mario wrote:Actually, we did see the incident that earned Gutierrez his penalty, albeit more by accident than by design - it was the moment when he went off track whilst fighting with Maldonado and the two Force India drivers, with the stewards ruling that running off track in that corner preventing him from losing his position to Maldonado.
Oh. I didn't remember that. My bad. I remember someone mentioning him holding it bravely on the outside of Blanchimont (which I didn't see) and he got a penalty for running wide or something like that. Or was that it before the di Resta and Maldonado collison, when NBC were at break, and I never got to see it?
Overall, though, I do agree that the TV directors have been rather poor at times when it comes to picking up battles in the mid to lower part of the field. How often do we see those below about 5th or 6th place - i.e. below the top three teams - unless it is to pick up a driver who would normally be towards the front of the field but is having to fight back through it (say, Hamilton in Silverstone). The commercial logic is sound - the top teams have the most important sponsors and are the most recognisable when it comes to promoting the sport - but at the same time it is difficult for those at the back of the field to make their presence known.
I have to agree with this. The top 6 get the most attention of all the teams. "It's all about the guys for the win" and stuff like that. Part of the logic behind that is true, but part of it I fell isn't true. I feel F1 is about all of the competing teams designing the best car and the drivers proving who has the best car and proving to the world they are best drivers. It is. But this includes everyone. The backmarkers too. I mean, back 10 - 15 years ago, McLaren and Ferrari had the best cars (and WIlliams, to an extent), but that doesn't mean they dominate. Back then, Minardi could all of a sudden find some huge sponsors and someone could buy them and turn them into midfielders and frontrunners again. Although that would be very unlikely to happen, what if it did? Minardi would be the focus of the viewer. Everyone I feel should be treated more fairly when it comes to airtime on the TV.
Equally, another thing that the TV broadcasters could make more use of would be the radio messages - sometimes the radio messages can throw up a very fascinating insight into what is going on both on and off the track. How many people know that, in Belgium, Massa reported Perez's move on Grosjean back to Smedley? Smedley might have said "It has nothing to do with you", but it suggests that Massa wanted to bring Perez's behaviour to the attention of race control, who also monitor the radio traffic, as soon as he saw him do that move.
Hell yes. More radio messages would be good for viewers, so that they, as you pointed out, would get a better insight on what's going on on track (for example, car problems) and off track (strategy). The fact is, we get very few of those radio messages, and about all I pay attention to anymore is the ones reporting incidents because they are different from the rather extremely typical Red Bull, Ferrari, or McLaren strategy call or the reporting of the most typical parts failure on Red Bull cars in the heat, alternators and gearboxes. I feel there is a lack of diversity in the radio messages, as well as a lack of radio messages in general, which make me slightly cringe whenever I'm really thinking about the subject.
Was it an attempt to emulate that time when Prost did it?
