F1 Season Reviews Reviewed: 1988

The 1988 Formula One championship season was about two drivers in one team. The team in question was McLaren now with former Brabham designer Gordon Murray on board and Honda engines poached from Williams who won the championship in 1987.

The drivers in question were Alain Prost entering his fifth season with the McLaren team and Ayrton Senna who was entering his fifth season in Formula One.

They won 15 out of 16 races between them which is still a record that stands to this day although it’s hard to gauge given the fact that there are more races on a modern F1 calendar.

The one race they didn’t win was the Italian Grand Prix where Prost retired because of an engine problem and Senna tripped over a back-marker while leading. That race was won by Gerhard Berger with Michele Alboreto making it a Ferrari one-two just weeks after the death of Enzo Ferrari.

Other moments worth noting in the 1988 season include Senna crashing out in Monaco in a bizarre incident when leading by more than a minute hit the wall on the entrance to the tunnel.

The battle between the two McLarens continued in France, Hungary and especially Portugal where Senna appeared to squeeze Prost into the pit wall and the race in Japan where Senna was confirmed as 1988 champion. This was the start of one of the fieriest teammate relationships in the modern era.

On the surface at the start of the year at least relations between the two seemed to be really good but by the midpoint in the season and particularly in the 1989 season, things started to turn sour between the two. But more on that next time.

Final point about the season, it would be the last season for the turbo-charged cars that have been the driving force of the sport since the start of the 1980’s.

The TV coverage changed slightly in 1988 compared to 1987, pictured above is how onboard cameras used to look in F1 up to this point. They were big cumbersome devices that were literally strapped or bolted to the cars and they even affected the car's aerodynamics.

Such was the effect of this that in 1988 the teams said they weren’t prepared to have these big boxes attached to their very aero-efficient cars. The only on-board camera that appeared in a race in 1988 was on board with the March of Mauricio Gugelmin in the Detroit Grand Prix. They were pulled from the coverage for the year while a rethink and redesign was implemented for the real coverage redesign in 1989.

So what about the season review? It has a very different feel to those before it and to start with it seems like things are going well.

The intro is a montage set to all fired up by Pat Benatar. Narration by Tony Jardine (his first of three appearances in F1 season reviews) and Stirling Moss. This should have been a fascinating chance to hear a former driver who is considered a legend giving an insight into modern F1 but as I’ll explain later this was a huge letdown.

We then get a piece to camera from Tony and Stirling from Australia before the start of the last race of the season. Then we get the customary and pointless shots of sunbathing women in Brazil before we get to the track and a rundown of who is driving for who in the 1988 season.

But unlike previous seasons there are no graphics here. Just a brief explanation. The first cutback compared to the previous years. What you do get however is the results from each race still as well as the added bonus of a head-to-head result between Prost and Senna. So lets get into the meat of this season review.

In terms of footage, there isn’t much to report on. Although there seems to be a much more even split between the footage that was shown on TV and the footage that was shot especially for the video review.

What is really interesting is that the extra footage is much steadier than before. That is to say that it looks like there has been an investment in tripods for the intrepid cameramen. The extra footage comes into its own in the Italian Grand Prix when Senna got taken out by Jean Louis Schlesser (who by the way would in the 2010’s become a real character in the Dakar rallies).

The extra footage is shot from the inside of the chicane and offers a great insight as to how quickly things happened. The reason extra footage is even needed though is because the TV director totally missed the incident live so all we get is a replay.

So this review does a good job of choosing the footage wisely and that’s very refreshing. What is annoying however is that there is no footage of Senna’s accident in Monaco which again was missed by the TV coverage.

Although there was very limited onboard footage for TV viewers in 1988. Just one race. We do get a couple of specially shot sequences from the roll hoop of Piquet’s lotus in the wet at Monaco and a fast(ish) lap around Suzuka with Satoru Nakajima again from the roll hoop of the Lotus.

Like what you see from a 2019 on-board. The footage is definitely the best thing about this season's review. For what they had to work with they did a great job in telling the visual story.

Then there’s the audio quality. It’s OK but it doesn’t feel as atmospheric as previous seasons. 1982 and 1987 got it absolutely right. But for some reason even though I’m using a high-quality sound system (NOT relying on TV speakers for obvious reasons) 1988 just lacks that punch in the audio experience department.

It sounds almost quiet in places compared to the commentary and there’s no balance between the two that you would expect from an official production.

Interestingly 1988 was also the first season that the British Touring Car Championship got an official video review and that video suffers with a similar problem (maybe it’s a 1988 thing). The one really good thing however. The popping distortion sound on the extra footage is mostly ironed out which is the one big blessing in this review.

But then there’s the commentary. I could sum it up in 2 words. Oh and dear are the words that spring to mind because it’s truly awful. It’s done by Tony Jardine and Stirling Moss which should sound like a great combination and indeed I like to think that under any other circumstances, it would have been but the commentary particularly from Tony Jardine is awful.

Referring to Gerhard Berger as “Cheeseburger” for example is in my opinion tacky, not funny which is how it was intended to be, and makes me cringe every time I hear it. The fake accents that Jardine also does are even worse.

Again I don’t know what the scriptwriters were thinking when they came up with this but it’s truly awful. The fake posh, American, Italian, and Australian accents are again neither funny nor clever and although it doesn’t quite make the review unwatchable it still doesn’t help its cause at all.

I haven’t even talked about the narration style. In short, it’s all over the place. Part past and part present tense without even a hint of a documentary style to it so it’s almost like Jardine is trying to react live to some stuff and recall the rest like he’s seen it before.

It doesn’t work at all well and needed a lot of revision and thought before the 1989 review. The input from Stirling Moss is to give his opinion in almost a live style but with a taste of looking back at the season.

So when he talks about the two Arrows drivers Eddie Cheever and Derek Warwick for example during the Mexico round he says “I never know which one was going to win you know, one’s ahead then the other, they made for good racing” which is an OK attempt at the sort of thing I’m talking about.

That look-back commentary style, is almost like watching a DVD directors/actors commentary of a movie. That’s fine as an extra commentary soundtrack but as a main commentary for an official F1 season review? I’m less convinced about that. Either way for me the commentary is probably the biggest letdown of this season's review.

It’s not the first time I’ve said that in the series and it certainly won’t be the last either.

So in summary this review has it’s high points. The footage is superb. The interviews with many of the key drivers are equally superb and in this area the reviews have come a long way during the course of the 1980’s I can almost (just) forgive the lack of atmosphere in the audio in places.

Listen to the original footage of the Monaco Grand Prix for instance. Or the Italian Grand Prix. The TV coverage of those races, in particular, that year was terrible from a technical standpoint and the audio on both was also terrible.

So it does sound flat in places. But I can’t forgive the commentary. Something the F1 reviews seem to fall flat on their faces on with alarming regularity. The cringe value in places of it brings the standard down for me to a disappointing 3 out of 5.

That was the 1988 review. Next time I’ll look at the 1989 season review and yet another evolution in Formula One technology on the broadcasting front.

But I’ll leave you with the end-credit music for the 1988 season review. Thank you for reading and there will be more from me soon.