casual viewer while Sky dig a bit deeper & offer stuff that the more hardcore fans (Which I consider myself) would better appreciate.
        Stuff like this:
        http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5l6z1b
        http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x68vm7f
        http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3yxu49

  2. As one of the many who was infuriated by the massive amount of commercial breaks during the Australian GP race coverage on ESPN, I was very vocal on Twitter expressing my discontent. I couldn’t have cared less about the pre-race show sync-fail – I was streaming it live anyway and frankly, that was an understandable failure since it was their first attempt. Yes, it could have been handled better – but I want to say I rated the rest of what ESPN had done very fairly.

    The streaming of practices was of excellent quality and the decision to go commercial free while the cars were on track for all of that first qualifying was great! Then for Bahrain, they added in F2 on the streaming (which they call ESPN3) and televised FP3 and then proved they heard the fans and didn’t reduce the amount commercials for the race but removed them ENTIRELY which is completely unheard of in the USA. Then, they went one step further and made everything available to be watched or rewatched at our convenience on ESPN3 streaming. Brilliant.

    I know this reads like I’m an ESPN employee. I’m not. I’m just a fanatic who’s thrilled at being heard by @ESPNF1 and @LibertyMediaUK and I hope all of you who were as loud as I was expressing discontent for round one made an effort to express your gratitude for round two.

    Final thought: No, they aren’t including the entire pre-quali/race and post-quali/race SkyF1 coverage. Yes, I’d love to have that included with the televised content or at least streamed prior to and after the event, BUT, I’d much rather have quali and the race without commercials! That’s something NO ONE else has ever delivered and it’s truly my wildest dream come true!

    1. pastaman (@)
      11th April 2018, 0:35

      It’s true, commercial free programming is unheard of here except for public broadcasting networks. It’s so ingrained that there are even “TV timeouts” in basketball that are taken after every 4 minutes of game clock to show commercials. This is awesome, ESPN!

      1. pastaman (@)
        11th April 2018, 1:27

        Also, I have to wonder if the double retirement of Haas in Australia played a factor as it happened during a commercial break. I was screaming at the TV :)

      2. It’s so ingrained that there are even “TV timeouts” in basketball that are taken after every 4 minutes of game clock to show commercials.

        What?! @pastaman – so do the ticket-buying audience just have to meekly sit through this timeout while the ads run? The more I hear of TV programming in the US, the more it sounds like they are ad channels interspersed with sports.

    2. Lucky you, my friend!

      TSN in Canada copy paste the sky feed and cut to commercial every 15 minutes on the dot. Watching C4 post race on YouTube lets me know what I’m missing!

  3. Lucky USA (if they have ESPN), although I now understand their complaints about the commentators from SKY. I watched the 1 hour, so-called highlights program here in Oz and found myself wishing it would hurry up and end as random chunks of the race were removed along with the commentary to allow for commercials and the 1 hour format, there was absolutely no continuity, cars suddenly appeared in a totally different order with no explanation as to how that happened, passes shown were all highway style DRS, in all it was an incomprehensible procession of cars, I think LibertyM should seriously consider dropping these “highlights” as they probably turn potential fans off, alternately they should consider a properly produced highlights program with an explanatory commentary.

    1. @hohum I don’t understand what you so upset about. The definition of highlight is only showing the interesting part of the race, so of course chunks of race will be removed and car position will be switched around of they’re not doing something special (i.e. most of midfielders that changed place during pitstop anyway). Since I’m sure you have watched complete F1 race before, I can’t understand why you so mad about DRS passes. The highlight director doesn’t decide how a pass happened and we all know after first few laps, barring SC/VSC events the passes are most likely DRS passes. Is there any non-DRS pass that they cut from the highlight in favor of DRS pass? Likewise with the car positions, even in live feed they don’t show every pitstop every car takes and you probably missed out many of midfielders changing position if you don’t pay attention to the tower.

  4. I tuned into the Bahrain GP, prepared for the onslaught of ill-timed commercial breaks to come. As an American tv viewer for many years, I’m used to it. As the race wore on, and finally finished without a single break, I was pretty well stunned. As an American tv viewer for many years, I’m definitely NOT used to that! Maybe what we heard about ESPN getting the broadcast rights for next to nothing is true. Whatever the reasons behind this, well done Mothers Polish and ESPN. I’m not nearly as anxious now about the roll-out of F1TV.

    1. This is the interesting thing to me: where does this put F1TV? I was ready to drop ESPN like a hot potato and go for the streaming service the moment it became available; for commercial-free coverage, they could have asked almost any price. Then ESPN goes commercial-free! I don’t know what effect this has or will have on the potential user base of F1TV (yes, they’re different mediums, but surely there’s some crossover), but I assume the question isn’t lost on the ESPN people trying to retain viewership.

  5. ”the Shanghai International Circuit, where the two very long straights and medium speed corners will present us with a very different challenge this weekend.”
    – A bit misleading wording there. SIC only has one ‘very long straight’ and one ‘long-ish’ straight to be precise.

  6. Last seasons F1 coverage still better than nameless group plus Brundle in the 2018 series but it will be sooner than later l will have to get them. What damn choice do l have here in the Pacific Northwest of America ??

  7. Hearing these English Commentators really scream as much as they do will take time to get used too and become second hand. I love to hear excitement but come on

  8. The level of trolling Toro Rosso and Honda do of McLaren is absolutely admirable

  9. I was very pleasantly surprised when there was no commercial during the Bahrain GP. So I applaud ESPN here. Of course, being in America, I know this has nothing to do with caring about the F1 viewers, but they are just trying to create an F1 watching trend before starting to commercialize everything. But, I trust ESPN more than other broadcasters when it comes to keeping the sports-watching engaging, so we’ll see how it goes next year.

    But I’ll say that it’s actually not expensive to follow no-commercial-break F1 in America. For 25 bucks per month on Sling (Orange + Sports Extra), you get all the F1 sessions, a lot of other sports (beIN Sports, ESPN-U, other sports on ESPN, etc.). Plus you get common channels like CNN in case you feel like hearing pundits talk about Trump 23 hours and a half each day. In the UK, the same SkySports package would cost you more than 30 GBP. Great prices for a country known for overcharging customers.

  10. Roth Man (@rdotquestionmark)
    11th April 2018, 8:15

    Pierre Gasly is quite an amusing character isn’t he? At first I couldn’t weigh him up, seemed a little arrogant but he’s actually very dry and funny. He’s like Kimi but with some batteries in.

    1. @rdotquestionmark he’s like Kimi, but human

  11. I’m a HaasF1 supporter, but I think Grosjean probably heard enough to know he should have let Kmag go by. He’s really feeling the pressure from the Dane. Let’s hope for a little more self-discipline and better “communication” next time out. They’ll work it out.

    1. Surprising this is the first comment on the roundup headliner! Yes I agree – I would go as far as to suggest Magnussen / Grosjean may be this season’s Ocon / Perez. Romain was just awful leaving space and then cutting back in, almost as if the devil on his shoulder told him at the last minute not to let him through.

      So far, Magnussen has looked more impressive too.

  12. Talking about coverage, you can complain as much, as you want, but here in Lithuania F1 coverage was scrapped for the first time in more than 20 years. That is very sad, as broadcasters said they couldn’t come to the agreement with Liberty Media, though I doubt there was much effort put into it. Anyway, the race was broadcasted via pay channel and it was commented by a surgeon and various other guys, who have nothing to do with motorsports, except they are fans of F1.

    1. who have nothing to do with motorsports, except they are fans of F1.

      I don’t thik it’d be very unfair to say this of @keithcollantine (OK, he does run an f1 website but that’s different from e.g. driving or being an engineer or strategist) and yet I’d love to have him as commentator.

      1. But @keithcollantine lives from this, it is his passion and the way of living, but here commentators were like armchair experts, always missing important things during coverage and pretending they know so much.

  13. Ben Rowe (@thegianthogweed)
    11th April 2018, 13:52

    While it is great to see Channel 4 doing so well, it is also a real shame knowing that we just have 9 live weekends left in their deal. We gain so many more viwers, they Paytv takes over. What a terrible way to get people to watch F1. Sky will get more customers which is what they want. But F1 will get less viewers, which is not good at all. I really hope Channel 4 will show a replay of the whole race, not just the highlights from 2019. If they can do that, It would be brillent.

    From the amount of comments I have seen, it seems the majority think that the freeview coverage of F1 is better than Sky. I find that pretty shocking that so many think Sky is worse as it has it’s own dedicated Channle. That said, I myself think their presentation is nothing like as good as Channel 4. Especially in practice sessions and before and after the race on Sunday.

    I really hope Sky will do there 9 month deal again next year. It wasn’t worth it this year as it didn’t make it any cheaper to be able to watch all sessions live. But if it is the same price next year, it will be worth it. But still 150GBP for coverage that I think is a lot worse than Channel 4 will still seem really expensive.

  14. SparkyAMG (@)
    11th April 2018, 16:39

    I’m with many here and think that the C4 coverage is fantastic, although personally I could do without Steven Jones.

    I would have loved to have seen Jake Humphrey back in his place, and given that he’s director of Whisper Films (the production team behind the C4 broadcast) I thought it might have happened at some point.

    I don’t think their involvement in the 2019 season has been decided yet, but I hope they continue to be involved in F1 broadcasting, even if it is only available as a highlights package.

    1. Ben Rowe (@thegianthogweed)
      11th April 2018, 21:37

      @sparkyamg

      Jake Humphery, David Coulthard and Eddie Jordan were such a good team in the pre and post race coverage when they were together. I really do miss Humphrey on the coverage although I was aware he is a big part of is behind the scenes.

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