Formula Half

I'm quite excited about the new Formula 1 season, which begins next weekend in Melbourne. Sebastian Vettel is a god amongst drivers and I look forward to seeing what he achieves this year. He may be the finest Formula 1 driver ever.

I'm not hugely loyal though, I'll also be keeping a close eye on Lewis Hamilton and Jensen Button. We can pretend that I'm being patriotically British just for a while, even if we have to concede that I really tend to be a bit German about sport.

I'm a little apprehensive about the coverage however. The BBC are how showing half, and Sky are showing half. As a Virgin subscriber, it would cost us £22.50 a month to have Sky Sports, which then gives free F1 coverage. Their website states that what you can do if you don't have Sky Sports and you want to watch F1 is: get Sky Sports.

I am told by a trusted source that this is due to Sky setting prices and further told by another that this is true.

Reason to detest Sky #6,345,311.

In a previous incarnation of my life, I had Sky Sports and watched football on it. Then Sky stopped showing any match you'd want to see and instead made them pay-per-view and that was that. As the bundle with Sky Movies 1-236 is generally negligibly more expensive, we had movies and sport galore. Woo. Not so any more. Sports is mostly boring football featuring diddy team B team vs weeny team B team from 1976. Woo. Movies show the same blockbusters over and over and over and over and...

Mostly actually due to having children and little time to stare at the tellybox, we don't have the full Sky works any more and so £22.50 to watch half the grand prix doesn't seem good value at all.

I don't follow how it works anyway, mostly because I haven't found out. I'll buy the Radio Times this week and find out.

"It" being the split coverage incidentally, I follow how the Grand Prix works. Obviously.

As far as I've gleaned, the live races will be split; half will be broadcast live on the BBC. What happens to the other half - being shown live on Sky - for terrestrial and non-Sky viewers I don't know. They should get a non-live version of the race as I understand it. Non-live is fine when they're on at crazy hours, but knowing Sky, they'll have all the European races live, and the BBC will be left with all the races run at silly o'clock to broadcast live. Maybe just highlights, which isn't worthy of the licence fee, but which is better than nothing. Just.

I also have no idea what will be broadcast, or where, of the qualifying et al. I don't know much really. Hopefully when the first race begins in fractionally (7 hours) over a week's time, I'll be better informed.

We'll see.



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