If anything has continued to improve in Formula One, it’s the graphics package that accompanies the broadcast—and that’s part of what makes watching old broadcasts so damn difficult. Who’s running where? Is that car legitimately running for position or is it a lap down—or more? And that is why I love every single person who superimposes modern graphics onto old races.
Today, we’re looking at a video from BH Formula 1, who has added a modern introduction to the starting grid of the 1984 Monaco Grand Prix. It is some very good stuff.
I love it, in part because the modern day graphics are great for clarity. Sure, there are some very unnecessary elements of the broadcast (your tire projections are meaningless, F1!), but you know exactly what you need to know: name, nationality, team, and time behind the leader.
The gap between Alain Prost in first and Nigel Mansell in second is minimal: 0.091 seconds. You have actually competitive Ferraris hanging out there in the second row. Aytron Senna down there in 13th? He was over 2.3 seconds slower than the polesitter.
There are some other very excellent clips of this sort, many of them coming from Matt Amys:
The quality on these is just exceptional (though I do have to say that seeing such bright graphics on a black-and-white race is a little jarring).
If your personal flavor of nostalgia lies within the graphics, then never fear, my friends, because both Amys and the F1 YouTube channel have you covered:
Someone even went ahead and added modern F1 graphics to Mario Kart:
To all you talented YouTubers and video editors out there: thank you for your service.