I was reading this post on F1Fanatic about Ross Brawn’s dislike of the Formula 1 coverage when I was motivated to write the following comment. As it was quite long I thought I’d repeat it here:

The problem is that there are two roles in the commentry box. They should be divided up like a newspaper between News and Comment. And Murray used to do News and Martin did Comment. But James, desperately desperately wants to show off how much he knows about F1. It means that both of them end up doing Comment and we don’t have a clue what’s going on! It means that Martin sometimes, feeling embarresed no doubt ends up describing what’s going on. All of their descriptions are far too slow because James has been taking his lead from Martin.

It should be like this:

James: Somethings happening on the track, somethings happening on the track. Something very exciting is happening on the track. Why is it happening on the track?
Martin: Because of x and then y and this is because of…
James: Sorry to cut you off Martin something is happening on the track. Something is happening on the track. Something is happening on the track.

When it is usually like this:

James: This week I had dinner with somebody who told me something that was relevant before this race started.
Martin: Really? That might mean the fuel in the race is going to be x.
James: Well I thought the complete opposite because I’m completely stupid.
Martin: That would be a stupid thing to think.
James: Yeah I know. I’m stupid. I’m stupid. I’m stupid.
Martin: Well while we’ve been speaking about that this is what’s been happening on the track.
James: Let me re-cap everything that’s been happening since the start of the race again, I haven’t done that for 2 minutes and it’s not as if you’ve been watching the whole race or anything and as far as I can tell nothing could possibly be happening now and if it is then it can probably wait a minute or two and I’ll include it in my next recap of everything that’s happened in the race.
Martin: You are stupid.
James: Yes I’m stupid.

Or something like that.