Formula One Decade on Speed Channel

Cafe Society
1

Speed channel has been running the 1993 F1 season on Sunday nights on weekends that have no live event that week. Last night was the Monoco GP of 1993. Watching this was very cool because this is one of the few races I haven’t seen since the early 80’s. ABC had the television rights to this race in 93 and did not air the original event in the states!! (thats a who BBQ Pit rant, there!) I was looking forward to it. Prost, Senna and Schumacher, as well as Berger, Alesi, Patrese and others from “the good old days”.

Man, what a trainwreck! Talk about sloppy racing! Prost jumps the start, then proceeds to go a lap down on his stop-and-go penalty due to a stalling Williams, Schumacher breaks while leading, back-markers seemed worse than usual, apparantly trying to take people out :eek:, and the worst passing attempt I’ve ever seen by Berger at the Loew’s hairpin.

Berger just doesn’t break and torpedos Hill, causing a giant cluster-fuck and blocking the track. Even if Hill had not turned in, there was no way Berger could have made the corner. Really poor effort. I recall reading about it, but never saw any highlights. He had no chance! Knocked himself right out of the race, too.

Its pretty weird watching these “old” races, where the pit crews are running around in shorts and no safety gear and no speed limit in the pits. It was also strange seeing sponsor logos on cars for companies that don’t exist anymore, or at least not in F1. Senna had a “K-Mart” logo on his rear wing. Brought on board by teammate Andretti, no doubt. Who stunk up the joint, as was customary back then. I think he rammed two cars during the event.

Overall, a pretty shabby event. It was Senna’s 6th and final victory in Monoco, and he didn’t really do anything spectacular but avoid the other nonsense on the track and have the leaders drop away, handing him the win. Oh well. Thats racing. To finish first, you first must finish.

Anybody else see this 10 year old race for the first time?

She told me she loved me like a brother. She was from Arkansas, hence the Joy!

2

I did! I started feeling all bittersweet at the end when Hobbs & Matchett started talking about this race being Senna’s final race at Monaco. I love the side-view cockpit level in-car shots they had in those days. The ones from Schumacher’s car were especially good, especially with Matchett explaining all the buttons and knobs and such…and the cheap Casio digital watch taped to the center! :slight_smile:

However, it is completely off-putting to see how exposed the drivers were in those days. Unfortunately that played a major part in the tragedies in the following year. Next year they’ll show the 1994 season…don’t know if I’ll be able to watch the San Marino replay. :frowning:

Thank God for Speed Channel, so long as it doesn’t go completely NASCAR on us.

3

How would you find the WRC on tv? Does Speed Channel carry it, or do you need Fox Sports World or something?

4

WRC is shown on Speed. Earlier in the year they were delaying the broadcasts by a week, but I think complaints got them to reverse that decision. You can usually find it sometime on Sunday evenings, which occasional replays. It helps to have the digital cable listing search function to seek it out!

Here’s the broadcast schedule for the rest of the year:

5

Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you…

I did look through their web site, but even searching on “world rally” didn’t return any hits in their schedule.

DirecTV wasn’t ANY help on the phone, either. They just had no idea whatsoever.

This is now my incentive to get cable/DirecTV in the near future.

6

Ok:

“Rally XS Germany Tue, Jul 29 6pm
Germany Thu, Jul 31 9pm
Rally X-tra Germany Sun, Aug 3 6pm”

I don’t understand what these mean. I’m gathering that XS is some sort of prelude, and X-tra is some sort of addendum?

???

7

Yeah, the XS show is the preview show, and the X-tra show is a condensed down highlight package, usually with a few extra interviews and such thrown in. But the main coverage is in the 2nd show for each rally, typically shown on Sunday night of the rally weekend if other programming doesn’t get in the way.

8

The World Rally Championship coverage is pretty good on Speed, but sometimes hard to find. They do have repeats out the butt, so I can usually catch pretty much all the events. WRC is not covered anywhere else, other than the website, so the race is never spoiled for me by the time I get to see them.

Finland was wild!

Heres a stumper: Would you ride along as co-driver on that course? If not, how much would it take to get you to, and if yes, how much would you be willing to pay?

I’d do it. I would do it and pay $1000 for the privledge, as long as I got to ride with Marcus.