Dodgy Business

Due to family circumstances I ended up watching the Turkish GP on TV from a sofa rather than from the Istanbul press room. And, no disrespect to the ITV crew, which does a good job and is not the cause of the problem, it hammered home just how much is missed and how difficult it is to tell the true story of a Grand Prix in 'real' time.

On Saturday and during the race build-up, I gleaned that Ferrari and Michael Schumacher were odds-on favourites. Okay, Michael had screwed up his qualifying lap and been pipped by Massa, and was vulnerable to Alonso's Renault off the line from the dirty side of the track, but once that was rather forcefully sorted, surely there was only one winner?

Then came the Safety Car and Alonso jumped Schumacher when Ferrari had to stack Michael behind Felipe in the pits - hard to believe, but true.

So far, straightforward. But then, suddenly, the number 5 Ferrari was unable to run with a Renault it had been significantly quicker than all weekend and we didn't know why. Just as this was becoming apparent we went to an ad break. Nothing new for the majority of you, I know, but not being exposed to it I hadn't appreciated what a pain in the ass it truly is, entirely breaking up the rhythm of a race and its coverage.

You don't get ad' breaks during football, so why are they necessary in the middle of a race? I know it's all to do with money, but I think I could get close to arguing that interruptions to a Grand Prix are actually more harmful than during football.

Fernando Alonso (Renault) leads Michael Schumacher (Ferrari) in the 2006 Grand Prix of Turkey © LAT

So there I am, sat wondering why Schumacher is suddenly struggling. Logically, either, a) he's carrying a truck load of fuel to do a long second stint, or b) he's got tyre problems. When he runs off the road in Turn 8, it looks more likely to be the latter. The burning question is: how long was he stationary at his pitstop compared to Alonso? It's going to be fundamental to the outcome of the race, possibly the whole championship, and nobody's telling us.

Frustrated, I pick up the phone and call a mate in the Istanbul press room.

"What's going on with Schumacher?"

"Looking at the laptimes we think he's got tyre problems and he was stopped a bit longer than Alonso."

At the circuit, in the press room, we see the same pictures as you do these days. But we've also got the timing screens, which give you every car's every lap and is colour coded so that you can tell whether a car is gaining/losing to the car ahead.

The pitstop times you see on the TV screen can be misleading because they are total stop times and not fuelling times. Sometimes you see the entire stop and can actually hand-time how long the nozzle is attached. You know that the fuel flows at 12 litres/second, you know how many litres it takes for a lap and so you have a fair idea how far a car will run to its next stop.

The teams have a guy with a stopwatch getting an accurate nozzle time for all potential rivals, which is then fed into their strategy computers and so they have a pretty good idea of what's going on.

And it's here where you have to have some sympathy for James and Martin in the ITV comm box. Let's suppose that ITV made it a priority to get accurate nozzle times for all the major stops. They could then do a spot of mental arithmetic and work out how far each car was likely to run and what the potential gains would be for the guy stopping two or three laps later. But, as Martin pointed out some time ago when talking to some of us about this very issue, they'd be on a hiding to nothing.

For a start, one of the principal rules of broadcasting is to talk about what the viewer is watching. Second, the theory is fine but in reality is so often skewed by other factors; traffic, safety cars, tyre performance, etc. Third, if the first stop was artificial, eg because of a safety car, you don't know how much fuel was in the car when it stopped. And on it goes.

So, without Carol Vordemann in the box, ITV chooses not to get into mental arithmetic exercises to hypothesise about things that probably won't happen anyway. Especially in this instant gratification age of the limited attention span. It would send viewers over to chess in their droves as well as making the ITV men look like muppets when, seven times out of 10, the race turned out differently anyway.

In a recent column, Nigel Roebuck talked to Brundle about some of his frustrations and it's hard to escape the conclusion that much of what's wrong with F1 as a spectacle is symptomatic of the strategy age - the fact that cars pass in the pits and not on the track.

Fernando Alonso (Renault) passes Michael Schumacher (Ferrari) for 2nd in the pits © LAT

You can't blame the drivers. Overtaking in a Grand Prix car is bloody difficult and if you can achieve it with strategy, why are you going to give someone the opportunity to take your front wing off? It might not make for great viewing but it's common sense.

I know from covering Grands Prix for the last 15 years that you only get a decent idea of what's gone on when you pore through a 'race history' chart, published in the press room about 15 minutes after the end of a race.

Improved media coverage and the Internet age has seen circulation figures of specialist magazines dropping off over the past decade, right across the board. But ironically, with Formula One at any rate, never has it been so important to read a race report if you want a decent grasp of what went on.

I know this because at 11pm on a Sunday night, when most sensible people are either back in the UK or else half cut in the bar, Mark Hughes is hitting me with his latest revelation from the race history chart.

This thing is an anorak's delight, with almost unlimited scope for the true motor racing gnome. It's actually quite funny when, after an 18hr day, a deadline still to hit and an inviting bed mocking you, someone says: "Hey, have you noticed Jarno's laptimes after his first stop? Do you know if his tyres were graining or do you think he might have been in a bit of a huff because he came out behind Ralf?"

You're never going to find out on TV or in your morning paper, that's for sure. Then again, does anyone give a flying one? But that's the point. The real enthusiast does. But does TV cater for the true enthusiast or the casual Sunday afternoon viewer. The reality is that it has to try to be all things to all men. And women. And in real time it can only do so much.

The eternal problem for the race reporter is that once the chequer has fallen, a Grand Prix paddock is like the evacuation of Beirut. By the time you get to look at a race history chart in any depth, everyone's gone. It can confirm a story or reveal a lie. Racing drivers these days have nowhere to hide. Ditto team strategists. But how often is the real story told?

One thing I can tell you for sure is that if a round-up of statistic does not tell the story it's certainly not for want of effort on the part of a race reporting team.

But, however much we're into our sport, we have to realise that magazine readers is maybe one sixtieth of the audience that will watch the race on TV. These are the people that will be making marketing decisions to fund those infernal ads. Without them staring at the box, advertisers will pay less for the slots, which will reduce the value of the TV rights, which will reduce the money in the sport.

And so, naturally, there's a vested interest in making the product as good as possible. When Bernie thought he could sell digital TV rights as well as terrestrial rights - persuade people to spend a tenner to see something in more detail that they could see for nothing elsewhere - I've got to admit I thought he'd make it work.

FOCA cameraman © LAT

Not because he's Bernie, but because I'd seen the product. We used to get Bernie TV in the press room and it was fantastic. It missed nothing and the production was excellent. No sooner had you seen a Jordan cream into the barrier than there was the man himself on the pitwall, clutching his head and cursing under his breath.

There was subtle, humorous stuff too. Such as cameras focusing in on 'Hakkinen' on the side of Mika's car as it sat waiting for a qualifying lap in the pits, then onto the 'Boss' sticker on the engine cover, then an immediate cut to a serious-looking Erja Hakkinen (the brains of the family) as she stood waiting to see if Mika could grab the pole.

Switched on commentators could have had a field day and the end product would have been so much more entertaining. An 'inner' screen with laptimes and fuelling times for the anoraks would be the icing on the cake. When everyone finally stops worrying about engines, I'd suggest that a bit of brainstorming in this direction could work wonders for F1.

That and the old chestnut about making cars that overtake each other on the track, although that would obviously have the major disadvantage of devaluing race history charts in anorak central. I keep on being told how tricky this is, but then I keep seeing Lewis Hamilton and GP2 races...