Coochas

Someone on Axis just referred to the driver's view camera as "HALORRIBLE." Hehehe.

PiB993

Help me out, I'm in America what are my options to view this series -> ESPN 2, anything else? Was kinda hoping for an online option via Formula 1 themselves but it seems that's been postponed.

DTMiller

Qualifying spoilers below!!
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HOLY CRAP Mercedes. If I was sufficiently bored I'd go and find video of a cat toying with a mouse to illustrate what HAM just did to Vettel and friends. It would seem that party mode is real and it's devastating. Should be an interesting race tomorrow. Red Bull trying some alternative strategy to spice things up. Now I have to decide if I want to stay up until 3 am to watch it live or enjoy F1 and coffee tomorrow morning.

edit to add: just watched the press conference and Hamilton said there was no change in the engine mapping between Q2 and Q3. Vettel was priceless "what were you doing before then?"

MarcD147

I love Kimi 's response to Lewis saying "Kimi parties all the time"

fatbillybob

watched qualy. The commentators are so boring I fell asleep several times. There is no substance to the commentating.

Jimbo951

Yea, I wasn't impressed either. At least we didn't have to hear Matchett say "Maranello" every 30 seconds.

gbuff

Hoe could you possibly fall asleep with all the yelling they were doing, especially as the sessions ended? I had to turn the volume down I don't think the main guy (Croft?) took a breath the entire time; just kept talking and yelling.

Gary

...sure as hell don't miss Buxton though

CCA

Not as much yelling as Diffy!! Man, I found that guy irritating. But yeah, overall pretty boring commentary...
Btw, Buxton was on grid for interviews at the end. He's not as bad as when he started, so he doesn't really bother me anymore.

Coochas

I didn't find the coverage of qualifying much different than the NBCSN crew. Just different. Lots of babble from both.
What I DID like was that there were not two commercial breaks between each qualifying session. Easier to fast forward now.

dogger15

I watched qualifying on ESPN 2 and practice on ESPN News and I believe the race is on ESPN 2 as well.

Looks like Liberty cheaped out the TV package by picking up the "Sky Sports" feed from Europe for broadcast here in the states. Commentators are a mix. There is pretty good track and driving analysis from the likes of David Coulthard and Martin Brundle
but I didn't catch any technical analysis from the two viewings, so I don't know if they have a "Matchett" on staff. That's the end of the good news, the rest of the presentation is sub standard when compared to what NBC Sports provided, especially the
gratuitous hysteria generated by the "play by play" announcer. I ended up hitting the mute button for Q3. I think for the race tonight, I'm going to mute the sound and turn on the closed caption.

If Liberty thought this change would attract more American fans to FI, they thought wrong. I can't imagine anyone new to F1 watching this and thinking anything other than "what an obnoxious show".

For the rest of us, like the halos, it's going to take a while to get used to it.

consolidated

Great to see Haas leading the "best of the rest" pack. Huge 2 second gap from Hamilton to P6.

consolidated

^^^ I jinxed Haas. So close, it was fun to see Gro and Mag racing RB while it lasted. Sucks for the crew. Those online suggesting Haas threw the race for both drivers to bring out a SC to keep Vettel in front of Hamilton should go choke themselves. Not a bad race at all for Melbourne!

MarcD147

ESPN dropping commercials in at random times is a disaster... they missed the restart... Wtf

Really need a commercial free service or a broadcaster who knows how to go to commercials during a lul in the race

DTMiller

That was one of the worst live sports broadcasts I've ever seen. It was like they had commercials on a timer and just threw them in whenever they were due. If ESPN can't afford to have someone watching the stream to push the "commercials now" button why bother. I also never understand why they can't cut a commercial block short when something happens. It's bizarre that seemingly simple things aren't done.

naptownmike

Yeah the broadcast was pretty bad. Seemed like they just used Sky's coverage and plugged in commercials randomly.