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Carlos Sainz believes Formula One<\/a> is \u201cgoing overboard\u201d by placing too much focus on the reactions of drivers\u2019 girlfriends and celebrities during live broadcasts, obscuring the drama of grand prix racing.<\/p>\n The Williams driver has criticised the sport after his surge from the back of the field to 10th at the end of the Singapore Grand Prix<\/a> made little impression on the TV coverage from the Marina Bay Circuit on Sunday.<\/p>\n Also failing to make the director\u2019s cut was a battle for points places between Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton over the final laps of a race where Max Verstappen\u2019s tussle with Lando Norris for second dominated the live feed. There were, however, plenty of shots showing Sainz\u2019s girlfriend, Rebecca Donaldson, as well as Lando Norris\u2019s girlfriend, Magui Corceiro, in the paddock.<\/p>\n On-track footage is controlled by a lone world feed, so local broadcasters \u2013 such as Sky Sports in the UK \u2013 can only show images supplied by Formula One during a race.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s becoming a bit of a trend, which must have worked for them once upon a time when people found it interesting to see our girlfriends, to see famous people on TV, the reactions,\u201d Sainz told Spanish radio station El Partidazo de COPE.<\/p>\n \u201cI understand that if there is an overtake, a very tense moment in the race, it is understandable that the production team might want to show a reaction shot if they have seen that it has worked in the past \u2026 but [they only should] if the competition is respected and you are always showing the important moments of the race.<\/p>\n \u201cLast weekend they didn\u2019t show any of the four of five overtakes I did at the end. Nor did they show Fernando\u2019s pursuit of Lewis \u2026 they missed a lot of things.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Williams driver Carlos Sainz emerges from the crowded paddock at the starting grid for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix in September.<\/span> Photograph: Darko Bandi\u0107\/AP<\/p>\n Sainz wants Formula One to address its apparent fixation with celebrity, and put the action first, adding: \u201cThe other [thing] is fine but don\u2019t lose sight of the main thing. For me, they go overboard a little showing the celebrities and girlfriends.<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes there are so many VIPs in the paddock you can\u2019t even walk. We move by bike or scooter [in the paddock] because if you don\u2019t, you just can\u2019t get around.\u201d<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n The best of our sports journalism from the past seven days and a heads-up on the weekend\u2019s action<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Formula One responded to Sainz\u2019s comments on Thursday, saying in a statement: \u201cWe always focus on giving our fans the best possible footage of the race and never compromise the key focus \u2013 the racing on track.<\/p>\n \u201cOur team does a great job of covering a highly complex situation with multiple cars at different points on a track and also provide great context moments of the grandstands, high-profile guests and the locations we race at. We are always in pursuit of excellence and improvement in what we deliver.\u201d<\/p>\n The popularity of the Netflix series Drive to Survive has seen a growing following among younger viewers, as well as gaining a wider reach for F1 in the United States, with the drivers themselves pushed further to the foreground.<\/p>\n That has fostered more interest in their lives away from the paddock. Mercedes attracted 7.8m views for an Instagram reel that featured George Russell\u2019s girlfriend Carmen Montero Mundt reacting to his victory on Sunday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.theguardian.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Carlos Sainz believes Formula One is \u201cgoing overboard\u201d by placing too much focus on the reactions of drivers\u2019 girlfriends and celebrities during live broadcasts, obscuring the drama of grand prix racing. The Williams driver has criticised the sport after his surge from the back of the field to 10th at the end of the Singapore […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2114791,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2114790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Carlos-Sainz-hits-out-at-F1-broadcasters-coverage-of-\u2018celebrities.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2114790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2114790"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2114790\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2114792,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2114790\/revisions\/2114792"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2114791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2114790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2114790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2114790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}