The unseen challenges of making F1 cars look fast

When Carlos Sainz Jr recently tweeted some footage of one of Ayrton Senna's qualifying laps from the 1991 British Grand Prix, it reignited some debate about whether television does the current generation of cars justice. After all, 2020 F1 cars are the fastest ever, with the greatest amount of downforce ever produced and engines that are on a par with those crazy turbo cars from the mid-1980s that could top 1000bhp in qualifying runs.

But, despite all that engineered insanity, modern high definition images and camera work executed by highly-skilled professional operators can sometimes conspire to take away the rawness of what the cars are like up close.

Chatting to McLaren technical director James Key during Silverstone's 70th Anniversary GP weekend, he concurred that the iconic footage like the Senna lap delivered something that isn't always captured right now.

"When you look back at Senna qualifying laps, they always look spectacular don't they?" said Key. "I love watching back some of the old races that inspired me as a youngster.

"I don't think TV shows the speed of these cars very well. I know it's very difficult to capture sometimes. You get these shots of kerbs when you've got cars coming around and hitting a kerb and you've got this low camera and you really get a sense of the speed of them.

"But we also tend to have sort of long shots down straights, and that sort of thing, which shows an order of the race, but it doesn't show the speed of the cars. It'd be great to see if there is a way to generate a better view of just how quickly these cars are going.

"I remember when we first started to go with the V8, we were flat through Copse for the first time. I used to stand on the inside of Copse for practice sessions just to watch the cars go through there flat and it was absolutely spectacular. It's even quicker now.

"It's the same at Turn 1 here, and you just don't get that sensation at all off TV. So if there was a way of showing what you actually see when you see it for real, I think you'd probably capture what that Senna image showed us."

The challenge of making F1 cars look as spectacular on screen is certainly not an easy one, and it is nigh on impossible to translate the rawness of a car blasting past you on a straight in the real world to be anything close to that when you are sat on your sofa in front of a 36-inch flat screen.

The man whose job it is to try as best as possible is Dean Locke, F1's director of broadcast and media, who says that there is not one simple explanation for why the Senna lap looks so quick.

It's certainly an interesting case because, given the performance discrepancy between a 1991 F1 car and a contemporary equivalent, they should not look remotely close to each other. Using the exit of Luffield as a reference point, Senna is four seconds behind on the exit of Chapel; five seconds behind by the exit of Stowe and nine seconds adrift by the time the cars are coming out of Club.

"With the onboards there is less going on, as the drivers are doing less, even though they're driving just as well. There's just less movement and you're restricted on how much you can see in the car, and what the driver is doing" Dean Locke

But the lack of speed of the 1991 car is made up by the fact that it looks more spectacular because it moves around so much: it doesn't ride the bumps very well, it has a sharp turn in and there is more of a battle for its driver while cornering.

As Locke says: "The car is violent - it's moving all over the place. It's bouncing around, the back's drifting out. I mean when we get a back drift out now we will shout: 'car twitch!' Also the suspension and the ride of these cars is so much smoother, but the tracks are smoother and getting smoother all the time.

"With the onboards there is less going on, as the drivers are doing less, even though they're driving just as well. There's just less movement and you're restricted on how much you can see in the car, and what the driver is doing. And I think the same goes with the context of that: the car is just quite violent."

There are technical explanations regarding the image as well. While current F1 cars are filmed on widescreen, back then television was 4x3; so there is a much narrower field of vision. That can have a big impact on the sensation of speed. The cameramen would also have been on a wall at the side of the track back then, rather than safely put behind fences as happens now.

The rawness of the footage is helped by it being standard definition rather than the Ultra HD of current F1. Just as modern day onboard cameras don't look as spectacular as the early 1990s when camera shakes (the famous 'Senna wobble') and signal cuts were common, so too the silky smooth modern day camerawork sometimes works against the current cars.

There is one other really important factor to consider about the speed too: the sound. Seeing an F1 car at speed close up is a multi-sensory experience and the emotions are fired as much by the sound as they are by what you see. In that regard, the Senna footage is helped by the screaming normally aspirated powerplant in the back.

"I think what really made that clip jump out to me a bit was the audio," adds Locke. "I think the audio plays a big part, and our track director was talking about Eurofighter jets. When you hear them, they seem so much more dramatic and so much quicker. I do think the audio on that was quite fierce.

"I thought that clip was quite interesting and I was going to show our video team that. We want to continue to improve the audio to get close to this feeling again! We've got 150 microphones out there to try to make the sound more dramatic."

F1 is always doing as much as it can with technology and techniques - such as the high speed cable camera used to shoot the cars from the air at the 70th Anniversary GP - to offer a better impression of the speeds cars are doing. Locke is well aware that just zooming in closer to the cars - as was done a lot on that Senna lap - is not the answer and employs clever camerawork to improve the visual spectacle.

"We do it in Baku/Russia, and a couple of places like that, where we're really close to the subject matter - and we actually cheat," he says. "We almost like the cameraman to not have the car in frame. So we wait [for the right moment] and say: 'go now'. Then he whips around and that gives a really good idea of speed. We do that at Spa and a few other places.

"We're also very harsh on cameramen when they zoom after the car, because that kills speed. We let the cars go away."

Camera placement also helps with this. Viewers at home would find it hard to judge the overall speed of a car as it zooms down a straight; but Locke says putting cameras at braking points is an effective method "of really emphasising the decrease in speed as much as the acceleration".

"We've had some success in Spa where we are down in the bottom of the hill before it goes back up," continues Locke. "We've had lots of tests with a kerb camera there for a few seasons and also fixed lens cameras.

"We are making quite a lot of progress on cameras closer to the track edges. We get pushed out because of the newer tracks but it's quite right when you think of some of those cameramen and how they were exposed at the time.

"We've got some pretty good concepts of what we're going to do and how we're going to do that so that's coming back and it's not only all about speed.

"We are probably slightly envious of that clip audio to be honest: or certainly that engine noise. But we're doing more, you can hear more from the car" Dean Locke

"There's some amazing high motion cameras coming out now, which is the kind of opposite of what we're talking about. They do demonstrate what a Formula 1 car is doing and the incredible nature of that car with the small movement of parts."

While F1 might not be able to overcome the audio issue with F1's current hybrids set to stay; things can be done on that front too.

"I think the audio is getting better all the time," says Locke. "We have 5.1 Surround sound already and multiple mics on the cars will help.

"We are probably slightly envious of that clip audio to be honest: or certainly that engine noise. But we're doing more, you can hear more from the car, and some of the special cameras we will be rolling out around Belgium, we are quite excited about.

"Also, we're getting to some of these new tracks like Mugello and Portimao. The speeds will be high, and will we get any wheels coming off the ground in Portimao? That is the interesting question!"

F1 cars with wheels off the ground: now that will look spectacular, not to mention quick!