After many years of America not figuring very importantly in the sport of Formula One racing, all of a sudden there is a Renaissance of American involvement in the sport.
For the first time in 30 years, there is an American team in F1, the Haas team, owned by NASCAR team owner Gene Haas of Haas Automation, Inc., the largest machine tool builder in the Western World. An American driver in F1 is hopefully on the cards for Haas F1 in due course. Haas F1 has factories in Kannapolis, North Carolina and in Banbury in Oxfordshire, the area of the UK that most F1 teams call home.
McLaren has recently announced that American Zak Brown - a race driver himself in sports cars and vintage racing and founder of Just Marketing International, an extraordinarily successful motorsports marketing company, has been appointed Executive Director of McLaren Technology Group, one of the most significant jobs in the F1 pitlane, in part replacing Ron Dennis and in part guiding the restructuring of McLaren generally.
Moreover, the ownership of the promotional side of the sport is about to be under the control of 75 year-old American media mogul and multi-billionaire John Malone, the controlling shareholder of Liberty Media Corporation, a major distributor of TV entertainment sports and other programming in the States. Malone, born in Connecticut, has tapped 62 year-old Connecticut-born Chase Carey - currently the executive vice chairman of 21st Century Fox - to eventually replace F1's longstanding ringmaster, 86 year-old Bernie Ecclestone, once Liberty Media has completed its acquisition of F1.
Bernie's view is that Liberty Media is currently just a shareholder, and that Liberty Media does not run F1 pending regulatory approvals and the definitive Closing in 2017. Notwithstanding Bernie's comments, Chase Carey told me during his visit to the paddock in Austin that he has moved to London to begin the process of taking over the reins to F1 so the Americanization of the sport is very much underway behind the scenes. If you watched the Abu Dhabi race on TV there was a shot of a smiling, moustachioed Chase Carey sitting in the same hospitality suite as Bernie and his wife Fabiana so at the moment we have a united front between the old and new stakeholders of F1.
All of these developments mean that after years of the USA having an on-again, off-again relationship with F1 - 10 separate U.S. Grand Prix venues from Sebring to Las Vegas being experimented with before finally having settled on a purpose-built permanent circuit at the Circuit of the Americas in Austin - American players and institutions are finally moving up on everyone's radar screen in F1.
TV Coverage of F1 Racing in the USA
As with America's difficulty throughout the history of F1 in finding one race circuit to host an F1 race, so with the TV coverage of the sport, which has been patchy and episodic and has migrated from channel to channel over the years.
ABC's trailblazing sports show Wide World of Sports (the memorable theme was "The thrill of victory, the agony of defeat, the constant variety of sports"), was the first U.S. network to broadcast F1, beginning on June 10, 1962, when the Grand Prix of Monaco was televised in black and white on a tape-delayed basis, the actual race having been held a week earlier on June 3, notable for being the race where Jim Clark's in his Lotus 25 scored his first pole position. Prior to this broadcast, ABC-TV had dipped its toes into the F1 coverage waters in 1960, when ABC studios in Teddington, U.K, worked with Dunlop to produce Dunlop's same-day Grand Prix TV commercials featuring audio driver interviews on a tape recorder combined with still shots of the race, all of this leading to the commercial pitch for TV consumption in the UK: "Monaco Grand Prix won on DUNLOP."
By 1980, the modern standard of ABC's coverage of the Monaco Grand Prix had taken hold, with the by then retired Sir Jackie Stewart becoming ABC's preferred commentator, full colour coverage and pre-race analysis of the drivers and the circuit. And gradually, other selected Grands Prix were covered such as the Italian GP, the German GP at Nurburgring and the Mexican and Dutch GP's. There was no attempt in these early stages to cover a full Grand Prix season, which in 1962 consisted of just 9 races. The 1988 Monaco GP was the last F1 race shown on ABC's World Wide Sports and that ended the Monaco-centric nature of TV coverage in the States.
Eventually, ESPN picked up the mantle from ABC and the Golden Age of USA coverage of F1 began, with Bob Varsha, trained as a lawyer but having ended up as a multi-faceted motorsports announcer, taking over by chance at the last minute from Jackie Stewart as ESPN's F1 commentator for the 1987 Austrian Grand Prix. Varsha subsequently became a permanent fixture in the ESPN era of covering F1. This was a time frame when the budget was there to begin to cover all the F1 races since the 16 races were still mostly in European countries, making it feasible to send the broadcast team of Varsha, David Hobbs, John Bisignano and others to most of the races, and providing the kind of on-site coverage of the race venues and the environs of Silverstone, Monaco, Monza, the Nurburgring, Spa, Portugal and Spain, that, we should have suspected, was too good to last. Much of the footage used in the spellbinding 2011 movie SENNA, was drawn from the ESPN broadcasts of that Golden Age.
Speed Channel - originally launched as Speedvision in 1995 - was up next as the F1 Broadcaster after ESPN and the budgets were just not there to fund worldwide travel for all the broadcasters to the expanded F1 schedule of races, now including the Middle East and Asian venues. The Speed Channel coverage was again quarterbacked by Varsha, with the "driver" commentary supplied by the irreverent and experienced Hobbs and a new feature, the "mechanic-in-the-pit-lane" commentary, provided by Steve Matchett, who earned his spurs as a mechanic and rear jack man with Michael Schumacher's World Champion 1995 Benetton F1 team. The commentators were mostly confined to studios in Bristol, Connecticut but the professionalism and expertise of this threesome was such that most of the time the impression was left with the viewer that they were actually "there" at the race venue.
Australian Peter Windsor, a former Williams F1 team manager, and someone very well connected in F1, became Speed Channel's man on the ground at the races during this early Speed Channel era, but Windsor left to pursue his dream of forming a new Formula One team, US F1, for the 2010 Season, but the team was stillborn and never took to the grid. In 2010, Englishman Will Buxton, a GP2 specialist, joined the broadcast team as its pitlane reporter, replacing Windsor, and Buxton added a new dimension to the on-site coverage given his knowledge of the younger drivers coming up the ladder to F1.
The highlight of Speed Channel's era of F1 coverage was the U.S. Grand Prix at Indianapolis during the 2000-2007 seasons, which Speed Channel covered on the scene and some of its best American F1 broadcasts were during that time frame. The initial USGP at Indy in 2000 was the high-water mark for American TV coverage of F1, with the race drawing 225,000 fans. That race was actually broadcast on two networks, with American ex-F1 driver Eddie Cheever and all around car guy Mike Joy in a commentary box for FOX and Varsha, Hobbs and Matchett in the commentary booth next door broadcasting for what was then called Speedvision, predecessor to Speed Channel.
The USGP at Indy broadcasts were all special. During one broadcast from the Brickyard, each and every driver was interviewed one-on-one on a stage during the race weekend by Varsha and the Speed Channel team, a one-race weekend tour de force in cooperation with the F1 teams and a presentation by Speed Channel that has never been equalled or exceeded in terms of TV coverage of F1 in the States.
In 2013, NBC Sports Network (NBCSN) won the broadcasting rights to F1 for three years taking over from the now-defunct Speed Channel which ended a 17-year run, and that NBCSN rights agreement has been extended by Bernie Ecclestone through the 2017 season, so NBCSN is us up for renewal sometime soon.
NBC Sports Network: The Little Engine that Could
How is NBC Sports Network doing covering F1?
To begin with, NBCSN has built a new studio facility in Stamford, Connecticut dedicated to coverage of multiple sports, replete with wide hallways and sound stages similar to Hollywood movie studios, to serve as the heart of all of NBCSN's sports programming, including F1 and now Indycar and NASCAR as well as Hockey, Premier League Football and other sports. I had a chance to observe the F1 race coverage one weekend from NBC's Stamford studios and it gives you a great appreciation to be in the NBC Studios to see how the final product beaming out to the TV viewer comes together, integrating the World Feed received from Bernie Ecclestone's Formula One Management (FOM), with NBC's home-grown coverage.
The other initiative NBC has taken that differs from prior F1 broadcasters is the number of "platforms" NBC uses to deliver its F1 content. On its NBCSN Extra App, an American viewer can for the first time actually follow all the F1 practice sessions live (with no commentary but audio from the track) as well as Friday Second Practice being presented live on the TV channel with commentary and many hours of overall TV programming on the race weekend, including pre-race and post-race analysis of Qualifying and the Race itself.
If you are a devoted fan and out of town on an F1 race weekend, the NBC Sports Extra App is a tremendous benefit and the App also has video tape highlights and is archived back to much of the season, so the digital platform is a big step forward for even the casual F1 viewer and a must for the more die-hard F1 fan. If anything, NBCSN suffers from too many ways of delivering F1 programming, as NBC has juggled its F1 coverage with its other sports programming (Premier League, Tour de France) amongst NBCSN, and its affiliates CNBC and NBC itself, counting on the resourcefulness of its loyal F1 viewers to follow the channel changes and amazingly they did.
But however much technology an F1 broadcaster has available to it, there is one irreducible fact when it comes to F1 TV coverage. With the World Feed supplied by Bernie's FOM setting the baseline for coverage for every network everywhere, it is down to the individual broadcasters in each country to come up with the goods to make the presentation of the race weekend interesting. In the case of NBCSN, they have loaded up their coverage with the highest quality broadcasting talent and the depth of that talent is what makes watching a race weekend on NBCSN in the USA almost as good as being there.
Bob Varsha had contract issues when NBS SN came on board since he continues to be signed with FOX, so in the play-by-play quarterback position he has been replaced by Aussie all-around sports commentator Leigh Diffey, who cut his teeth on the ferocious Australian V8 Supercars and is now a whiz on motorsports generally, especially open-wheel but also the 24 Hours of Le Mans. On occasion, Varsha has made guest reappearances when Diffey has conflicts, so full credit to FOX and NBCSN for permitting that to occur. Hobbs and Matchett made the transition to NBCSN, as did Buxton.
David Hobbs, as has been the case for decades, is the heart of the F1 broadcast team in America. Hobbs in his driving days was a tremendously versatile and talented English driver who was the 1971 Formula 5000 U.S. Champion in those hairy 5.0 litre cars of the 1970's, has had driver stints with Roger Penske's team at the Indy 500, has been in F1 driving BRMs, a Honda and McLarens and has driven in twenty 24 hours of Le Mans endurance races, so his driver cred is second to none.
"Hobbo's" last F1 race was in the 1974 Italian Grand Prix at Monza where he was driving a Yardley McLaren M23 - Cosworth, and the field included the likes of Graham Hill, Emerson Fittipaldi, Niki Lauda, James Hunt and Ronnie Peterson, so a pretty rarefied group.
After Hobbs left F1 racing he stumbled into motorsports commentary, landing a job at CBS covering the Daytona 500 on February 15, 1976, a job that was originally intended for Graham Hill but he had crashed his private airplane fatally in November 1975, returning from a test session at Paul Ricard for his "Embassy Racing with Graham Hill" F1 team, so Hobbs was substituted as a commentator at that race and has done motorsports commentary ever since.
Hobbs has even played a motorsports commentator in the movies, appearing in the 1983 movie "Stroker Ace," a ridiculous NASCAR movie starring Burt Reynolds with Hobbs as a race commentator, and he has now done it in real life for decades, with CBS, ESPN, FOX, Speed Channel and now NBCSN.
Hobbs has the respect of F1 insiders like Mercedes-Benz Board Member Niki Lauda and others in the pitlane and always brings to the broadcast his keen sense of humour along with the perspective of a mechanically knowledgeable driver that has learned from the ground up how to keep a Triumph Spitfire running for 24 hours at Le Mans or how to race a Honda F1 car with an experimental engine in it at a place like Monza with John Surtees as your teammate. In a recent NBCSN special feature, Hobbs drove Dan Gurney's 1967 Gurney-Westlake Eagle around the grounds of the Collier Museum in Naples, Florida and the joy and exuberance on his face made me wish we had a Senior F1 Series for drivers of his pedigree.
Sam Posey, an American driver with credentials of somewhat similar breadth to Hobbs - Indy, Trans Am and sports cars - is another member of the NBCSN broadcast team but due to Parkinsons disease, he does not come to the studio in Stamford. In advance of a race weekend, Sam prepares his beautifully honed and insightful prose features with the audio backed up by the graphics/video department in Stamford, somehow distilling in a few minutes the rich history of the sport as applied to the race day in question and its significance for we viewers.
A good example of Sam's work was his poignant summary of Brazilian Felipe Massa's career in the run-up to the 2016 Brazilian Grand Prix, with Sam reciting Felipe's career in a Voiceover while the graphics people rolled the accompanying footage. His piece covered Felipe from his early days at Sauber to his final days at Williams, with tempestuous times at Ferrari in between as a teammate to World Champions Michael Schumacher and Kimi Raikkonen and Fernando Alonso. It was a career that soared very high until the crushing loss of Massa's best shot at a World Championship in 2008 when Lewis Hamilton in his McLaren finished fifth in a rainy Brazilian Grand Prix, robbing Massa of the Drivers' Championship though he had won the race itself. As the drivers took to the wet grid before the 2016 Brazilian Grand Prix, the TV director at NBCSN's Stamford studios captured a shot of Massa, a Catholic, crossing himself ahead of his next to last race, another artistic touch.
For most F1 broadcasts, Diffey, Hobbs and Matchett are usually in the Stamford studios and Buxton, who travels the Globe and is on the ground at each of the 21 races, is joined by Jason Swales, Will's producer during race weekends and for other motorsports segments that Will and Jason develop in their travels on the Grand Prix circuit.
Buxton, though an Englishman, has developed a huge following amongst his American fans. Having nothing to do with his actual duties at NBCSN, Will began the practice of inviting American F1 fans to "meet ups" in Montreal and Austin several years ago and these parties which tend to be on Friday nights before Saturday Qualifying have grown from having a burger with Will to all-out disco parties that F1 drivers come to and that the fans adore.
Back at his day job, Will's previous work covering GP2 means that he knows personally many of the drivers on the current grid from the time they were teenagers and that tells in the access he has to the drivers on the busy and crowded F1 race weekend when 500 journalists are tugging at their sleeves.
Jason Swales, Will's producer, has also developed with Will Buxton various special feature shows called "Paddock Pass," "Off-the-Grid," and "The Road to..." which also run on NBCSN during F1 weekends, taking the F1 fan beyond the gates of the various F1 tracks to the countries F1 goes to, to automobile museums, to specialty car restoration shops or to a visit with F1 drivers in a more relaxed environment than a race weekend. Blair Soden, a field producer for NBCSN, assists Will and Jason in translating their ideas for shows into actual footage for these features. One of the last interviews with Jules Bianchi, a very revealing portrait of the young and engaging Frenchman, was orchestrated by Soden and conducted by Will during one of those special feature projects at Monaco in the year Bianchi was killed in Japan.
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