For 24 weekends a year, 20 drivers battle it out to be crowned Formula One World Champion to a global audience of billions.
These billions come in the form of TV viewers, ticket holders at the race tracks and internet users who hang on to every moment from their favourite teams and drivers.
But without a dedicated bunch of individuals who travel to each race to help bring the sport to the world, these billions of people would be left disappointed.
Sky Sports F1 commentator David Croft might be as familiar to these billions of fans as the likes of Max Verstappen, Lewis Hamilton and Lando Norris, having been the voice of Formula 1 for more than a decade.
The man people know as ‘Crofty’ is a staple in living rooms across the world, with his job to call races and tell the story of what is happening in front of him to the dedicated fans who hang on to his every word.
It was a dream of his to do so from a very young age, having grown up listening to the likes of Murray Walker and James Hunt commentate the sport on TV.
“I used to listen to sport and watch sport on TV and I thought how brilliant must it be to sit and talk about sport and get paid for it and bring sport into people’s homes,” he told The Roar.
“I set about trying to get experience broadcasting in hospital, local and national radio as a full-time job to learn my craft, learn how to write voice pieces, edits, do interviews, produce shows, present shows, all of the above and commentary as well.
“It was a lifetime of moving up the ladder until I finally got the Formula One job for BBC Radio in 2006.”
Croft would eventually move from BBC Radio to Sky Sports in 2012 and partner legendary F1 broadcaster and former F1 driver Martin Brundle as the lead commentators of their F1 coverage.
More than 350 races later, Croft remains the voice of Formula One, with Sky Sports’ coverage currently reaching more than 80 countries globally.
But just how does he prepare for each race to make sure that he is ready to be heard by billions of people around the world?
“I use travelling to do my notes for the race, writing up team and driver notes,” he explained. “I do a track map with some general notes about the racing and some stats and corners and corner speeds and gear ratios and all that sort of thing. Then Thursday, we’ll get to the track.
“Thursday’s media day, so I’ll go and talk to a few drivers, see team principals and engineers… find out what’s been going on… just generally get yourself into a position where on Friday you hit the ground running.
“You’re preparing yourself. You’re making notes. You have to be concise. You don’t want too many notes because we need to find things in a hurry, and you’re getting yourself ready for that moment where the titles start rolling and I’ll put the headphones on with my microphone, press the red button and start talking.”
Croft says that he never writes down what he will say before a race, preferring to keep things natural on air once he is live.
“You can’t script being in the moment,” he said. “We can’t pretend and plan ahead for that… I want to be that fan in the moment and be those eyes and ears for the fans around the world.
“It’s like a tightrope without a safety net every time you go on air.
(Photo by SkySports)
“That’s the thrill of a job, that you never know what’s going to happen.”
Alongside the thrill of a live broadcast comes the thrill of recognition, something which Croft says is a part of the job he enjoys, particularly when it comes to the fans using his notable commentary catchphrases.
“I really do love the fact that people recognise ‘lights out and away we go’ as the start of the race. I think that’s fabulous,” he admits. “It’s quite touching that people get excited enough to shout it into the TVs as I’m saying it down the line from a particular racetrack.
“You want to make a difference to people, and if I can, then that’s great.”
Another person making a difference to the sport from the photos he takes and the social media presence he has created for himself is Aussie photographer Kym Illman.
(Photo by Kym Ilman)
Having made a name for himself as a photographer in publications such as National Geographic, the West Australian photographer switched focus to Formula One after working with Red Bull and Daniel Ricciardo during a corporate engagement at the 2016 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
Since 2017 he has travelled around the world following each Grand Prix, and during this time has created several popular social media channels which showcase not only his work in the sport, but also several behind-the-scenes aspects of Formula One.
“People want it (a look behind the scenes of the sport), they want to find out,” Illman told The Roar. “Particularly now with the boom, it has added to the popularity that people want to see the personal side.
“If I put a picture up of a car and if it doesn’t do well, well I’m not going do that again. But if I put a picture up of Franco Colapinto walking in to the track and he gets 20,000 likes, I’ll do more of that.”
His social media channels have more than 650,000 followers combined, with his YouTube channel having more than 64 million views across all of his videos.
He also sells photo books of his work, showcasing various sides of each driver on the grid.
Illman admits it’s a job he loves doing, and having the chance to show a different side of the sport to fans around the world.
“It’s just not like any other job,” he admitted. “It’s a phenomenal thing to do.”
When it comes to showcasing behind the scenes of Formula One, there is perhaps no more familiar face than that of Will Buxton.
The popular broadcaster and author currently works as the face of the Official Formula One channel over each race weekend, but is most well known as one of the stars of the Netflix F1 docuseries, Drive to Survive.
The show has become a global phenomenon and is seen as the catalyst for the massive boom in popularity Formula One has had since the show debuted in 2019.
Buxton, who serves as a quasi-narrator of the series, says that although the show has made him recognisable to F1 fans, he puts this down to the growth of the sport rather than his role in the show.
(Photo by Buchwald Management)
“I don’t see it as a reflection of my popularity, I see it as a reflection of the sport’s popularity,” he explains to The Roar. “If I’m lucky enough that people recognise me and want a photo or an autograph or something, I just see that as being the growth of the sport and that more people are watching the sport.
“Whether that’s Drive to Survive and then they watch the races. I’ve met people who just watch Drive to Survive and don’t watch the races. It means that they are enjoying this thing that I enjoy and I absolutely love that.”
Having had eyes for nothing else but F1 journalism since the age of 13, Buxton rose rapidly through the F1 media world in the early 2000s after landing a role writing for the Official Formula One magazine.
From there he switched to working as a press officer for the F1 feeder series GP2, now known as Formula Two, before working as a pit-lane reporter for both Speed and NBC and then landing his current role of digital presenter for Formula One.
He said that his role demanded a lot of hard work and long hours, with countless hours of research and preparation the key element for him each race, as well as constantly talking to everyone he can in the paddock.
“When you’re not on air, you’re talking to people and trying to gather information… trying to piece it all together,” he explained.
“The one thing I learned as a press officer was how to take the meat off the bones and give people the skeleton. Then your job as a broadcaster or a journalist is to put that meat back onto the skeleton and try to create that whole picture.”
Buxton said that despite the long hours during a race weekend and the constant travel and time away from home, he wouldn’t want to do anything else.
“It’s the greatest job in the world,” he admitted.
“It’s an incredible honour to get to do this, to get to talk to your heroes, week in, week out and to get to tell their stories.
“It’s something really special.”
This article was originally written for The Roar. You can read the published version here
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