With respect, situations like this place EVERYONE in the heat of the moment. Cameramen, officials and, yes, commentators. We can only say what comes into our minds instinctively and go from there – it’s what we are paid to do. When watching this shot happen live at Sandown the first thing we see is a F3 car flying towards our camera operator – so of course the first thing we’re going to mention is how close that was.

We could not see the officials in the shot on the small TV we had in the commentary box at Sandown.

If you had been listening to the remainder of the call live that weekend you will have noted that we – on several occasions – noted the flaggies present and the excellent response that they provided in this situation. In fact, as a commentary team we discussed off-air the need to make sure we acknowledged the marshals and their efforts as often as we could. Certainly there were plenty of opportunities to do just that over the weekend with all the accidents.

I have close friends racing in many of these categories so I am the first to ensure that the people looking after them are noted and thanked.

I appreciate your message and your feelings, but don’t take this one piece of ‘in the moment’ commentary as the whole story about what was said.

Hope you and everyone else on your team enjoyed the weekend – it certainly was one of the more dramatic we have had the pleasure of calling.

Cheers,

Richard Craill
Commentator,
Shannons Nationals – SBS Speedweek