Those of us hoping the kinks would be worked out with F1 TV after its disastrous debut two weeks ago were out of luck Sunday morning for the Formula One Monaco Grand Prix. In my case, F1 TV Pro’s live stream worked fine through the pre-race and then crashed on the opening lap.
After missing the start, the stream worked intermittently through the middle of the race, at which point it seemed to stabilize, but not before it angered a ton of fans.
Making matters worse was the fact that I had to physically refresh the page to get a play button to appear to click and see if the stream was back. It didn’t automatically restart, so it was hard to tell when exactly it was working as intended again.
Formula One has since set up a help account on Twitter for stream-related issues, @F1Help, which noted that a “temporary blip” affected the stream.
Monaco is arguably F1's biggest race weekend of the year in many respects, as it’s the only F1 race deemed important and historic enough to be considered part of racing’s Triple Crown alongside the Indy 500 and Le Mans. It’s beyond disappointing that F1's much-awaited live streaming service wasn’t actually operational in time.
Fans who had issues with the stream are encouraged to write to technical@en.formula1.com. The footage will be available on the F1 TV service for a rewatch, but that kind of kills the fun of watching it in real time with the rest of the world.
[Full disclosure: Jalopnik is owned by Univision, which holds the Spanish-language broadcasting rights to F1 in the US.]