Pat W

IndyCar TV: Versus & Sky Sports

While I’ve keeping up to date on the BBC’s F1 coverage here in the UK, I’ve been remiss in not talking about the new TV deal for the IRL IndyCar Series. Since it is effectively the series I cover most after F1, I need to put that right straight away.

US Coverage
(see below for UK coverage details)

New for this year is a switch to the Versus cable channel, which brings with it an increase in race day coverage and as well as more time for qualifying. What’s interesting is that all of their content will also be available on Versus HD – which is a result!

Five races are still with ABC, doing that curious American thing of splitting coverage between broadcasters. Obviously Indy isn’t moving any time soon but with the rest of them… guys just put them in one place and market the hell out of them, yeah? I’m guessing ABC insisted on this arrangement.

Versus is cleverly choosing to air IndyCar programs around the 500 so as to keep the content rolling and the awareness out there, which is good thinking. I think it includes something on qualifying but that’ll be announced properly later.

Previews
Prior to the season there are four hour-long previews every Saturday at 2.00pm ET.
– The first of those was aired last weekend and was about Danica P. Okay, not my choice but she is the marketing darling of the series so I can live with that, even if I’d prefer a similar show about the reigning champion – but I’m just a hardcore fan not a casual viewer… The remaining shows are:
– ‘Top Ten Closest Finishes in IRL History’ which should be very entertaining! (I’m fairly sure this is ‘IRL’ and not ‘Indycar’ history, so since 1996);
– Next is ‘Crashes and Conflicts’ which worries me slightly, we don’t want to be attracting the sort of “fans” who “only watch for the crashes” so I hope they treat it with a respect for the danger instead of ‘hey that’s cool’ – because it isn’t cool, what’s cool is the skill in avoiding the crashes;
– Finally we end with ‘IndyCar World Tour’ which is about the circuits visited during the season;

Qualifying
During the season there will be a post-qualifying wrap up show at 6pm ET on the Saturday. I don’t think ESPN covered qualifying did it? I’m not sure, someone let me know, but if so this marks a big improvement and dare I say a toe-in-the-water for potential live coverage next season, so make sure you watch it to convince them to do it!

If the IRL knock-out qualifying is as good as it is in F1 then it’ll be worth watching, and the oval system seems interesting in a completely different way.

Race
This is followed on Sunday by a live 3-hour race show featuring build-up and post-race. It sounds like you guys are finally getting for IndyCar what we’ve got here for F1! IndyCar finally gets the hours it deserves.

Race commentary will be provided by Bob Jenkins, Jon Beekhuis and Robbie Buhl. Jenkins is an experienced hand who’ll run a steady ship, Beekhuis is possibly the best IndyCar technical expert around, and Buhl is a team owner. That’s a good, solid line-up.

In the pits will be the inimitable Jack Arute, along with series newcomers Lindy Thackston and Robbie Floyd. I hope Thackton isn’t the token female that Brie was for so long last year (due respect though – she did get A LOT better). Apparently she’s been on ALMS pit reporter duty before so that’s promising. Floyd seems to be coming in as a total newbie to racing, so maybe he’s the one in the deep end this year? Good luck to them all, let’s keep an open mind and give them a few races to bed in.

Races will be re-aired in full the next day (Monday). There will also be further reruns on Sunday for races in odd timezones, like Motegi.

Lights
Alongside the Monday re-air, Versus will show Indy Lights in full – a great result for the Lights guys. Furthermore, two of the Lights races will be live – at Indy and Homestead. I’m sure this marks a major step up for this series.
(PS – if someone could see their way to sending MotorsTV in Europe the Lights tapes a little earlier than last year, that’d be cool too)

Overview
On the whole this looks to be a very good deal, and it’s long-term as well. Okay so the reach isn’t as big as ESPN’s but ever since the coverage announcement was made a couple of months back several US-based IRL bloggers have noted that Versus has appeared in their local area, or the area of people they know. So it is growing and will continue to do so – this a great chance for the IRL to put their series in a place where it can grow along with the network, a bit like NASCAR did many years ago. There’s a lot of potential here – this is a good deal.

The IndyCar Series begins on April 5th on the street/airport hybrid circuit in St Petersburg, Florida. This will be live on Versus at 2.00pm ET, and remember to check out the qualifying recap show the day before at 6.00pm – get eyeballs on to it to show them you want to see it live next year!

UK Coverage
IndyCar once again returns to Sky Sports with every round live or same-day delayed, primarily on Sky Sports 3 (St Pete will be on Sky Sports Xtra).

There are precious few details around at the moment and I’ve been unable to locate an announcement but I have found a short-term schedule of motor racing appearing on Sky over the next six weeks and IndyCar is on it, along with NASCAR and A1GP.
I assume there will be at least one replay of the IndyCar races if not more at various stages in the week, however there is no HD coverage as far as I am aware – this of course may still change. Last season there were only two HD races across their entire motorsport portfolio, yet this year I believe most if not all of the NASCAR events held so far have been in HD. We’ll know more nearer the time.

We also don’t yet know who will provide commentary. In previous years ESPN supplied a different commentary pairing, Garry Lee and Larry Rice, along with the same pit crew seen on American TV (albeit with fewer reports). We don’t yet know if we’ll have Jenkins/Beekhuis/Buhl or another team – frankly there are pros and cons to both options. It’s nice having the guys talking to us without endless promotion for other stuff on the network, and giving shouts to countries watching. On the other hand, it’d be fantastic to have everyone watch the same thing (a la A1GP) and maybe the US domestic guys could shout out the different places tuning in live.

Once again you can expect interjections from Sky’s London studio with Keith Heuwen and guests during any yellow flag periods.

The IndyCar Series begins on April 5th on the street/airport hybrid circuit in St Petersburg, Florida. This will be live on Sky Sports Xtra at 7.30pm and is directly followed on the same channel by live NASCAR Sprint Cup from Texas. That’s a good long day of racing, starting with the Malaysian GP – love it!

Weekend Preview: 14-15 March 2009

Welcome to what Blogger tells my is my 100th posting! I can’t believe I’m at that number already, I only started in August.

We have a quiet weekend this week with only one major series competing, as even NASCAR takes a break from time to time. Next week is very different with ALMS kicking off at Sebring and NASCAR paying a visit to Bristol, among many others.

As always this preview highlights events happening this weekend. Make sure to regularly check your listings for highlights and preview shows! I know that MotorsTV is airing an ALMS preview and ITV4 has WTCC highlights, and over in the US Versus has another of their four IndyCar pre-season specials – so there is content out there to be found if you can look for it.

* * * *

FIA World Rally Championship
– Cyprus Rally (3/12)
– Cyprus
– www.wrc.com

The WRC makes a return to the island after a couple of years away. This year the drivers will have to manage with using gravel tyres instead of asphalt ones, I don’t know why this is and it doesn’t make sense, to me it sounds like a cost-saving method. I have to admit to not following WRC this year so I don’t really know what’s going on or who’s fast – though I can guess!

The Production WRC boys will be joining in this weekend along with a small number of Junior WRC entries.

UK TV: Daily updates each evening on Eurosport, and a roundup on Sunday on Dave.
Elsewhere: Check www.wrc.com for details, video and live stage timing.

* * *

Other Events:

World Superbikes & Supersport, Losail, Qatar.
I don’t follow WSBK at all. I’m sure the racing is good but I just can’t bring myself to care. MotoGP has it for me. Now, fans of bikes will almost certainly tell me that I’ll like WSBK if I watch it and this may well be true! If I’m cruising the sports channels and stumble upon it I’ll watch, but since I don’t have any sports channels this may be a long time coming..

Note – Autosport magazine lists the Atlantics as starting this week in Savannah, Georgia, yet Open Wheel World noted yesterday that there are under 14 days until the start of the Atlantics season, as a support to the 12 Hours of Sebring. I’m calling this a cancellation which Autosport forgot to erase from their calendar.

Come back for another preview next week, which may be slightly earlier or slightly delayed depending on what college work I get done, and other reasons.

FOTA’s Proposals

The Formula One Teams Association (www.teamsassociation.org), the independent body made up of the 10 teams of F1, conducted a survey in 17 countries of both F1 fans and non-fans as well as those who follow casually. From the results of this survey they have made the following proposals, known as the ‘roadmap’ and classified as ‘sporting’, ‘technical’ and ‘commercial’ to match the working groups established some months ago.

I’ll list these in the order of the press release and include my own comments in each section.

Technical
For 2009:
– An engine life increase of over 100%.
– A reduction in the usage of wind tunnels and computational fluid dynamics (CFD).
– Engines to be supplied for €8 million per season per team.

These are expected to provide significant savings over 2008. In addition, these proposals were made for 2010:
– Engines to be supplied for €5 million per season per team.
– Gearboxes to be supplied for €1.5 million.
– Standard KERS system to be put to tender, target price €1 million to €2 million.
– 50% reduction on 2009 levels on the spend on aerodynamic development.
– Cap the number of chassis, bodywork and aero updates per season via homologation.
– Prohibit ‘exotic’ materials.
– Standard telemetry and radio systems.

My thoughts:
I agree with all of these moves, but one. They retain the uniqueness of F1 development, that the teams design their own cars, without needless aero updates for every race. The one I disagree with is standard KERS – the whole point of KERS being in F1 is that each team is developing their own systems, and some are radically different from others. Green tech should be the areas left open for development, not closed off!

Sporting
For 2009:
– A reduction in testing of 50%.
– Adjust the points system to 12 for a win, 9 for 2nd, 7 for 3rd. The remaining points to 8th remain as present. This is to further reward winners and podium finishers. (10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1 would become 12-9-7-5-4-3-2-1)
– Starting fuel loads and tyre selections to be made available to the public before the race.

For 2010:
– Recommend a new qualifying format.
– Radical new points-scoring opportunities (e.g. fastest pit stop).
– Further testing restrictions, to 4 x 4 day single car sessions, plus one single car shakedown.
– Reduce Grand Prix race distances to 250km max, or 1hr 40 mins. (presently 300km or 2 hours)

My thoughts:
I agree completely with the 2009 proposals, of which testing has already been reduced significantly. The points need adjusting and the race data should be available, as it is in MotoGP.
I don’t think we need a new qualifying format, the present one works very well indeed! I also disagree with reducing the race distance and the ‘new points opportunities’. F1 should be about going flat out for a couple of hours, not racing for trick points or becoming a sprint race.

Commerical
For 2009:
– Increase data provision for the media.
– Explore means to more dynamically present F1, to improve engagement with the public.
– Nominated senior team spokesman available during GP.
– Commitment to enhance consumer experience via team and FOTA websites.

For 2010:
– Commitment to enhance viewer experience through TV coverage.

My thoughts:
You can’t disagree with any of this. I would prefer to bring the TV coverage forward to this year but I understand if it’s now too late, although I’m sure some improvements can be filtered in in the latter half of the year. I’d also prefer F1.com to be the focal point, unfortunately Bernie won’t let that happen. I like the opening up of personnel during race, like they do on American coverage of IRL/NASCAR. I also like telling the drivers to show up at an appointed time to meet the fans.

Other Points To Note
FOTA noted several other findings.

1. F1 isn’t broken. The survey results clearly were against the mooted suggestions of splitting GPs into ‘sprint’ and ‘feature’ races, or reverse grids.

2. F1 needs to be consumer-friendly. Only devotees watch a race live outside of their peak viewing times. No shit, Sherlock!

3. Qualifying changes are not urgent. Fans like the meritocracy and don’t want luck to play a part of it. Fans are actually quite smart.

4. Revise the points scoring system. Fans want the winner to be more rewarded than at present. Good idea.

5. Evolution of pitstops and refuelling. It seems fans very much like tyre changes, but don’t really care about refuelling and strategy. This isn’t a surprise as strategies haven’t been explained well in the past, despite the best efforts of James Allen and Ted Kravitz (here at least), and they are quite hard to follow sometimes even for us smart fans. Sometimes they are only hard to follow because they are boring. I like the sound of the 80s, when cars would go full distance but some drivers would choose to stop for tyres and try to catch up the time lost by making full use of their fresh rubber. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.

There are further details on these points in the press release which I urge you to read. We’ll shortly hear of the FIA’s own proposals I believe as soon as this coming week. It’ll be interesting to see if there’s any convergence.

BBC Promo vid

Check out the new BBC F1 promo!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport/formula_one/7911126.stm

Theme: ‘The World’s Greatest Car Chase’

Two F1 cars in the BBC Sport colours of yellow and black race through city streets in the classic movie style, with a hint of that theme… I’m excited now. F1 is back on the Beeb. REALLY excited!

* okay, so they aren’t F1 cars, they’re mockups and they are in South Africa for no reason at all, but I don’t care.

This will air on all BBC channels in the few weeks before the season starts, and in cinemas nationwide. F1 is now arguably their biggest sports property and they are really going for it.