Racing ahead: Inside F1's 2023 broadcast plans with director of broadcast and media Dean Locke By George Bevir
Friday, February 24, 2023 - 10:21
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From more helmet cams to an overhauled remote production centre, the upcoming F1 season promises a raft of innovations. F1 director of broadcast and media Dean Locke provides an in-depth update on what's in store in 2023, including preparations for the Las Vegas Grand Prix.
When the first race of the 2023 Formula 1 season gets underway in Bahrain on Sunday 5 March, it will mark the beginning of what is likely to be another bumper year for the sport, with the largest ever round of races, a glitzy new weekend of action in Las Vegas and six Sprint races (up from three last year).
Racing at Silverstone last season
It's fair to say that the popularity of F1 is on the rise as well, with the 2022 F1 World Championship season the most-viewed ever on US television, with an average of 1.21 million viewers per race, up 28% on the previous record set in 2021, according to ESPN.
That increase in viewership is attributed at least in part to Drive to Survive, with season five of the Netflix fly-on-the-wall series debuting today (and season 6 in the pipeline). There is also an F1 movie directed by Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski and starring Brad Pitt in the works and set to film over the course of this season at F1 races, all of which is likely to further boost interest in the motorsport.
It is always incredibly difficult to get anything on a F1 car, no matter what it weighs, or what the power or the heat is.
With more racing, growing audiences and an increased thirst for content, it's fair to say that F1 director of broadcast and media Dean Locke and his team have been busy since the fall of the chequered flag in Abu Dhabi in November. The 2022 season ended a few weeks earlier than the 2021 Championship due to the World Cup, but that didn't mean a few weeks of downtime.
I think everybody thought that that would mean we'd have a fairly quiet December, but it was the complete opposite, says Locke. But we're up to the challenge. And it's not just F1; there are more races in F2 and F3, so people are always busy. And I think that's why I'm particularly proud; we don't just say, here you go, here are three new things,' and then not do anything new for the rest of the year. The rollouts are throughout the season at every single race.
Locke has the challenge of overseeing a continuous cycle of innovation in the way content is captured and presented on viewers' screens throughout the year, but one of the most significant changes this season is unlikely to be noticed by viewers. Between the end of last season and the start of 2023, there has been an upgrade to the F1 Media and Technology Centre at Biggin Hill, which is some 20-miles southeast of London.
We've completely converted the building now to be a remote centre, says Locke. The broadcast centre we had in Australia in 2020 was brought back here to Biggin Hill, and since then operated in the same way apart from it was in the hangar in Biggin Hill and wasn't a permanent structure, but we've done things like move the renderers and servers away from the operational positions.
We started that at 6am after Abu Dhabi (the final race of the 2022 season). Kit was ripped out of containers and then put into permanent workspaces and a permanent CAR room. That's been going on all winter, and it's now ready and we've had test signals coming back from Bahrain.
One of the main benefits has been an improvement in the working environment, but it is also part of F1's sustainability initiative. At each race, an Event Technical Centre (pictured, below) is deployed onsite and acquires content, data and feeds which are sent back to Biggin Hill. That operation will continue to be used, but over time Locke expects the remote setup to result in fewer people and less kit as F1 works towards its plan to be net zero carbon by 2030.
Speaking from F1's Biggin Hill base, Locke says: This is more of a dedicated site now. It's a much better environment, with more capability to do more - it enables us to do a lot more of the handover and the hefty, heavy lifting.
We also have a bit of an IP transition, like a lot of people in the industry. So part of the build at Biggin Hill was to facilitate over the next two to three years a big IP transition, and that will open up opportunities. Also, as we reach end of life on some of that kit, it raises the question of how we move that over to IP as well. One of the main things was to get all the fibre infrastructure into this building, and into the new CAR. And now we have to look at a roadmap for replacing some of that kit.
At each of the 23 locations around the world that will host races this season, the broadcast and media team's focus is on the acquisition of data, pictures, audio, along with some mixing of pictures. The main curation and production of the world feed and additional content for rights holders, as well as the F1 TV streaming services, is completed on race weekends at Biggin Hill where the main director and producers are based.
The build of a new full AR, dedicated studio for use by the F1 TV team, sponsors and broadcasters will see more content created at the Biggin Hill site. The majority of the commentary is done here at Biggin Hill now, so we have dedicated commentary booths. We like to keep commentators on site some of the time, because they like to be there. But we will host various broadcasters' commentary here as well, potentially. And a couple of couple of the broadcasters want to do shows here from [the new studio], because it supports their sustainability aims as well, says Locke.
More helmet cams
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Racing ahead: Inside F1's 2023 broadcast plans with director of broadcast and media Dean Locke By George Bevir 
