TV figures Drivers more Visible for Viewers Start Number - Todt

F1 needs to act on TV figures - Todt
http://www.supersport.com/motorsport...aspx?Id=412782

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World motorsport federation chief Jean Todt has said Formula One needed to question how it can remain attractive to television viewers.

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He also said more would have to be done to make the drivers more visible for viewers.

"In television I can hardly recognise who is sitting in a car," he said.

"The helmets are only known to experts. A lot of drivers are constantly changing the design as well

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He praised the US Nascar series in which drivers received a start number to be kept throughout his entire career and was "immediately identifiable for fans."

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Hey, I must be an expert!

I wonder what Jean would propose to "make the drivers more visible" without detracting from their safety. The high sides of the cockpit were recently introduced to improve safety. Maybe just put the driver's name on the car, like who was it? Honda? I think, when they lacked sponsorship. Didn't one car say Jenson in big letters? I forget the other driver and probably have the wrong team, but you get the point.

But really, come on! This dumbing down of F1 to grow the sport will be the ruin of it!

I think having a name or number quite visible on the side of the car would make things easier for the casual viewer. Todt is right about the changing helmet designs, it used to be easy to identify the driver quite readily especially with designs like Hill or Senna.

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Originally Posted by motetarip

I think having a name or number quite visible on the side of the car would make things easier for the casual viewer. Todt is right about the changing helmet designs, it used to be easy to identify the driver quite readily especially with designs like Hill or Senna.

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When I think back to when I were a wee lad say back in those heady days of 1986, Ferrari, Williams, Lotus, McLaren, Osella, Tyrell, Brabham etc. all had prominent numbers either on the end plates of the rear wing, on the side pods or in front of the side pods. It was very easy to find every number on most cars.

Fast forward to 2011 and only Williams and HRT are really obvious anymore. Personally I like the idea of NASCAR where they have a minimum of 40 inch numbers on the doors. Even at 199.99mph it's obvious as to which car you're looking at.

If I was Grand Poobah and Lord High Everything Else, I'd make it mandatory to display competition numbers on the end plates of the rear wing in numbers no smaller than 300mm in height and obviously legible from at least 75m away.

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Originally Posted by Rollo

When I think back to when I were a wee lad say back in those heady days of 1986, Ferrari, Williams, Lotus, McLaren, Osella, Tyrell, Brabham etc. all had prominent numbers either on the end plates of the rear wing, on the side pods or in front of the side pods. It was very easy to find every number on most cars.

Fast forward to 2011 and only Williams and HRT are really obvious anymore. Personally I like the idea of NASCAR where they have a minimum of 40 inch numbers on the doors. Even at 199.99mph it's obvious as to which car you're looking at.

If I was Grand Poobah and Lord High Everything Else, I'd make it mandatory to display competition numbers on the end plates of the rear wing in numbers no smaller than 300mm in height and obviously legible from at least 75m away.

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Well m' Lord, you'd get my vote on that propsal.

I'd prefer that teams retained numbers rather than drivers but Todt has the right idea, though you can't stop drivers from changing helmet designs Nor can you stop them from using overly complex designs that look a complete mess in anything other than a close-up still shot.

Some better TV directing would be a start, instead of having so many cameras positioned at the end of straights looking at cars half a kilometre away. On such shots it's difficult to read anything on the car, let alone a number even if it were bigger.

It's also trivially easy to provide captions to identify which drivers are onscreen - my pet hate are the onboard shots where the car is obvious but the driver's helmet is out of shot.

In order to put captions on screen it has to be obvious to the director which cars are in shot. And I think even they struggle!

However with onboard shots they know which driver they are cutting to so it should be trivial to have a graphic on screen as soon as they are cut to.

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Originally Posted by Mark

In order to put captions on screen it has to be obvious to the director which cars are in shot. And I think even they struggle!

However with onboard shots they know which driver they are cutting to so it should be trivial to have a graphic on screen as soon as they are cut to.

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With a halfway decent use of technology it should be completely automatic. You know where the cars are thanks to GPS and telemetry, you know where the cameras are because you spent all of Thursday wiring them up, and as you mention you usually have a shot in mind before you cut to it. The captions wouldn't be needed - or even welcome - on every single shot.

Depends how much you want, do you want a bright blue glow around the cars like they do in hockey? Or do you want like NASCAR where they have the names along the top of the screen and arrows pointing down to show which cars these are.

Well

Back in the mid-late eighties, you knew which Williams car was which because;

1. they had big numbers - on the nose and on the rear wing uprights,

and,

2. Mansell's number was red, the other (Piquet/Patrese) was white.