The wet part of the German GP was absolutely manic. Tyre strategy was up in the air, the order was rapidly changing, and drivers were spinning off – including leader Sebastian Vettel. It’s a tricky situation for any TV director trying to decide what to show, and you can’t really blame them for missing a few things.
Hamilton wasn’t happy, though, and feels more attention should have been paid to his own performance in the slippery conditions. He was quoted by RaceFans.net as saying:
“I just watched this race that felt so great in my heart. There were certain things that I was like it’s not being perceived that way by who’s reporting it. But also there were things missed.
“There was a point when it started to rain, I was three seconds quicker than the other drivers but for some reason there on the TV screen there was only the gaps between us there was no times being shown so people couldn’t see the difference.”
Hamilton alluded to his dissatisfaction earlier in the week when he hit out at the Sky F1 team for not praising his drive enough. He soon deleted it, which he said was because as the race progressed there were actually some good comments.
He still suggested he was disappointed by the lack of analysis, though, saying that other sports do a better job of explaining things:
“It wasn’t being explained the difference I was making, the different lines that I would choose. Being that we had racing drivers commentating I would have thought they would pick those things out but they didn’t. I can look at, for example when I watch the race I can look at Sebastian, how he enters the corner and positions the car.
“There’s drivers that I grew up watching and succeed and it’s interesting. It seems a little bit different how they sometimes commentate – it’s different from race to race – how they commentate as opposed to when you watch an ex-tennis player commentate on the technicality of a tennis player, how they do fast balls or they work well on grass as opposed to sand. I don’t see that happen as much, but I don’t watch all the races.”
Do you agree with Hamilton? Could commentators be doing a better job of explaining things, or was the German GP simply too chaotic for anyone (commentators or director) to properly show what was going on?
