Formula 1 has a problem. Well, it has lots of problems, like tires that sometimes last forever, and tracks where passing is apparently impossible. But there’s one problem it has no excuse for: an international broadcast that was almost unwatchably bad.
If you tuned in to the qualifying session of last weekend’s Bahrain Grand Prix, you might have wondered what was going on in the control booth. Cars screamed at full volume on track, completely overwhelming the Sky commentary from David Croft and Martin Brundle. In a complicated session with a lot of action up and down the field, it made the action incredibly hard to follow.
But of course, this is a billion-dollar sport with TV deals that start in the eight-figure range. Naturally, this audio faux-pas was sorted out in a matter of seconds, right? Oh, honey, no. It went on all fucking weekend.
I have to turn the volume down because of the extreme loud engine noise in the team radio audio, and then when there is conversation between driver and pit the sound is too low so you have to increase the volume and then the engine sound comes back and it is too loud again. aarrg
— Philip van der Matten (@philipvdm) April 12, 2025
I wish I were kidding, but I watched the whole sorry thing. As an Australian, I was tuned in to the Sky feed via Kayo, and I honestly couldn’t believe what was happening. For the entire qualifying session, the track audio was turned up way too loud, and the commentary was far too soft. I looked forward to the distant shots after the cars passed by so I could actually hear what Brundle and Croft were saying.
It’s not exactly clear why this happened. You got the distinct vibe that someone had left the work experience kid on the mixing desk without supervision. What was more confusing was that it went on for the entire qualifying session.
Hey there. Thank you for your feedback, this has been passed onto our team now and they are monitoring it. Any changes that they make likely won't be immediate, so we cannot provide a timeline on that for now. If the issue does persist though, then please contact our customer…
— The Official F1® Help Channel (@F1Help) April 12, 2025
Appeals through official channels did little to help.
At some point, surely, you would think someone at Sky or in F1 would have noticed that the commentary was turned down to almost nothing. They might have picked up a phone and screamed at whichever idiot was in charge, and gotten the problem sorted? Alas, no. The terrible audio mix continued for all of qualifying and the vast majority of the race. Apparently nobody was listening, and many fans rushed to Twitter to complain that something was deeply wrong in the broadcast booth. [Ed note: Yeah yeah, “It’s X now,” but who cares? – Pete]
It’s astonishing that this can even happen. I work at a proud and enterprising automotive website. If I so much as misplace an image or make a few too many typographical errors, somebody will notice and I’ll get a friendly ping on Slack to pull my goddamn socks up. However, you can apparently produce a garbage TV feed that’s shown to millions of people around the world, live, and get away with not even checking the faders for two full days in a row. Just astounding.
Where does the problem lie? In this case, possibly Sky F1, given it was their commentators being drowned out on their feed. Regardless of who is precisely at fault, F1 needs to step up and ensure the world is getting a better show than this.
Hey there. Please try restarting your device and logging out of your F1 TV Account, and then log back in. If after this you are still experiencing issues Please contact our customer support via this email: general@en.formula1.com and let us know the case number you receive in…
— The Official F1® Help Channel (@F1Help) April 13, 2025
Unhelpful advice was never far away.
Ultimately, it was a weekend the Formula 1 broadcasters will hope to put behind them. Beyond the regular sound issues, a number of important passes were entirely missed by the telecast. As a weird bonus, the “REPLAY” icon flashed up multiple times during live images for some reason.
The most challenging issues raised their head later in the race, when George Russell’s Mercedes stopped triggering the timing system. This not only left the broadcast unable to show accurate timing, but made it near-impossible for Russell—or his direct competitors—to trigger their DRS systems in line with the rules. This was a technical issue outside the control of the broadcast team itself, but it created yet more problems for the on-air product.
Credit where it’s due, the graphics team rushed to manually create custom timing graphics to keep the viewers at home updated as to the state of the race. But unfortunately, it’s not the first time this year that timing has apparently completely gone awry. Previous races have seen the timing tower disappear entirely for ten-plus minutes at a time, leaving viewers in the dark as to how the race is developing.
The fact is that F1 is a major global sport. It doesn’t get any bigger than this. That’s why it’s so shocking that the quality of the broadcast has been so poor. Maybe heads need to roll, or maybe they just need to make sure somebody at Sky is actually watching the feed that’s being broadcast around the world.
In any case, I’m happy to help out. Give me the number of someone in the booth, and I will gladly ring up and chew them out next time they’ve left a vital audio channel on mute or something. The world (and my friends) will thank you.
Image credits: via Twitter screenshot
For me, background noise drowning out Croft and Brundle was a good thing. I pray we can get a non-Sky broadcast here in the US in the future
I contacted Kayo and they said while they’re investigating it, they have no control over the audio on their end as they “receive the feed directly from the broadcasting team”.
Was it only a problem for the Australian Kayo broadcast? I’ve heard people in other countries that watched through Sky say it was fine.
I could be wrong, but suspect it’s an issue with Fox Sports Australia (I also reached out to them – no response yet). My understanding is Sky provides multiple audio channels to broadcasters, like Fox Sports, who should mix themselves before providing to Kayo.
This is a long standing problem. Specifically, F1 doesn’t produce the broadcasts, the track/promotor does. As such, you get stuck with poor production and direction. Missed passes are nothing. The local producers have their perceived priorities and act accordingly. If the king of Bahrain whines about not hearing enough engine noise, this is what you get.
Before I quit watching F1 I remember some hilariously bad broadcasts where the local directors clearly were out of their depth. Those early Baku races were utterly terrible for example. And again, the sound issues are nothing new and will continue along with the atrocious camera choices.
Actually, F1 took over all production duties some years ago. The last domino to fall was the Monaco GP, which handed over control of the broadcast to F1 itself in 2023.
Apologies. I have not watched a broadcast or read much news re since the moment Masi screwed Hamilton out of a championship which I still feel should legitimately be awarded to Lewis. Like, I turned off the TV that moment and haven’t watched even a clip since. I just can’t.
Anyway, it’s still all so very weird that they couldn’t fix it toot suite considering social media and how easy it should be to fix. I’m back to wondering if it was a deliberate choice to hype engine sound since everyone hates the V6 hybrid sound mixed with tire tire screeching. That might explain the bad mix and any reluctance to fix it.
I worked in TV News for 20 years. The audio part of putting something on the air was about the simplest part of it. The director (calling the shots) and the technical director (the guy at the switcher/vision-mixer/StarWars Death Star weapon controller (it was a Grass Valley Group 1600 switcher with its distinctive T-handle [link below if you want to read more about it.]) had a lot more to handle than the guy at the audio board. Once you get there, just do a find for 1600 and you’ll see it and get to read a little bit about it.
Grass Valley Group
All that said, I watched the race (and just now re-watched parts of the qualification days and the race) in the US via ESPN on Hulu and the mix sounded okay. With Hulu, if there’s some part of commentary I miss, I can go back 15 seconds and enable “closed captioning on replay” and a few seconds later read what I missed.
I have no insight into how Sky distributes their content around the world. But it would be weird if they didn’t just blend it all together and not allow however what source you’re watching mess it up.
Maybe it’s time to see an audiologist? I got tested a couple of months ago and was told that I had amazing hearing for my age, despite getting blown almost on my ass by the Green Bamba and taking my son and his friends to a lot of metal concerts.
Nah, the sound is usually fine, so it’s not my hearing. There’s also the whole crowd of people complaining online…
Well, sorry it was bad for you. It sounded fine as delivered via the path described above to me. I guess we’ll see if they have the issue ironed out next weekend from Saudi Arabia.
The audio issue that bugs me at least as much is when the sound is a bit out of synch from the video. In the US, the video is normally 30 frames per second (fps). Watching the 3rd round of the Master’s golf tournament on Saturday, the audio was showing up about 5 frames earlier than the video. I’m watching the local CBS affiliate (Shout out to KIRO/Seattle, the last station I worked at as a photographer and a system admin for a product that I ended up going all over the Americas and a bit over into Europe, installing, upgrading or training for the software company that made it.) via Hulu, so I don’t know whether it was KIRO’s problem or CBS’s or Hulu’s. It was better Sunday.
But audio showing up ahead of the video really messes with my head. I’m used to seeing a bolt of lightning and then the thunder takes 5 seconds per mile to arrive. That’s just how it works. But to hear the thunder before the bolt hit you or somewhere within visual range would be unnatural and defy the laws of physics.
Maybe F1TV’s overly-aggressive noise suppression could marry Sky’s non-existent approach, and we could have a happy baby F1 broadcast. But that’s not even in the top 10 of the ways that F1 broadcasts suck. The TV direction is, and has been for years, absolute dogshit. We often spend minutes watching a pass attempt for 17th, or endless cutaways to WaGs (who cares?). Missed action, replays over ontrack action, cutaways from shot to shot without continuity, providing little or no sense of the track layout during broadcasts, using stupid names for corners as if we’ve all been to these tracks for years… it goes on and on. Then we can deal with the timings and graphics. After that, maybe we could talk about liveries that don’t show car numbers clearly (I can memorize t-cam colours, but why should I?). I’m cranky today, but this is getting harder and harder to watch.
This sounds like Sky’s problem. Although, when I was still watching on ESPN, the times this happened I considered it a feature, not a bug. “Crofty” is terrible and I just can’t stand him. Now I watch on F1TV and there the commentary was just fine, b both in content and in volume. So I don’t think this is F1’s issue, it’s Sky’s problem.
I watched live on Sky in the UK with my Sky box thingy (Sky Q I think it is) and the sound seemed fine. Perhaps it was affecting only the app based versions? I should mention, I have a lot of other problems with the box thingy and F1 in particular, just not this time.
The caption for the final image says it all:
“Getting the sound right is just one of the basic jobs of making television.”
Even if the problem wasn’t immediately correctable, Quality Control should still NOTICE that there’s a problem, and that “log out and log back in” tweet is fucking bullshit.
“[Ed note: Yeah yeah, “It’s X now,” but who cares? – Pete]”
Ha, yeah, as seeing how Musk insists on deadnaming his daughter he’s in no position to whine about Twitter still being called Twitter.
I gave up on Sky and now watch F1TV. With the exception of a overly excitable Italian color commentator, they are pretty good.
My issue is the F1 video feed, they’ll report someone under investigation for causing a crash and then not show the incident for 10 minutes (or not at all).
Davide Valsecchi really only seems to cover practice/quali at least. I really like the rest of the F1TV announcer team, more than Sky Sports.
I don’t know if he’s new to F1TV but I’ve only seen him recently and I kinda get a kick out of watching him. He’s so animated and full of energy. Just bursting at the seams to tell you that some team is going from hards to softs.
My wife and I joke that Valsecchi is what you get when you tell a redneck to act Italian. He’s quite the caricature.
F1 broadcast quality has been an absolute clusterfuck this year.
On another note, I really wish someone would coach Bernie to improve her speech. She is soft spoken and always sounds like she has a mouthful of cookies. One of these things is a bother, but together I can’t make out anything she says.
I also would really like to hear and understand what she’s saying, but you’re right – total mushmouth – unless you’re from Ireland, I guess. Was she even in this broadcast this weekend?
ESPN+ coverage didn’t seem to have this issue, or at least it didn’t seem as terrible as you’re all describing for us watching. I’m not opposed to anything drowning out Brundle though, so there’s that.
It’s interesting. I wonder if ESPN does its own mix, or if Sky has multiple audio mixes and some apps/channels got a shit one…
I watched quals on F1 tv, and noticed the mix was off too. Not unwatchable, but I too made the comment “who’s intern is running sound today!”
I’m going to guess that they do their own, because nothing really seemed blown out, at least not in a way that I noticed.
I think the sound issue is with Sky. I watch using the F1tv app and it wasn’t a problem at all. Yell at Sky all you like, but you can’t in good faith blame FOM. As far as Russell’s telemetry, that was just an unfortunate situation caused by a part failure on the car that probably won’t be repeated. It really comes down to whether you are happier with a timing tower that doesn’t show him, or the manual screen they provided.
On how rare Russell’s timing issue was, I really can’t think of another car issue that affected DRS timing like that since DRS was a thing. There have been hydraulic failures that caused a mechanical failure to the wing, but I honestly can’t think of something like this…
I wonder if it really happened the way he said (he triggered the radio and the DRS opened) or if it was a quick and clever way to cover up a mistake he made that will cost him a penalty.
Well, the investigation ended with no penalty. They said it was open for 37 m on a 700m straight and estimated that he gained .02 seconds but then gave up .28 to make up for it. With F1, you never know, but I tend to take this one at face value.
I’m inclined to give the benefit of the doubt because they had to know they were being watched like a hawk. I believe they also had to have special approval to re-map the DRS button so it wasn’t a secret.
It sounds like they were dealing with cascading electrical problems with the car.
The Fox IndyCar broadcasts this year have had similar terrible audio mixes as well, at least to my ears, which function admittedly less than optimally.
This!
It does suck.
I’m thinking the answer lies in a book titled “The End of Expertise “!
Wait wait, the Autopian corrects typos now??
I wasn’t about to say it but Zing!
It was in Bahrain. Not a lot of sport in the blazing desert. TV crews have no practice.
Same problems with football, cricket and anything else which gets sucked into UAE.
I work in production in the live events industry, and this is not a good take. Any touring production, whether it be live sports or Broadway musicals, carry a certain number of their own production staff for high-skill positions, and hire local labor for the “grunt work”. However, bringing staff with the production is very costly.
From my guess, F1 is being too cheap to bring professionals on tour around the world, so they hire local labor for skilled positions, and that labor is less skilled than necessary. These problems can all be fixed with money, which F1 clearly has.
Why did DRS suck so bad?
Specifically Mercedes – the steering wheel went haywire, and engaged DRS when George Russel pressed the auxiliary radio button. Which also happened to be the DRS button. There may have also been a defect with the transmitter on their vehicle.
I’m thinking the car had a host of electrical gremlins. Maybe it decided to pretend to be a VW/AUDI for the day…
I was livid when the timing tower was taken off: I watch the boring chunks of the races on fast forward, keeping an eye on the gaps between cars on the timing tower so I can judge what’s going on.
I thought it was wild the system is only able to operate completely automated. I was surprised they couldn’t just select Russel and force him P2 to override to glitch. No, they wouldn’t have his time delta, but at leas the rest of the tower could be accurate.
F1’s broadcasts/apps are….trash. I’ve never tried on Sky as I have an F1TV subscription, but we’re still dealing with stereo and 1080p there and no PIP, so you can’t watch your fav driver cam and the race w/ commentary at the same time. They recently released F1TV plus which has 4k (IDK about 5.1 surround), but only for Chrome and Apple TV. I’m guessing they’re trying it out on a small user base first before expanding. That doesn’t stop them from letting me upgrade on an android device to a service I can’t use on an android device.
F1TV certainly isn’t perfect, but it’s the best way I’ve ever watched any sport at all. Way better than trying to watch NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA or any other league in the US.
That being said, my biggest complaint with F1TV is the race director. They are constantly showing us some boring laps all while missing critical passes. Or it’ll take 4 minutes for them to show us a replay of something important they missed. They also seem to hate PIP for some reason, and the rare occasions they do PIP, the small one is so small it’s basically useless.
The rest of my complaints about F1 aren’t about F1TV, but rather about the FIA.
Broadcasting live is pretty difficult. It may not be F1’s/Producers/Directors fault. It may have sounded perfect to them in their production trucks. It’s when it get to the distributors is where it gets tricky. They might have not setup the audio channel mappings to the same as the production trucks. Looking through post, I didn’t see anyone posting if the problem was channel mappings on 5.1, so maybe it was a down mix problem. Just try to give some possible reasons
I had this problem watching football broadcasts a while back. It turns out YouTube TV was configured for 5.1, but since I was running it through a 2.1 system I lost all of the sound from the center channel. Basically all I could hear was the ambient crowd noise.
It’s genuinely impressive how F1 consistently has some of the most glaring and inexcusable technical issues for broadcasts. Indycar doesn’t have this issue, neither does WEC or IMSA, and those both run 24 hour events. College sports seldom have problems like this in the US, and when it does happen it’s always when the entire broadcast is run by college students, and even then, it’s usually less intrusive. Heck, my High School had a daily TV type broadcast run by literal teenagers, and it had fewer issues than F1 does.
While I doubt the FIA manages the broadcasting, dumping MBS would be a great start regardless, and at would go a long way showing good will to the teams and fans.
An F1 car drowning out Martin Brundle’s commentary doesn’t sound like the worst thing in the world.
I watch UK’s Channel 4 coverage to avoid Brundle.