What do you think about David Croft?

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I think he appeals too much to the slightly drunk, primarily beer-drinking audience of Sky Sports. He really does not appeal to the more knowledgeable motorsport crowd, hyping up potential events that we know are impossible.

The most ridiculous David Croft moment was in the 2015 US GP, in which he suggested Rosberg may let Vettel through to second place to keep his slim championship hope alive. Brundle replied by saying Rosberg would be handed his P45 if he did so.

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Sammo123 said:

I don’t drink and I quite enjoy listening to Crofty commentate on the F1. He’s so much more interesting to listen to than Jonathan Legard ever was! Yes he gets things wrong but who really cares? Nobody is perfect!

James Allen was so much better

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I actually don't know what Croft looks like, but listening to his voice I cannot get the image of a beer belly out of my head.

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TheDeuce said:

Truth is, he's the man for the job. The more you know about the sport (or even which cars belong to which teams..) the less likely you are to appreciate his input. But rest assured if sky keep him, it's because he's ticking the right boxes for the majority.

We're not the majority - we're a nerdy collection of F1 geeks in the land of the interweb

What is right for Sky Sports is not what is right for F1. Sky Sports are obviously trying to appeal to the beer-drinking football fans who just happen to want to casually watch a bit of racing, but I don't think this helps F1 reach a wider audience beyond the type of people who will spend 20 or 30 pounds monthly to subscribe to a channel which is primarily focused all around football.

10 or 15 years ago F1 was much more popular among the general population, there was no need to appeal to just a particular group of people, someone like Croft would be inappropriate for free-to-view broadcasting and in my opinion this style of broadcasting cements F1's position as a niche sport.

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TheDeuce said:

But.. he is a sky presenter. If he's right for sky's customer base he's the right person. Regardless of whether or not he's good for F1 in general.

Yes, I am just making the point he is bad for F1 as a whole (in the UK at least).

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TheDeuce said:

Fair play. Tricky one though - is it best to dumb it down to drag in the casual viewer or adopt a more technical attitude to commentary and reward those that do tune in with deeper detail and insight?

I'd imagine sky have had some pretty good minds focussed on that question. Probably why they settled on crofty to scream like a 9 year old when something is/is not happening and paired him with brundle to confirm that, actually, something else happened - or that nothing at all had happened

It is not necessarily just the way he dumbs things down, but also his mannerisms, analogies, the way he mispronounces foreign names like Perez at puts emphasis on every syllable.