In your wildest dreams did you ever imagine a new team could have such a great debut? It is the question that David Coulthard, who not only co-presents Channel 4’s Formula One coverage but owns the production company that makes it, would have been desperate to hear as their first live race came to a close. Instead he was asking it himself while thrusting a microphone towards Romain Grosjean, who had just finished fifth. Having come sixth in Melbourne a fortnight earlier the Haas driver has illuminated this new season but in Bahrain the sport’s other new team was not quite so convincing.
By the end the lead presenter Steve Jones, normally so at ease when on camera that interviews with such people as Angelina Jolie, Paris Hilton and Pamela Anderson have blossomed into tabloid-friendly romances, was visibly squirming, perhaps having used the tablet he was clutching to check on the latest vitriol flushing through his Twitter timeline. He treads a fine line between the fun and the flippant, not always successfully. Most awkward was a post-race interview with Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo. “The prince of Australia, how do you feel?” opened Jones. “Prince of Australia? That’s weird…” squirmed Ricciardo.
As he warmed up for his first attempt at covering live sport Jones told one interviewer that, though he had “been dipping in and out” of the sport for some time, he had watched “with a greater sense of urgency lately”. Perhaps someone with more familiarity with the sport would have fared better, though Jones was unfortunate that his intention to make his employers’ coverage differ from the BBC’s by “getting a lot more celebs involved and generally enjoying it a bit more” – to play, in short, to his strengths – could not survive the current obsession with qualifying methodology and tyre compounds.
Jones apart, this new dawn featured a lot of old faces. The very first belonged to Murray Walker, who followed the equally familiar strains of Fleetwood Mac’s The Chain at the start of the broadcast with a jog through Formula One history that was a good deal more sprightly than the 92-year-old himself, who presented his segment from a leather armchair. “Formula One is back,” he concluded, “ready to go, united as ever in the shared spirit of racing.”
Presumably he recorded his introduction a while ago, for all the talk pre-race was of the near-total lack of unity as teams debate how to replace this season’s new and patently ludicrous qualifying system. Bernie Ecclestone, cornered by Coulthard during the grid walk – also patently ludicrous – was really rather mean about the smarting parties. “We’ll eventually get it sorted,” he insisted. “It just takes a bit of time with these people. They’re not quite as quick as us.”
Earlier Sebastian Vettel had told Lee McKenzie that “it seems to be quite clear what’s maybe not right and what can be improved” this season. He also criticised the spendthrift nature of modern formula one, even though his own Ferrari team has perhaps the most wildly overworked chequebook of all. “There is really rocket science going on in the garage but to whose benefit?” he asked. “Does it help the drivers? Does it help the spectators? As I understand it no one really, but it costs a lot of money.”
Mark Webber reacted quite harshly to this revelation by calling Vettel a bit dull, praising McKenzie for coaxing such nuggets from someone who “rarely comes up with good stuff like that”. If Vettel was fuming when Channel 4 spoke to him it was his car’s turn during the formation lap. “I’m not sure, I think I might have an engine failure,” he said, as plumes of smoke billowed behind him and he pfutted to a halt, showing powers of deduction that perhaps affirmed Webber’s opinion of him.
By then we had enjoyed the broadcasting highlight of the afternoon, as Webber and Coulthard stalked the grid semi-independently while a solitary cameraman tried to cover them both, leading to periods of havoc as Channel 4’s three representatives ran about trying to find each other.
Choice moments included the Australian, off screen, revealing he had “just headbutted a cameraman” and the Scot looking over his shoulder and admitting that “I’ve lost my buddy Mark” before literally running right into him. But eventually they ran out of people to bother. “They’ve done enough interviews; they’ve started shutting down,” said Webber, his relief evident, “and I’m absolutely cool with that.”
The on-screen chaos continued, for a few laps at least, once the race began, though Coulthard and Ben Edwards did a fine job of describing it from the commentary box. There is no lack of expertise and excellence in Channel 4’s team, even if there was no sign on this occasion of Eddie Jordan, who went from describing the sport’s move to Channel 4 as “utterly devastating” in December to signing up to join them in March. The recently retired racer Susie Wolff seemed a natural broadcaster and as a bonus convinced her husband, Mercedes head Toto, to be interviewed twice.
In addition to producing, presenting and commentating Coulthard was also on the podium to interview the first three finishers, though he could not convince Kimi Raikkonen, who came second in his Ferrari yet looked as if he had just put down his favourite kitten, so much as to smile. “It was a bit flat, wasn’t it?” the Scot asked Jones of the presentation once he had returned to the C4 fold. “No, it was amazing!” replied the Welshman, who clearly has some quality control issues to deal with.
