2009 Abu Dhabi Formula 1 Grand Prix

[narf]

Originally Posted by Dr_Grip

@narf: You call german TV/RTL/Heiko "Deutschland über alles" Waßer "medium" quality commentary? Heiko Waßer is the worst thing that has ever happened to sports journalism.

I was referring to the entire team, overall they rate as medium for me... in part because their focus is on German drivers, which does suit me a tiny bit more than the Lewis and Jenson fanboys over at the BBC *runs and hides*

For the actual race commentary mediocre is more appropriate than medium, indeed.
Additionally, the BBC doesn't try to steal my money with stupid phone-in competitions...

[SchumacherM]

Originally Posted by vikiradTG2007

Yeah, in rFactor, where the entire width of the track provides equal grip. From the videos of Brundle, DC and Senna lapping this track in the two-seaters, it looks as if you can't go off the racing line because of HUGE amounts of dust.

I agree, but atleast there ARE overtaking chances...and the dust I think shouldn't be such a problem...I mean, in Brasil I think it was a Williams that ploughed through that field of dirt and got away with it..

[Mercury]

Who;s moronic idea was it to make a track that pretends to be a street circuit? Dumbest thing I ever heard. There's only 1 Monaco, now give us a high speed fast paced track, not another snooze fest.

[vikiradTG2007]

Originally Posted by SchumacherM

and the dust I think shouldn't be such a problem...

Dust + hot tires = dramatically reduced grip for the next 3-4 corners. A F1 tire is pretty much melted rubber (okay, not exactly melted, but hot enough to stick) sticking to the surface of the track, that's why it picks up the dust so quickly. And when you pick up dust, you lose a large amount of grip until the dust is cleaned off the tires.

[Der Stig]

Random factoid: my neighbor was an engineer on this track when I used to live there.

Am I interested though? Not really. I'll probably watch the highlights though.

[GraemeH]

Pit-lane exit is awesome, and part of the unlimited racing track too from the looks of it.

[ahpadt]

I can understand that people arn't as interested in F1 now that the championship is done, but why not watch it when it's a brand new circuit? Don't judge it before you've seen it.

[Red_Bull]

Originally Posted by ahpadt

I can understand that people arn't as interested in F1 now that the championship is done, but why not watch it when it's a brand new circuit? Don't judge it before you've seen it.

But we have seen it!

[Dr_Grip]

Originally Posted by narf

I was referring to the entire team, overall they rate as medium for me...

Let's see:
-Waßer (race commenter): Worst sports journalist in the world by a margin. Not only is he even more biased towards the german drivers than the BBC is towards the british, not only does he assume that all the viewers feel the same ("A german driver in a german car.... that's every german F1 fan's dream" - No! It's not!), not only does he give a shit on sportsmanship ("Let's hope many drivers in front of [Vettel] get penalties...") but, worst of all, he gets so excited about three german drivers running on five to eight that, coming back from another ad break, he has to repeat over and over that there still are three german drivers to score points, i.e. nothing has changed there that he completely forgets to even mention that or why Alonso retired during the ad break. Massive fail. And don't let me even get started about his massive cluelessness when it comes to basic facts or strategy.

-Christian Danner (german Brundle aequivalent): Sometimes i get the feeling he is so emberassed by Waßers general cluelessness he spends half of the race facepalming instead of watching the race, which is a pity, as the things he says tend to make sense and are actually interesting - in harsh contrast to Waßer informing me for the n-th time that i can also join the chat on RTL.de.... So he is better than average, might even be good when paired with someone else.

-Florian König (pre-and post-race forum presenter): He's good at what he does, which is giving Lauda the right cues. As soon as he tries to state his own opinion, massive fail happens, resulting in a lecture from Lauda. But maybe that's just giving Lauda the right cues, too.

-Niki Lauda (pre-and post race forum expert): Maybe the best "expert" on the grid. While the Lauda/König bickering looks forced and like a poor rehash of Netzer/Delling, the things he says are brilliant and put him even above DC and Eddie Jordan in my book - but the BCC trio is much more fun to watch as the german duo still lacks some chemistry after diverse years of working together.
-Kai Ebel (grid/pit lane interviewer): Where the BBC's interview girl has a nice set of boobies, Kai Ebel has a horrible shirt. Apart from being the person with the worst fashion sense on the grid he is also obnoxious up to the point where you can acutally see that almost everyone he interviews tries to get away from him as fast as possible (or simply run away from him when he's trying to talk to them... on air!). His interviews thus invoke physical pain. The only reason why he's not as bad as Waßer is that he's not talking rubbish through the whole race.

If it would not be for Waßer, i'd be with you that Danner and Lauda alone save the day for RTL and can compensate for any bad performance. But there's no way any expert commentary can compensate for being forced to listen to Waßer for the whole race.

RTL without Waßer: medium, bordering on good.
RTL as it is: Plain and simple, horrible.

Originally Posted by narf

Additionally, the BBC doesn't try to steal my money with stupid phone-in competitions...

Don't get my started on this. The stupid puns Waßer uses to once again plug the "quiz" (with joke questions, of course, as every call is $$$ for RTL), the amount of times he mentions that Toyota plays carnival music from cologne in the pits if the driver scores a podium, the Schumacher worship... argh!

[narf]

I mostly do agree - but I don't worship Brundle's boobies during his grid walk
yes I know, Lee thingamajig...

I'm drifting towards the iPlayer version... unless I'm awake and bored at quali/race time, then i'll try to sync up RTL's picture with the BBCs talking, and switch to the BBC altogether during the ad breaks.

[Dr_Grip]

Originally Posted by narf

I mostly do agree - but I don't worship Brundle's boobies during his grid walk
yes I know, Lee thingamajig...

I'm drifting towards the iPlayer version... unless I'm awake and bored at quali/race time, then i'll try to sync up RTL's picture with the BBCs talking, and switch to the BBC altogether during the ad breaks.

As i suspect the BBC's stream lags quite a bit, how do i get RTL's picture to sync? I'd have to put it through some kind of buffer/how is this function on digital VCRs called-thingy, i think... mplayer has a function to compensate audio/video delay on broken avis, but i don't think it works on streams... use the buffer size to induce delays? Please help me

[narf]

I just press pause, wait a bit, press play and boom there's your delay. DVB-T USB FTW.

No idea if I could get it to sync that well to make it watchable, having the commentary 1s too late is no problem, but there's more to audio than talking

[Dan9-1]

Watched the Chinese Grand Prix in Germany last year on my exchange (got to work at Bosch Rexroth for a week, very fun times had by all) and I even with my fairly limited German skills (B grade at A-level) still enjoyed watching it and was also struck by how bias the commentators seemed too. Although it was probably them not being bias towards the British drivers (e.g. James Allen towards King Hamilton).

ON TOPIC- I've got the option to go to Sherwood Forest with Uni or watch this.... I'm pretty sure I'm going to be watching this tbh, looks like it should be a good race due to the lack of circuit knowledge.

[Karoug]

Originally Posted by ahpadt

I can understand that people arn't as interested in F1 now that the championship is done, but why not watch it when it's a brand new circuit? Don't judge it before you've seen it.

Agreed! I'll definitely watch this race.

[shad_68]

Originally Posted by Dr_Grip

@narf: You call german TV/RTL/Heiko "Deutschland über alles" Waßer "medium" quality commentary? Heiko Waßer is the worst thing that has ever happened to sports journalism.

Yeah, he's terrible!
Which is a real shame, because Christian Danner does his job very well, and is a pretty good commentator in my book. But most of the time just as he's about to talk about something interesting in-depth, Waßer chimes in to talk about some asinine shit that's completely irrelevant!
And 50% of the time they comment on the race is actually taken up by Waßer summarizing the current standings (of course, with ridiculous German bias and patronizing comments) before an ad break. You can actually always tell when an ad break is coming up five minutes ahead because of this...

[Dr_Grip]

Originally Posted by narf

I just press pause, wait a bit, press play and boom there's your delay. DVB-T USB FTW.

In mplayer you can set the delay by a tenth of a second... not for streams, sadly.

[Richmondgal]

May be an interesting race to watch, hopefully it's not a re hash of Valencia. I won't be able to watch the race for a while, I've got exams on that week.

[fluke667]

Originally Posted by shad_68

And 50% of the time they comment on the race is actually taken up by Waßer summarizing the current standings (of course, with ridiculous German bias and patronizing comments) before an ad break. You can actually always tell when an ad break is coming up five minutes ahead because of this...

I like that because it signals me to switch to SF2 and miss only 0.5 sec of the race (and then normally staying there until their single ad break).

[Donington]

I predict that Jenson Button will be world champion after this race.

[Cold Fussion]

Originally Posted by ahpadt

I can understand that people arn't as interested in F1 now that the championship is done, but why not watch it when it's a brand new circuit? Don't judge it before you've seen it.

Yea, it looks just as good as spa and monza.