Hunt vs Lauda: BBC2 Sunday 9pm
Discussion
Nice one, ta.
Documentary examining the battle between Britain's James Hunt and Austria's Niki Lauda for the 1976 Formula 1 world drivers' championship, which was decided by the last grand prix of the season. Featuring rare archive footage and interviews with team managers, families, journalists and friends.
Documentary examining the battle between Britain's James Hunt and Austria's Niki Lauda for the 1976 Formula 1 world drivers' championship, which was decided by the last grand prix of the season. Featuring rare archive footage and interviews with team managers, families, journalists and friends.
Watched it last night and really enjoyed it.
It was interesting that they didn't make much use of any of the TV images from that season - relying mainly on film footage instead. I recognised a lot of clips from the Brunswick series.
1976 was the year when the BBC panicked over the sponsorship of the cars and dropped their coverage of the few races they normally covered as they agonised over the issue. What a season to decide to drop F1!
I seem to remember that ITV picked up the baton and covered some of the races in a rather disorganised way. I'm pretty sure that live coverage of the Japanese race was shown on ITV with Andrew Marriott was the commentator. We saw Marriott doing a report to camera at the British GP in this documentary.
The only jarring aspect of the documentary was the rather babyish explanation of F1 and the points system etc at the very beginning. Yet again a programme makes the assumption that the viewer is dumb and knows nothing about the topic.
There was also slightly sloppy editing in that shots of cars on track were sometimes edited into the wrong race. This was very obvious on a couple of occasions because 1976 was the year in which the distinctive tall airboxes which were in use at the start of the season were banned after a couple of the early races. In at least one sequence we saw cars carrying tall airboxes suddenly sporting the new low boxes - supposedly in the same race
Apart from those slightly annoying bits, the rest was excellent.
It was interesting that they didn't make much use of any of the TV images from that season - relying mainly on film footage instead. I recognised a lot of clips from the Brunswick series.
1976 was the year when the BBC panicked over the sponsorship of the cars and dropped their coverage of the few races they normally covered as they agonised over the issue. What a season to decide to drop F1!
I seem to remember that ITV picked up the baton and covered some of the races in a rather disorganised way. I'm pretty sure that live coverage of the Japanese race was shown on ITV with Andrew Marriott was the commentator. We saw Marriott doing a report to camera at the British GP in this documentary.
The only jarring aspect of the documentary was the rather babyish explanation of F1 and the points system etc at the very beginning. Yet again a programme makes the assumption that the viewer is dumb and knows nothing about the topic.
There was also slightly sloppy editing in that shots of cars on track were sometimes edited into the wrong race. This was very obvious on a couple of occasions because 1976 was the year in which the distinctive tall airboxes which were in use at the start of the season were banned after a couple of the early races. In at least one sequence we saw cars carrying tall airboxes suddenly sporting the new low boxes - supposedly in the same race
Apart from those slightly annoying bits, the rest was excellent.
Eric Mc said:
The only jarring aspect of the documentary was the rather babyish explanation of F1 and the points system etc at the very beginning. Yet again a programme makes the assumption that the viewer is dumb and knows nothing about the topic.
It didn't strike me as that 'dumb'... 9 6 4 3 2 1 hasn't been used since I was a kid, and despite being a fan for most of nearly 30 years now I for one wouldn't have been sure it was in use in '76 (I was born the year after) or how the frequently revised 'best finishes' rule in place at the time would affect the result (actually I'll admit they glossed over this by not mentioning it, having since looked on Wiki for clarification!)Yes - they didn't mention the old "dropped points" system that was in place for a while. I'm not sure it was in use for 1976 anyway.
And they didn't state why they came to the conclusion that the McLaren was too wide in Spain. Hunt always said it was due to the tyres being over inflated.
And they didn't state why they came to the conclusion that the McLaren was too wide in Spain. Hunt always said it was due to the tyres being over inflated.
Eric Mc said:
Yes - they didn't mention the old "dropped points" system that was in place for a while. I'm not sure it was in use for 1976 anyway.
And they didn't state why they came to the conclusion that the McLaren was too wide in Spain. Hunt always said it was due to the tyres being over inflated.
Yep dropped points system survived until 1980 so in 1976 was 7/8 for first half of the season and the same for the latter half of the season.And they didn't state why they came to the conclusion that the McLaren was too wide in Spain. Hunt always said it was due to the tyres being over inflated.
As for the "wide" Mclaren surely the theory was tyres under- rather than over- inflated ??
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