Thursday 30 September 2010

F1 driver tracker to continue

Following the success of its introduction at the British Grand Prix, BBC Sport has decided to continue with the new Formula 1 driver tracker feature.

This device allows you to see the location of all cars on the track during the race and we think it provides a neat complement to the rest of our coverage.

The best use of it is probably in addition to the TV output as a way to better understand the race - and the feedback we received after Silverstone was generally really positive, with many of you explaining how it had helped your appreciation of the action on the track.

It is particularly useful, for example, during the pit-stop period, when you can follow easily whether a driver has emerged from the pits ahead of or behind the rival he was racing before his stop - something that is not always picked up by the TV director.

As at Silverstone, the driver tracker - which is provided by Formula 1 Management (FOM) - will be added to our live video module on Sunday.

I know a few of you had difficulties finding it over the Silverstone weekend, and that there was some confusion about when it would be available. Sorry about that. In the interests of absolute clarity, this is what you need to know:

It is a video feed and it will appear in the live video module at the top of our live page covering the German Grand Prix. (This is the page that will be headlined "Live - German Grand Prix" and that is first published on the homepage of the BBC Sport site (www.bbc.co.uk/sport) and F1 (www.bbc.co.uk/f1) about 90 minutes before the start of the race.)

But of course the driver tracker only goes live when the cars are on the track, so it will be available only from the start of the race at 1300 BST.

It will be the first option after the main F1 video - which means you will need to click on the link that says "driver tracker". This will be found in the carousel directly below the main video image. It will appear in the middle of the three options that are visible at the default setting - you can scroll to show the other options, which are the in-car camera channel, alternative commentary streams and rolling highlights.

And just to be clear, the tracker will not be available for practice and qualifying on Friday and Saturday.

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A short video of the F1 driver tracker, which will be available during the German Grand Prix on Sunday

For those of you not familiar with it, the driver-tracker option features a top-down circuit map, on which the drivers are identified by colour-coded shapes bearing their standard FOM three-letter abbreviation (ALO, for Fernando Alonso; HAM, for Lewis Hamilton; BUT for Jenson Button etc). These identifiers move around the track as the cars do, allowing viewers to track the progress of the drivers and the visual gaps between them.

As I say, the graphics, abbreviations and other features of the tracker are all developed by FOM themselves - but we're really pleased we've been able to include it as part of our overall F1 package.

We hope you enjoy it - and please do let us know what you think.

Giacinto Facchetti Raymond Kopa Matthias Sammer Alan Hansen

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