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The best of the best – Part two
5 months ago
18-year-old Max Verstappen on his way to a famous first victory
As soon as the race was over, instead of going to talk to the team bosses I opted to grab a word with Jos as we walked to the podium. The Dutchman is a notoriously hard man but he was rendered almost speechless; he had tears in his eyes as he tried to recall what his son had just achieved. I also remember sticking my head into the Red Bull motorhome for a coffee later and it happened to be as Daniel and Daniil both walked in. They gave each other a look across the motorhome and shook their heads. No words exchanged but both knew that, from that moment, there was a new top dog at Red Bull.
4. 2020 Bahrain Grand Prix
We are lucky we live in an age where it’s rare you genuinely fear for a driver’s life but as I watched with Simon Lazenby and Damon Hill as Romain Grosjean’s car exploded into a ball of flames, all three of us immediately feared the worst. I’d known Romain for a long time by then – we’d raced together in GP2 in 2008 and 2009 and generally got on well. My first thought was ‘where the hell is the car?’ because the pictures didn’t show him bounce back onto the track, which is what I would have expected to see at that location. My next thought was ‘poor Marion and the kids’ because the tower of flames were so high I really thought he’d have no chance of escaping them.
The remarkable will power he showed to extricate himself combined with the halo and incredible safety standards of race suits and helmets meant that as little as a minute later word came through from the F1 cameraman filming at the corner that Romain was out of the car. Rightly, the F1 television directors always move to something else when we have a large accident until we know the driver is safe. Soon after we’d been told he was out, the images started to filter through of medical car driver Alan van der Merwe and F1 medic Dr Ian Roberts along with the marshals dragging Romain to safety. Even today, it’s jaw-dropping to think he got away with it considering he went right through a barrier, split the car in half and spent some considerable time sitting in that inferno, initially unable to get out.
I remember the smell just wafting through the paddock and lingering for some time afterwards. Ayao Komatsu, Haas Chief Race Engineer at the time, now elevated of course to team principal, came running up to me: ‘Do you know where the medical centre is? I need to see him before he goes to hospital,’ he said. I steered him in the right direction and we were all relieved to hear the next day that smoke inhalation had not done any major harm. It’s certainly one of the most memorable days of my broadcasting career, and one I’d be absolutely delighted never to have to experience again.
"It refreshed just as Lewis crossed the line, so I got to announce it was Lewis who had just won his first title, not Felipe"
3. 2008 Brazilian Grand Prix
The 2008 Brazilian Grand Prix is the most dramatic conclusion to an F1 championship in history. Lewis Hamilton and Felipe Massa were battling for the title which changed hands at the final corner of the final lap of the final race. Those scenes of joy and celebration in the Ferrari pit which quickly turned to shock and heartbreak have become part of F1 folklore. Everyone in the UK remembers Martin Brundle’s line ‘Is that Glock?’ in commentary while I actually had a very similar experience while commentating for Star Sports.
I was racing in F2 (or GP2 as it was known then) and dovetailed driving commitments with commentating for both F1 in Cinemas and Star Sports to earn a bit of money, as every penny of sponsorship I had got sucked into paying for the race budget. Who knew it would also be a good way to gain experience for a future career?
Funnily enough, on this particular evening, a commentator called Steve Slater and I were working out of a portakabin at Sky in London, now where the security office for the Sky campus is located. I remember it being cold with no real heating, pretty dark and we had just one screen with the world feed pictures and Steve’s laptop with the live timing feed. There was no production team – literally Steve and me with a bag of snacks he’d kindly bought at Tesco on the way in.
As Massa came across the line, like the Ferrari team, Steve was heralding his moment as the new World Champion. But I’d seen Lewis pass Glock but waited for confirmation as the timing feed we had would only update every 10 seconds. It felt like a very long 10 seconds before I got confirmation but it refreshed just as Lewis crossed the line, so I got to announce it was Lewis who had just won his first title, not Felipe.
“Having the chance to speak with Sir Jackie Stewart, Emerson Fittipaldi, Mario Andretti, Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell, Mika Hakkinen and Jacques Villeneuve will be hard to top as a broadcaster”
2. 2025 Goodwood Festival of Speed
Last summer I was honoured to host the balcony moment at the Festival of Speed with no fewer than seven Formula 1 World Champions. If you’ve not seen it, you can read the ‘behind the scenes’ piece I wrote at the time by following this link.
I’ve been very fortunate that over the years the team at Goodwood, led by the Duke of Richmond, has entrusted me with speaking with several of the headline acts for the Festival of Speed and the combination of trying to do it well for the live audience below us as well as the people watching on screen around the world is a challenge I love.
In 2024 we had an incredible crowd for the Red Bull drivers including Max Verstappen, Sergio Perez and Daniel Ricciardo and I had both Nigel Mansell and Derek Bell, two of the hardest men during their driving careers, in tears during their celebration moments. Sebastian Vettel charmed the crowd with humility and humour. Seeing Wayne Rainey ride his championship-winning Yamaha for the first time since becoming paralysed in 1993 and having him share the balcony with fellow two-wheel racing legends Kenny Roberts, Mick Doohan and Kevin Schwantz was incredibly emotional too.
But as someone who grew up as a student of the sport and continues to love the history, having the chance to speak with Sir Jackie Stewart, Emerson Fittipaldi, Mario Andretti, Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell, Mika Hakkinen and Jacques Villeneuve will be hard to top as a broadcaster.
The following day, Alain was having his own personal balcony moment and as we were speaking, the television director said to me, ‘the Red Arrows are going to do a fly past in about a minute but I can’t tell you the exact second so you’ll have to eyeball it.’ I asked Alain a question and managed to wrap up and throw to the planes at the very second they passed over us and unleashed the smoke in the colours of the French flag, a brilliant surprise for Alain. Hitting that moment was one of my proudest moments in 21 years of television broadcasting and everyone in the production gallery was absolutely buzzing, it having all been coordinated so well.
Chandhok watches the Red Arrows flypast at Goodwood with Alain Prost
1. 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix
It is hard indeed to spend a day in the F1 world without talking about the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. It was undoubtedly the most controversial and high-profile ending to what had been the most stressful, emotional, pressure-cooker of a season. It was in Abu Dhabi when the lid finally blew off.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I believe Lewis Hamilton deserved to win that race but both drivers would have been deserving World Champions. The points are scored equally across the season and Max had more bad luck and made fewer errors that year. I also believe that Michael Masi’s obsession with wanting to finish the race under green flag conditions and not the safety car overrode his need to follow the regulations correctly and fairly.
Ultimately the fairest conclusion would have been a one lap shootout with all the five lapped cars in place between Lewis and Max instead of Masi choosing just those cars to unlap themselves. That decision to let through just those five cars is what allowed Max (on far fresher tyres) a direct opportunity to attack Lewis and, justifiably, a feeling of injustice from Mercedes and Hamilton.
I was in the commentary box with Crofty and Martin, in our ‘Race Control’ position where I can keep an eye on all the onboards and listen to the live team radio feeds. In the afternoon, a few hours prior to the race, Martin and I had been to Masi who was actually always very helpful and forthcoming with thoughts and answers to the questions we had. I remember we talked about the low risk of a safety car with the revised track layout and he said to us ‘the only real spot which is tricky is the exit of turn 14’ and, lo and behold, that is the precise spot where Nicolas Latifi crashed!
Which is why, when the Williams hit the barrier, Martin and I looked at each other and knew the safety car would not be far away. To be honest, my feeling was that the race would just finish behind the safety car and I remember being annoyed that after all the drama we had throughout the season, and the two protagonists arriving in Abu Dhabi equal on points, that would be a rubbish way to end the season. The team radio channels were going nuts with a lot of confusion between the pitwalls and drivers as to what would actually happen; my brain couldn’t actually keep up with so many voices so I just tuned into Lewis and Max’s channels alone. When that message came up about just the five cars being selected to unlap themselves, Crofty, Martin and I all stared at each other, confused. When the restart was announced, we all knew instantly this meant Max on fresh soft tyres would be able to attack Lewis.
I also pulled up the Sporting Regulations on my iPad and knew the normal procedure was that they needed to do another lap before they were allowed to go racing, so became immediately concerned about the fallout from that. I felt it was right not to disturb Crofty and Martin as they were about to call the most watched lap of their TV careers; besides, when reading the rules, you need to take a minute to pause and reflect on the implications of the way the wording is written and any other clauses that may be linked to it. In short it would have been wrong just to blurt out that the Race Director had made a serious error without careful consideration.
The paddock atmosphere was like nothing I have experienced before or since. Everyone apart from Red Bull seemed confused, disappointed or angry. Lewis showed an incredible level of magnanimity and class as he congratulated Max immediately after the race but by the time the podium was finished, Mercedes locked themselves up in their hospitality unit with their lawyers to work out the next steps.
These were unprecedented times and none of us knew whether the result would be overturned, although our general feeling was it would be improbable. I tried to dissect what had happened on the Skypad but it was hard to do in the immediate aftermath as my mind was still a bit confused and trying to process what had happened. We all tried our best to inform and educate the viewer as to why Mercedes had a right to feel aggrieved while also being respectful of Max’s achievement in clinching his first title.
Looking back, I’m proud to have been a part of the team that weekend. It was incredibly hard to tell that story when passions and emotions were running high and people from different quarters were briefing for their case. Our efforts for that Abu Dhabi Grand Prix won the Sky Sports F1 team a BAFTA, and it was truly a day I will never forget as much as I may want to thanks to the negative effect it had on the integrity of our sport.
