The pictures are better on the radio, they say. Since the Canadian Grand Prix wasn’t one of the BBC’s live Formula 1 races, and the highlights wouldn’t finish until gone midnight, I put that adage to the test on Sunday.

F1: not exactly a priority for 5 Live

But first the BBC put me to the test, in a game of find the coverage. Build up was scheduled to start at 18:45 on BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra, but that was dropped due to the cricket. The start of the race was bumped up to the main BBC Radio 5 Live, before Sports Extra was finished with the cricket at 19:30.

After about ten minutes, 5 Live had had quite enough of Formula 1, and decided to concentrate on some Euro 2012 build up – with a bit of cricket, which was also on Sports Extra. Thanks for that. Cue scrabbling around to get the online stream up and running. Frustrating? A little. But by that point I had live timing open on my laptop anyway, so I coped manfully.

You could argue that a less determined fan might have been put off by that sort of farting around, but frankly you’ve got to be a pretty determined fan to listen to Formula 1 on the radio in the first place. So annoying though it was, it’s probably not going to have affected listening figures very much.

Listening & viewing figures

Indeed, those listening figures were good – almost a million, according to 5 Live’s pit lane reporter Jennie Gow. That’s not far off the reported 1.6 million average for Sky. The BBC highlights averaged 2.3 million, compared to 6.3 million live last year.

Radio verdict

So, what about following a race on the radio – alongside live timing and Twitter, naturally? Not bad, actually.

Jonathan Legard was in the commentary box in place of James Allen, for reasons which aren’t immediately apparent – which was sort of fine. Jaime Alguersuari was a fairly insightful presence but, having now watched the BBC TV highlights, less so than David Coulthard – surprisingly. Jennie Gow barely registered – were her contributions as few and far between as I remember?

Listening on the radio certainly highlighted how little seat-of-the-pants action there was. Other than the start, overtakes were pretty much signposted a mile off, and I saw them on live timing first. But Legard did a reasonable job of describing the start, and the first half of the race went by in a haze of disgruntled tweets about the 5 Live coverage being passed from pillar to post.

After that it died down a bit – as it did on TV – until the super fun final stint, when Hamilton scythed through world champion after world champion to take the win. Live timing told that story perfectly, gaps and lap times laid bare, the inevitable clear to see. Had I been watching on TV, I’m not sure I would have been paying as much attention to the timing screen, and got as much out of it.

No: the pictures are better on the television

Still, I would rather have just watched it on TV. Not a waste of time though, by any means.

Photo Credit
BenJTsunami – Flickr – Some rights reserved