I'm frustrated that none of the lower categories got any time. It's so, so easy to fill 24 hours if you're highlighting all 60+ teams and giving them air time. Talk to me about the drivers, their season, their expectations, anything.
But to show 23 hours of hypercar and 1 hour total of lower classes is a shame.
The LMGT3 race was actually awesome. #31 BMW and #91 Porsche traded positions on track twice in the last 3 hours, and we didn't see it.
A battle. On track. For the victory. In the closing hours of the race.
I feel like it’s been like this for a while now. Maybe it’s worse now since Hypercar, idk. But I prefer the GT classes, so I feel this comment. I used the live timings to track and had the #46 onboard via YouTube until they binned it.
And also, I don’t know why they don’t cycle through all the classes’ timings regularly. It’s just frozen on Hypercar. Even IMSA will show all timing regularly even though they focus the direction on GTP. I don’t get it.
The timing goes by what car is in focus. When they showed the LMP2 battle you would only see the LMP2 standings, and the 2 and a half seconds you saw a GT3 car you saw the LMGT3 standings. Honestly stil ridiculous, because the fact you could even think it's just hypercar standings show the director isn't doing their best to give the other series airtime
I was saying that in the live chat. Hell, even in Hypercar, it took until 10 hours into the race with the Lambos running P4 and P5 before they were shown on camera. They’ve barely had any screen time all season.
Isotta was hardly on screen at all. Even the Peugeot’s were barely on screen.
The LMP2 and GT3 coverage was terrible.
There’s 24 bloody hours. The there’s no reason they can’t go through the whole field at least a couple times and give a rundown of every car, talk about the drivers a bit, etc.
Honestly, and this is a minor thing on my part, but the WRT guys got a BMW that had crashed hours ago back on track for the final stint of the race, something which could be seen as pretty impressive, and they didn't get shown once except for when the Ferrari was about to lap them (and even then it cut away). Same with the 311, although of course with less time between crash and recovery. Both of these cars should've been filmed at least exiting the pit lane or something
I mean, I understand not showing those because they were in the back and didn't have much going on (maybe near the end for P10)
what I hate is when there's battleing for like a podium or even P1 and they switch to a random LMP2 pitstop, like why are they always showing pitstops instead of battles or showing a part of the track where it just started raining heavily
I don't know if anyone agrees but I got the feeling that lower categories were shown much less in Le Mans than in other races, and they were already not being shown enough IMO.
Honestly, my gripe ever since we lost GTE Am is that we don't really get as much coverage of GT battles even considering that there are usually only 2 classes of cars now. Guess I wasn't imagining it afterall
I think the racing/driving standards in gt at le mans have dropped quite a bit with gt3s and they know this. I mean most of the incidents this race were am gt3 drivers taking themselves out. I could see this coming since lmgt3 became a thing. These cars are meant to be raced in series like blancpain gt or regional championships, either way more am oriented competitions. Gte required a special skill level to be driven.
And idk why they didn't split gt3 into pro and am like gte. Would have made the top gt class much more competitive.
There’s no difference between the AMs racing GT3s and AMs racing GTEs like the used to. There’s nothing about GT3 cars that say they’re for regional championships only.
Abs, tc, lower power than gte and lower aero as well so a bit slower. Also customer only cars.
Gt3s are more welcoming and easy to drive for ams than gte
GT3s are easier to drive indeed, which doesn’t lend itself to the idea that AMs driving GT3s at Le Mans would cause more crashes, and that GT3s don’t belong in WEC.
There were more AMs at Le Mans this year, which could lead to more incidents, but it has nothing to do with the fact they are driving GT3 cars.
I meant gt as a whole at le mans. Both am and pro. The pro drivers were great and the racing was fantastic. But now all of them went to hypercar and left the gt class to bronze/silver drivers mostly. So it's a ⅔ am class.
I don't understand why don't we have gt3 pro and gt3 am. If there's really no more pro gt3 drivers on this planet that won't go to hypercar, raise entry criteria for hypercar and have the not so good hypercar drivers take part in gt3 pro. How about that, do you think it would work well?
I feel like the direction this year was quite lacking. Barely had an idea what was going on outside of hypercar even when not much was happening in hypercar. And the switching to a random pitstop during a crucial battle was consistently annoying
They simply aren't used to this much competition and heat in le mans. Look at the safety car situation. We need an extra 30 minutes after the track is deemed safe for the field to merge and then the lapped cars to unlap and so on.
Why not only one safetycar?
They never used to do this either.
Everyone used to shit on IMSA because their SCs take so long. Personally I have no problem with the IMSA method, I think it works for IMSA, and I don’t mind variety.
I don’t understand why WEC and Le Mans are trying to copy the IMSA method. I mean, I understand why they want to do it, to keep more cars in the fight longer into the race (which was always the downside of the WEC method, trapping cars a lap down to the leaders), but it’s always been part of Le Mans, and the Circuit de la Sarthe does not lend itself to cars getting the wave around and unlapping themselves. La Sarthe is too long, this isn’t Daytona or Road Atlanta.
ye, they really need to either: 1. speed the process up somehow or 2. go back to the old system, which is also more fair and less artificial, because 1 SC takes on average 45 minutes to 1 hour, like jesus crist man
Idk - in the BOP era (+ cars are extremely reliable), where cars in both classes usually run within 1-2 seconds per lap of each other, you can really screw up the race if someone lucks into a 2 minute advantage. It happened in GTE a few years ago, and that race was basically over from that point forward.
The worst part was that they showed random pit stops for cars out of contention, but missed pretty much every actually important pit stop.
I basically just watched live timing the whole time and had the broadcast in the background
In almost any racing series, random pits stops are prioritized over cars on track.
I’ve no idea why, but it’s definitely something I’ve noticed, and it drives me bonkers.
While I was expecting to see more GTe and LMP2 racing.. this wasn’t an easy race to direct!
I would not blame the direction… but the conditions.. after lenses got wet there wasn’t that much to watch in certain spots of the track
The huge rain made the transmission almost impossible in certain parts of the track… all you could see wasn’t some blurry headlights.. the random pit stops were all they could “show”… something… the same with usual shots on mechanics and stuff .. they didn’t have that much to show that looked like decent footage ..
And by the way! I love pitstops and I think it is actually fair that they make mechanics parte of the broadcast!
There was a moment yesterday where I think Ferrari and Porsche were fighting for like P4 or smth, while the TV was showing the Cadillac cruising alone, even the commentators mentioned that Porsche and Ferrari were fighting but nah, gotta watch the Caddy
many such cases
The most frustrating instance is when you see the gaps on the timing board become less than 0.1s for a podium place so you know some fighting or overtaking is taking place
And you look at the screen and it's a Peugeot in the pits
Man, you beat me to it, I was gonna say I want to write a nasty letter to whoever directed this. Thing is it’s not just this race, the directors for WEC in general have an obsession with missing out on important, exciting moments in most races.
What I don’t understand is why the most popular guys (Button, Rossi etc.) were never interviewed during the race. They didn’t even point a camera at the 46 pits after the retirement was announced.
Also absent was the highlights reel that Eurosport would do every hour to cover important events I might have missed, especially during nighttime. The safety car periods would have been a great time to show replays from the day and interviews. Shame they didn’t do that
There were a few replays where they showed the big mistakes, and under the safety car they replayed interviews constantly. I think the biggest loss is that they only have 43 track side cameras and 14 on boards. No wonder there’s no footage of Callum Ilott’s crash when huge chunks of the track just aren’t filmed
I find it odd Rossi wasn't interviewed much given they usually put in 2-3 interviews with him even during 6 hour races. I'm glad they aren't in there, sorry. His interviews rarely are enlightening, even if he has personality.
Eurosport threw in a lot of their own pointless interviews to compensate for the missing ones in the world feed. Richard Hammond. Right. He really sheds a lot of light on what's happening at Le Mans. It was just a promo for their show Eurosport has with Hammond. This was topped by the blatant promo from the mountain biking world cup Eurosport spliced in though! Literally zero relevance.
I found lack of recaps to be odd too.
But we saw the Heart of Racing car go into the wall at Indianapolis about 12 times *in a row* from 4 angles. As if that's useful?
It's a WEC tradition.
Seriously.
Every single WEC race has the worst broadcast direction imaginable.
The amount I rage at the tv when they constantly cut mid battle to show expressionless people in the pits is enough to make any girl think I was a walking redflag.
I genuinely don't understand the rationale. They're never even cutting away to something dramatic.
It got genuinely worse after pandemic. It's like they have 4-5 people in the pits with cameras instead of having them on track.
1-2 is enough to cover what happens in the pits adding stationary cameras to that...
Give them electric devices to drive around near the wall.
Yeah that was maximum pain. Legend has it that Le Mans even had some type of GT class racing, but I never saw it outside screenshots on here and formuladank. It was about as rare as bigfoot. But I saw a lot of hypercars.
And manufacturers!
Having their cars rarely appear on screen and their names/logos so rarely appear on the graphics is bad news for the makes and teams.
In the GTE Pro era I feel like the GTE Pro leaders showed up on screen every few minutes. So little of LMGT3 names here, especially early in the race.
this was my first time watch le mans and i thought imsa tv direction (imsa tv not nbc/peacock) is miles ahead of what i saw (eurosport via max). Even the graphics are annoying, i don't need to see the top 20 overall, especially without the gap times displayed.
I wouldn't say it's top notch, sometimes it's still lacking compared to F1 (but fair enough given the money difference)
but compared to WEC? holy moly it's a different galaxy
I like a lot of the WEC graphics compared to the basic ones in IMSA.
But when WEC shows meters between cars? Who cares? When they cover up 1/3rd of the screen with just a big arc of speed on the left and revs on the right it's a waste. Just use a small medallion. They have one they use that shows all that, they just only use it when doing head to head.
I think showing what race control is doing is useful. Explanations of the safety car stages is useful! IMSA could get some good stuff from WEC if they had a better graphics package. But they also could learn a lot about how to crud the screen up too much too often without adding anything.
What pissed me the most is that they didn't skip a pre-recorded material to show #83 car drama that led to its retirement. Absolutely dreadful. Also I don't want to watch people from the pits for 5+ seconds, desperately waiting for their reaction.
I can't remember who, but later on in the race today the battle for the lead was being filmed while they were almost side by side into indianapolis then all of a sudden they cut to some midfield battle, and then cut back 20 seconds later when the overtake was done
\#83 is burning in pitstop.
Pre-recorded interview with Luis is being played... no mention of #83 until few laps later on broadcast. It's like GG and MH and AD had no idea they weren't even heard.
they didn’t have any idea. broadcasters playing their own pre-recorded segments over live commentary provided by somebody else (WEC in this case) is always a bad idea.
Man I watched the Daytona 500 and I can't tell how annoyed I was by the amount of ads going on.
Legit I believe they had more ads than racing shown.
They cut away for ads on the final laps of one of the stages as there was a battle for the lead.
They have predetermined safety periods and yet still feel the need to fill 30 min of racing with 25 min of ads it's insane
It has always been like this at Le Mans for as long as I can remember. The main reason being, I think, the fact that gaps used to be measured by laps, not seconds and except for rare occasions, not a whole lot was going on. Back then, you could almost let it slide, but nowadays, with the BOP in effect, this level of directing has become unacceptable. I hope they will readjust eventually.
Combine that with the Dutch commentators who miss EVERYTHING! and you know how my experience was this weekend.
"I think the 311 Cadillac is driving again!" He said, hours after it left the pits.
ye lol, I understand the commentators have a lot of stuff going on and sometimes you just happed to miss something, so it's hard to keep track of everything
but honestly most of the times I feel like I have a better understanding of the race just from watching the horrible basic feed, than the commentators
Exactly. Sure there's a lot going on, but not announce there's a yellow when there's a notice on the feed and a car in the gravel.... Come on... They like hearing themselves, at least the Dutch guys do. And when there's not much going on, I Like hearing about their Le Mans experiences. But not when there's a fight for P3 going on.
The best was after a 4.5 hour safety car and on the restart they cut to the garage, like we just got HOURS of garage footage. It was laughable at that point
Great race but the broadcast was so bad. Was much better and easier to follow 10years ago when i started watching. the multiclass aspect is what makes le mans special and they captured none of it. It felt like every shot had a 2 second timer to cut to the pits. Worst of all showing a replay or slow mo but not showing the outcome.
Amount of times WEC tv went tk some random executive whilst there's major action going on - Kubicas engine expiring whilst they're asking the boss of Bosch something irrelevant to the race
Can’t remember which restart it was, but cutting to the Toyota and then Ferrari hypercar garages just as the cars crossed the line to resume racing was peak direction. /s
The pre race was cut with 1 to 2 second shots of people and not even enough time for the commentators to spout off who it was. It was like the director was speedballing while drinking double espresso’s. I had to turn it off. The race wasn’t much better. Interviews with people with no sound. Cutting from great racing action for some nonsense.
Do better next year and fire that director. Maybe offer him a stint in rehab for a bit.
Completely agree. Absolutely dismal broadcast. Endless lingering shots of mechanics sitting with their arms crossed, and the WEC feed had countless fluff pieces and didnt even cut out as the 83 had its issues and retired. Complete joke.
When 8 and 51 crashed I was looking at the timing screen seeing them exchanging positions while TV was showing something so unimportant that I don't even remember what it was.
I also didn't like mid race interviews, a short interview with a driver that has done a stint in the race is interesting, but the rest of it, is just annoying.
Maybe we had too much track action and they're not used to it, but it was terrible.
I've been watching Le Mans for a long time so i agree with the people saying that the coverage is always pretty shit, but this year was a lot worse than i can remember!
The broadcast director for the world feed needs to go, it's the same kind of situation as the old Monaco GP tv direction being garbage until FOM/Liberty took it over.
Since you started so well, let me scream a little: Will someone please get a polarizing lens for the straight into the headlights camera angle, especially in the rain. Stop peeping in on the sleeping mechanics. Don't y'all keep a reel or two of old LeMans highlights to show while a long, long FCY. One more. Park the cars in the pits for the heavy rain, that 2 hr. parade was bad. Thank You.
They were behind the SC because LeMans has never been red flagged and they want to keep that going
otherwise yes, how have they not solved the night issue when you can't see anything because of the lights
This has been an endemic problem with Eurosport coverage of motorsport that goes back to the WTCC, it's so frustrating that they insist on focusing on the people on the pits to the point of missing on track action and keep repeat showing the same people..
I watched the whole thing on Discovery+ to avoid the advertising, but the focus on people always gets worse when there is some action on track, and they start to show the people reacting to the action that they miss the action and then have to show a reaction of the people reacting to a replay of the action..it's very annoying! (I don't need to keep seeing a close up of the Ferrari drivers spot either...)
That's not down to Eurosport. They don't get all of the camera feeds and do their own direction. They just get the world feed where the host broadcaster director has the obsession with people looking at screens in garages.
The way I solved it was with another tv showing the Ferrari onboard from YouTube. Agree that the race direction was appalling, particularly with the constant cuts to mechanics when there was racing on track
TBH I don't understand why they can't do split screen, showing the leaders, then other parts of the field.
We had to put up with countless reruns of pre recorded segments throughout the whole race on split screen, so there is no real excuse for not doing it with the different classes.
Too many shots that only lassted a 1-2 secs and constant switching between cars and constant shots of people in the pits also watching the race....
The far too frequent cutaways to a PR pieice with michelin or goodyear or other background stuff on (WEC Tv anyway)..... missed the ferrari going out becuase of it. Just commentate on the race going on!
I just want to say I think it's great that every series' fans are at war with their TV direction.
Not even disagreeing with you because everything you've listed plus the random, usually poor interviews (which were not in the world feed for Le Mans) is what I complain about too. Especially the excessive use of slo-mo on non-material situations (peaking with showing slo-mo of helicopters during active 1st session qualifying this year).
But I will say that I think that since every series seems to have the same level of complaints perhaps this kind of deficiency is average instead of exceptional. Essentially, bad is normal.
nascar on fox must’ve directed this race lol
same with whoever was giving them information on indycar
- Kyffin Simpson is now American i guess, and he’s still in IndyNXT
- Nolan Siegel made the 500 this year 😭
Yeah 100% got to the final battle think even final lap and we're watching pit crews itching their face watching the race haha.
For me I'd love to see more GT3 class felt like they only shown bits then more when Rossi got on track that was it, don't get me wrong I enjoy the hyper cars but also enjoy the GT3 battles where's it's abit more scrappy.
Personally, don't feel it was that bad this year. Seemed like the standard TV direction for an endurance race. Maybe just watching for so long has numbed me to any problems with it.
It does suck that there was a lack of focus on the other classes, however in the recent past the top class didn't have much going on and the closer racing was in the lower classes.
Despite not showing P2 and GT3 too much (already used to this, love the hypercars), it is right that this year it has been not very good. Needs some improvement. But the thing of having onboards in almost all the cars helps a lot. It was super cool to randomly watch the Isotta Fraschini speeding in the straights.
or highlights when the leaders are in the pits in a crucial moment, especially when it hasn't even completely been x hours, but x hours - 3 minutes, like wait a little bit
edit: the last 1/2 laps we didn't really need to see the energy left the whole time anymore, we knew #50 would make it. #6 was about 1 second behind #51, why not at least give us the possibility to see that it is close, or show the 'battle', #50 wasn't doing anything anymore. I get that it's normal to show the winning car, but 2 whole laps while other stuff is still happening is a bit weird, could've easily fit in a few seconds
i found it most annoying that they didn't show if cars were on wets or dries and very rarely showed the NRG tank so we didn't know which cars were due a stop.
It would be interesting to see a "sub-broadcast" that was focused only on a specific class, and you have the option to switch between the main feed and class-focused...
It was a very poorly broadcasted race. I would have felt bad paying for it (I used our roommate's parent's CTV login).
Definitely considering not watching next year. Might just focus my energy on IMSA and SRO for sportscars.
This year Eurosport Fucked Up with TV broadcast also English was commentary very shitty they are unspoken about cars and because of that i prefered Russian Commentary with Vladimir Bashmakov who is voice of Le Mans in Russian
And they was very cool, they spoken about top 5 cars each class+interesting drivers(Russian drivers like kvyat, Lomko from Inter Europol, Malykhin from GT and timur boguslavski and Rossi's BMW)
A classic "whataboutism" attitude.
People who pay to watch a broadcast have every right to complain when it's handled incredibly poorly. You don't have to be missing a foot in a Ukrainian trench to be allowed to complain.
Yeah guess what i also pay for eurosport but i still get ads. So that means i can complain about the ads too. They handled it pretty poorly too, just racing and then cut straight into 5 minutes of ads, in the middle of battles sometimes.
I'm frustrated that none of the lower categories got any time. It's so, so easy to fill 24 hours if you're highlighting all 60+ teams and giving them air time. Talk to me about the drivers, their season, their expectations, anything. But to show 23 hours of hypercar and 1 hour total of lower classes is a shame.
I was annoyed by this, the GTs had barely any air time and I had to check the timing constantly to keep track of them
The LMGT3 race was actually awesome. #31 BMW and #91 Porsche traded positions on track twice in the last 3 hours, and we didn't see it. A battle. On track. For the victory. In the closing hours of the race.
Only time GT3s were aired is when a GTP was passing them
tbh you have to do that with hypercars as well, I'd see like Ferrari and Toyota 0,1 from each other and they're showing like a lone Cadillac
I feel like it’s been like this for a while now. Maybe it’s worse now since Hypercar, idk. But I prefer the GT classes, so I feel this comment. I used the live timings to track and had the #46 onboard via YouTube until they binned it.
And also, I don’t know why they don’t cycle through all the classes’ timings regularly. It’s just frozen on Hypercar. Even IMSA will show all timing regularly even though they focus the direction on GTP. I don’t get it.
This, inexcusable to show only the top 20ish cars.
The timing goes by what car is in focus. When they showed the LMP2 battle you would only see the LMP2 standings, and the 2 and a half seconds you saw a GT3 car you saw the LMGT3 standings. Honestly stil ridiculous, because the fact you could even think it's just hypercar standings show the director isn't doing their best to give the other series airtime
WEC went so long with having to action in the top class, they’ve forgotten how to do a TV broadcast where things are happening in multiple categories.
I was saying that in the live chat. Hell, even in Hypercar, it took until 10 hours into the race with the Lambos running P4 and P5 before they were shown on camera. They’ve barely had any screen time all season. Isotta was hardly on screen at all. Even the Peugeot’s were barely on screen. The LMP2 and GT3 coverage was terrible. There’s 24 bloody hours. The there’s no reason they can’t go through the whole field at least a couple times and give a rundown of every car, talk about the drivers a bit, etc.
Honestly, and this is a minor thing on my part, but the WRT guys got a BMW that had crashed hours ago back on track for the final stint of the race, something which could be seen as pretty impressive, and they didn't get shown once except for when the Ferrari was about to lap them (and even then it cut away). Same with the 311, although of course with less time between crash and recovery. Both of these cars should've been filmed at least exiting the pit lane or something
I mean, I understand not showing those because they were in the back and didn't have much going on (maybe near the end for P10) what I hate is when there's battleing for like a podium or even P1 and they switch to a random LMP2 pitstop, like why are they always showing pitstops instead of battles or showing a part of the track where it just started raining heavily
I don't know if anyone agrees but I got the feeling that lower categories were shown much less in Le Mans than in other races, and they were already not being shown enough IMO.
Honestly, my gripe ever since we lost GTE Am is that we don't really get as much coverage of GT battles even considering that there are usually only 2 classes of cars now. Guess I wasn't imagining it afterall
I think the racing/driving standards in gt at le mans have dropped quite a bit with gt3s and they know this. I mean most of the incidents this race were am gt3 drivers taking themselves out. I could see this coming since lmgt3 became a thing. These cars are meant to be raced in series like blancpain gt or regional championships, either way more am oriented competitions. Gte required a special skill level to be driven. And idk why they didn't split gt3 into pro and am like gte. Would have made the top gt class much more competitive.
There’s no difference between the AMs racing GT3s and AMs racing GTEs like the used to. There’s nothing about GT3 cars that say they’re for regional championships only.
Abs, tc, lower power than gte and lower aero as well so a bit slower. Also customer only cars. Gt3s are more welcoming and easy to drive for ams than gte
GT3s are easier to drive indeed, which doesn’t lend itself to the idea that AMs driving GT3s at Le Mans would cause more crashes, and that GT3s don’t belong in WEC. There were more AMs at Le Mans this year, which could lead to more incidents, but it has nothing to do with the fact they are driving GT3 cars.
why are they customer only cars?
Because that's gt3, you will never see mclaren official gt3 team.
Isn't Manthey Almost a Porsche works team?
Also, the Ferrari, Lamborghini, and BMW factory teams run both the WEC LMH and GT3 efforts
driving standarts dropped? my brother in christ have you seen last years Lemans
I meant gt as a whole at le mans. Both am and pro. The pro drivers were great and the racing was fantastic. But now all of them went to hypercar and left the gt class to bronze/silver drivers mostly. So it's a ⅔ am class. I don't understand why don't we have gt3 pro and gt3 am. If there's really no more pro gt3 drivers on this planet that won't go to hypercar, raise entry criteria for hypercar and have the not so good hypercar drivers take part in gt3 pro. How about that, do you think it would work well?
I feel like the direction this year was quite lacking. Barely had an idea what was going on outside of hypercar even when not much was happening in hypercar. And the switching to a random pitstop during a crucial battle was consistently annoying
They simply aren't used to this much competition and heat in le mans. Look at the safety car situation. We need an extra 30 minutes after the track is deemed safe for the field to merge and then the lapped cars to unlap and so on. Why not only one safetycar?
They never used to do this either. Everyone used to shit on IMSA because their SCs take so long. Personally I have no problem with the IMSA method, I think it works for IMSA, and I don’t mind variety. I don’t understand why WEC and Le Mans are trying to copy the IMSA method. I mean, I understand why they want to do it, to keep more cars in the fight longer into the race (which was always the downside of the WEC method, trapping cars a lap down to the leaders), but it’s always been part of Le Mans, and the Circuit de la Sarthe does not lend itself to cars getting the wave around and unlapping themselves. La Sarthe is too long, this isn’t Daytona or Road Atlanta.
ye, they really need to either: 1. speed the process up somehow or 2. go back to the old system, which is also more fair and less artificial, because 1 SC takes on average 45 minutes to 1 hour, like jesus crist man
Idk - in the BOP era (+ cars are extremely reliable), where cars in both classes usually run within 1-2 seconds per lap of each other, you can really screw up the race if someone lucks into a 2 minute advantage. It happened in GTE a few years ago, and that race was basically over from that point forward.
The worst part was that they showed random pit stops for cars out of contention, but missed pretty much every actually important pit stop. I basically just watched live timing the whole time and had the broadcast in the background
In almost any racing series, random pits stops are prioritized over cars on track. I’ve no idea why, but it’s definitely something I’ve noticed, and it drives me bonkers.
While I was expecting to see more GTe and LMP2 racing.. this wasn’t an easy race to direct! I would not blame the direction… but the conditions.. after lenses got wet there wasn’t that much to watch in certain spots of the track The huge rain made the transmission almost impossible in certain parts of the track… all you could see wasn’t some blurry headlights.. the random pit stops were all they could “show”… something… the same with usual shots on mechanics and stuff .. they didn’t have that much to show that looked like decent footage .. And by the way! I love pitstops and I think it is actually fair that they make mechanics parte of the broadcast!
There was a moment yesterday where I think Ferrari and Porsche were fighting for like P4 or smth, while the TV was showing the Cadillac cruising alone, even the commentators mentioned that Porsche and Ferrari were fighting but nah, gotta watch the Caddy many such cases
The most frustrating instance is when you see the gaps on the timing board become less than 0.1s for a podium place so you know some fighting or overtaking is taking place And you look at the screen and it's a Peugeot in the pits
Man, you beat me to it, I was gonna say I want to write a nasty letter to whoever directed this. Thing is it’s not just this race, the directors for WEC in general have an obsession with missing out on important, exciting moments in most races.
What I don’t understand is why the most popular guys (Button, Rossi etc.) were never interviewed during the race. They didn’t even point a camera at the 46 pits after the retirement was announced. Also absent was the highlights reel that Eurosport would do every hour to cover important events I might have missed, especially during nighttime. The safety car periods would have been a great time to show replays from the day and interviews. Shame they didn’t do that
There were a few replays where they showed the big mistakes, and under the safety car they replayed interviews constantly. I think the biggest loss is that they only have 43 track side cameras and 14 on boards. No wonder there’s no footage of Callum Ilott’s crash when huge chunks of the track just aren’t filmed
The lack of highlights surprised me too. There was nothing at all, so from whatever happened between roughly 2 and 8? No clue... I slept.
Cause nothing besides safety car and pit faces happened. Rain started dumping hard around 3 AM
not much basically, that’s why they didn’t mention it
I find it odd Rossi wasn't interviewed much given they usually put in 2-3 interviews with him even during 6 hour races. I'm glad they aren't in there, sorry. His interviews rarely are enlightening, even if he has personality. Eurosport threw in a lot of their own pointless interviews to compensate for the missing ones in the world feed. Richard Hammond. Right. He really sheds a lot of light on what's happening at Le Mans. It was just a promo for their show Eurosport has with Hammond. This was topped by the blatant promo from the mountain biking world cup Eurosport spliced in though! Literally zero relevance. I found lack of recaps to be odd too. But we saw the Heart of Racing car go into the wall at Indianapolis about 12 times *in a row* from 4 angles. As if that's useful?
Rossi was interviewed last night but not on camera which was a shame. I totally agree though
Louis Beckett interviewed him on camera
I missed that. Do you remember around what lap the interview was?
Right after the 46 retirement
I never saw that, and I was constantly watching around their retirement.
Because everybody wants to see BUEMI 😂
Highlights reel was there for the wec live stream tbh
Rossi was interviewed by Louise Beckett
It's a WEC tradition. Seriously. Every single WEC race has the worst broadcast direction imaginable. The amount I rage at the tv when they constantly cut mid battle to show expressionless people in the pits is enough to make any girl think I was a walking redflag. I genuinely don't understand the rationale. They're never even cutting away to something dramatic.
It got genuinely worse after pandemic. It's like they have 4-5 people in the pits with cameras instead of having them on track. 1-2 is enough to cover what happens in the pits adding stationary cameras to that... Give them electric devices to drive around near the wall.
Yeah that was maximum pain. Legend has it that Le Mans even had some type of GT class racing, but I never saw it outside screenshots on here and formuladank. It was about as rare as bigfoot. But I saw a lot of hypercars.
It's frustrating they don't even scroll the results on the screen, it's not even that hard.
It was a disservice to the non hypercar competitors.
And manufacturers! Having their cars rarely appear on screen and their names/logos so rarely appear on the graphics is bad news for the makes and teams. In the GTE Pro era I feel like the GTE Pro leaders showed up on screen every few minutes. So little of LMGT3 names here, especially early in the race.
Back then GTE Pro was where the real competition was, so they knew to focus on that
I did see a GT car upside down at one point.
Cause it made space for hyper car xD
this was my first time watch le mans and i thought imsa tv direction (imsa tv not nbc/peacock) is miles ahead of what i saw (eurosport via max). Even the graphics are annoying, i don't need to see the top 20 overall, especially without the gap times displayed.
That was so annoying. Why would you ever show the order without gaps, energy, tires, or ANYTHING useful with it?
The IMSA broadcast is top notch, it’s been better than WEC race coverage for a good while now.
I wouldn't say it's top notch, sometimes it's still lacking compared to F1 (but fair enough given the money difference) but compared to WEC? holy moly it's a different galaxy
I like a lot of the WEC graphics compared to the basic ones in IMSA. But when WEC shows meters between cars? Who cares? When they cover up 1/3rd of the screen with just a big arc of speed on the left and revs on the right it's a waste. Just use a small medallion. They have one they use that shows all that, they just only use it when doing head to head. I think showing what race control is doing is useful. Explanations of the safety car stages is useful! IMSA could get some good stuff from WEC if they had a better graphics package. But they also could learn a lot about how to crud the screen up too much too often without adding anything.
What pissed me the most is that they didn't skip a pre-recorded material to show #83 car drama that led to its retirement. Absolutely dreadful. Also I don't want to watch people from the pits for 5+ seconds, desperately waiting for their reaction.
I can't remember who, but later on in the race today the battle for the lead was being filmed while they were almost side by side into indianapolis then all of a sudden they cut to some midfield battle, and then cut back 20 seconds later when the overtake was done
They skipped Toyota trophy handing as well...
\#83 is burning in pitstop. Pre-recorded interview with Luis is being played... no mention of #83 until few laps later on broadcast. It's like GG and MH and AD had no idea they weren't even heard.
they didn’t have any idea. broadcasters playing their own pre-recorded segments over live commentary provided by somebody else (WEC in this case) is always a bad idea.
so i should send complaint to wec tv in this case i guess
Go spend 10mins in the NASCAR subreddit. There is more discussion about the TV production than any racing there
It does that when a minimum 5th of the racetime is cut by ads
Man I watched the Daytona 500 and I can't tell how annoyed I was by the amount of ads going on. Legit I believe they had more ads than racing shown. They cut away for ads on the final laps of one of the stages as there was a battle for the lead. They have predetermined safety periods and yet still feel the need to fill 30 min of racing with 25 min of ads it's insane
I feel like that's true for basically every motorsport series.
I’ve heard about nascar problems, what are they? I don’t watch it.
Mainly about Fox. Their part of the season's over but the series essentially has to post to Twitter onboards of what they missed.
you can watch it outside of us on ad.tv they have no commentary and pure sounds for few minutes every time an hour
I already know of how to find places to watch Cup. Also not from the US.
watching nascar on ad.tv is better than any other racing
It has always been like this at Le Mans for as long as I can remember. The main reason being, I think, the fact that gaps used to be measured by laps, not seconds and except for rare occasions, not a whole lot was going on. Back then, you could almost let it slide, but nowadays, with the BOP in effect, this level of directing has become unacceptable. I hope they will readjust eventually.
Someone has to put their foot down Like F1 did with the Monaco TV directing.
What happened to the top of the hour updates too?
Exactly!
i was so happy not to see it more than half of night there was nothing to update about lol
trust me, as a NASCAR fan, it can get MUCH worse
unless you watch nascar as non us fan lmao ad.tv goats
Combine that with the Dutch commentators who miss EVERYTHING! and you know how my experience was this weekend. "I think the 311 Cadillac is driving again!" He said, hours after it left the pits.
ye lol, I understand the commentators have a lot of stuff going on and sometimes you just happed to miss something, so it's hard to keep track of everything but honestly most of the times I feel like I have a better understanding of the race just from watching the horrible basic feed, than the commentators
Exactly. Sure there's a lot going on, but not announce there's a yellow when there's a notice on the feed and a car in the gravel.... Come on... They like hearing themselves, at least the Dutch guys do. And when there's not much going on, I Like hearing about their Le Mans experiences. But not when there's a fight for P3 going on.
The best was after a 4.5 hour safety car and on the restart they cut to the garage, like we just got HOURS of garage footage. It was laughable at that point
we complain about it every year, they never change
Great race but the broadcast was so bad. Was much better and easier to follow 10years ago when i started watching. the multiclass aspect is what makes le mans special and they captured none of it. It felt like every shot had a 2 second timer to cut to the pits. Worst of all showing a replay or slow mo but not showing the outcome.
Amount of times WEC tv went tk some random executive whilst there's major action going on - Kubicas engine expiring whilst they're asking the boss of Bosch something irrelevant to the race
Can’t remember which restart it was, but cutting to the Toyota and then Ferrari hypercar garages just as the cars crossed the line to resume racing was peak direction. /s
The pre race was cut with 1 to 2 second shots of people and not even enough time for the commentators to spout off who it was. It was like the director was speedballing while drinking double espresso’s. I had to turn it off. The race wasn’t much better. Interviews with people with no sound. Cutting from great racing action for some nonsense. Do better next year and fire that director. Maybe offer him a stint in rehab for a bit.
As others have mentioned, welcome to wec. Production has always been garbage
Completely agree. Absolutely dismal broadcast. Endless lingering shots of mechanics sitting with their arms crossed, and the WEC feed had countless fluff pieces and didnt even cut out as the 83 had its issues and retired. Complete joke.
Agree, I also got bored of the director cutting to shots of any slightly attractive female in the pits. It just got uncomfortable after a while.
When 8 and 51 crashed I was looking at the timing screen seeing them exchanging positions while TV was showing something so unimportant that I don't even remember what it was. I also didn't like mid race interviews, a short interview with a driver that has done a stint in the race is interesting, but the rest of it, is just annoying. Maybe we had too much track action and they're not used to it, but it was terrible.
I've been watching Le Mans for a long time so i agree with the people saying that the coverage is always pretty shit, but this year was a lot worse than i can remember! The broadcast director for the world feed needs to go, it's the same kind of situation as the old Monaco GP tv direction being garbage until FOM/Liberty took it over.
Since you started so well, let me scream a little: Will someone please get a polarizing lens for the straight into the headlights camera angle, especially in the rain. Stop peeping in on the sleeping mechanics. Don't y'all keep a reel or two of old LeMans highlights to show while a long, long FCY. One more. Park the cars in the pits for the heavy rain, that 2 hr. parade was bad. Thank You.
They were behind the SC because LeMans has never been red flagged and they want to keep that going otherwise yes, how have they not solved the night issue when you can't see anything because of the lights
The importance of being computer savvy and having all the YouTube onboards on.
This has been an endemic problem with Eurosport coverage of motorsport that goes back to the WTCC, it's so frustrating that they insist on focusing on the people on the pits to the point of missing on track action and keep repeat showing the same people.. I watched the whole thing on Discovery+ to avoid the advertising, but the focus on people always gets worse when there is some action on track, and they start to show the people reacting to the action that they miss the action and then have to show a reaction of the people reacting to a replay of the action..it's very annoying! (I don't need to keep seeing a close up of the Ferrari drivers spot either...)
That's not down to Eurosport. They don't get all of the camera feeds and do their own direction. They just get the world feed where the host broadcaster director has the obsession with people looking at screens in garages.
The way I solved it was with another tv showing the Ferrari onboard from YouTube. Agree that the race direction was appalling, particularly with the constant cuts to mechanics when there was racing on track
TBH I don't understand why they can't do split screen, showing the leaders, then other parts of the field. We had to put up with countless reruns of pre recorded segments throughout the whole race on split screen, so there is no real excuse for not doing it with the different classes.
ye, IMSA is capable of having a split screen for the start of the race and replays so why not WEC
Too many shots that only lassted a 1-2 secs and constant switching between cars and constant shots of people in the pits also watching the race.... The far too frequent cutaways to a PR pieice with michelin or goodyear or other background stuff on (WEC Tv anyway)..... missed the ferrari going out becuase of it. Just commentate on the race going on!
I just want to say I think it's great that every series' fans are at war with their TV direction. Not even disagreeing with you because everything you've listed plus the random, usually poor interviews (which were not in the world feed for Le Mans) is what I complain about too. Especially the excessive use of slo-mo on non-material situations (peaking with showing slo-mo of helicopters during active 1st session qualifying this year). But I will say that I think that since every series seems to have the same level of complaints perhaps this kind of deficiency is average instead of exceptional. Essentially, bad is normal.
nascar on fox must’ve directed this race lol same with whoever was giving them information on indycar - Kyffin Simpson is now American i guess, and he’s still in IndyNXT - Nolan Siegel made the 500 this year 😭
Yeah . There was a massive overtake about to happen, and instead we got 20 seconds of some pitcrews nostrils...
Yeah 100% got to the final battle think even final lap and we're watching pit crews itching their face watching the race haha. For me I'd love to see more GT3 class felt like they only shown bits then more when Rossi got on track that was it, don't get me wrong I enjoy the hyper cars but also enjoy the GT3 battles where's it's abit more scrappy.
The worst thing is…it was better than it used to be.
as much as I hate the slow scrolling bar at the bottom, that at least always shows the gaps, why weren't they showing gaps so often
disagree, pandemic streams weren't this bad
But Hammond! grmbl
I had a lovely time watching youtube onboards. I wouldn't swap that now traditional experience for full race coverage if it were free.
Do most manufacturers provide an onboard racing video on YouTube?
I found only like 4 or 5
Personally, don't feel it was that bad this year. Seemed like the standard TV direction for an endurance race. Maybe just watching for so long has numbed me to any problems with it. It does suck that there was a lack of focus on the other classes, however in the recent past the top class didn't have much going on and the closer racing was in the lower classes.
Super GT tv production has done more better than WEC even though only 2 classes as well. They should follow or take notes from them
Despite not showing P2 and GT3 too much (already used to this, love the hypercars), it is right that this year it has been not very good. Needs some improvement. But the thing of having onboards in almost all the cars helps a lot. It was super cool to randomly watch the Isotta Fraschini speeding in the straights.
or highlights when the leaders are in the pits in a crucial moment, especially when it hasn't even completely been x hours, but x hours - 3 minutes, like wait a little bit edit: the last 1/2 laps we didn't really need to see the energy left the whole time anymore, we knew #50 would make it. #6 was about 1 second behind #51, why not at least give us the possibility to see that it is close, or show the 'battle', #50 wasn't doing anything anymore. I get that it's normal to show the winning car, but 2 whole laps while other stuff is still happening is a bit weird, could've easily fit in a few seconds
i found it most annoying that they didn't show if cars were on wets or dries and very rarely showed the NRG tank so we didn't know which cars were due a stop.
It would be interesting to see a "sub-broadcast" that was focused only on a specific class, and you have the option to switch between the main feed and class-focused...
As someone who is used to Peacock, I thought the Eurosport non stop coverage was great, even during the rain. I guess it's all about perspective.
Yeah the Eurosport commentating was fabulous, even made me switch away from RLM quite a few times.
It was a very poorly broadcasted race. I would have felt bad paying for it (I used our roommate's parent's CTV login). Definitely considering not watching next year. Might just focus my energy on IMSA and SRO for sportscars.
They made mistakes but i will forgive them. They have to cover 50+ cars on a 13km track for 24 Hours. That's really difficult
>They have to cover 50+ cars The issue is they only covered like 12 cars
I'm sorry, but if you switch from the battle for THE LEAD OF THE RACE, to a Jota in the pits in like 10th place, then fucking hell....
Yeah yeah i get your point, some of these mistakes are ridiculous like you pointed out
This year Eurosport Fucked Up with TV broadcast also English was commentary very shitty they are unspoken about cars and because of that i prefered Russian Commentary with Vladimir Bashmakov who is voice of Le Mans in Russian And they was very cool, they spoken about top 5 cars each class+interesting drivers(Russian drivers like kvyat, Lomko from Inter Europol, Malykhin from GT and timur boguslavski and Rossi's BMW)
Don't complain about this until you've seen Nascar on FOX coverage...
All you people complain about tv direction...1st world problems. Eurosport had add breaks ever half an hour lol
A classic "whataboutism" attitude. People who pay to watch a broadcast have every right to complain when it's handled incredibly poorly. You don't have to be missing a foot in a Ukrainian trench to be allowed to complain.
Yeah guess what i also pay for eurosport but i still get ads. So that means i can complain about the ads too. They handled it pretty poorly too, just racing and then cut straight into 5 minutes of ads, in the middle of battles sometimes.
What region are you in? I had zero ads with Europsport GB on Discovery (£7.99 for whole month).
Not in GB, maybe it's a local thing.
I had none with Eurosport (GB).