Event
From track to TV - how F1 is broadcast to 1.6 billion people
by Samarth Kanal
7min read
Hordes of cameras train their lenses on the eyes and actions of drivers and their teams every Formula 1 weekend. Whether it’s an armchair analyst, team boss, or an F1 fanatic, they’re relying on this broadcast product to complete their Sunday.
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Hordes of cameras train their lenses on the eyes and actions of drivers and their teams every Formula 1 weekend. Whether it’s an armchair analyst, team boss, or an F1 fanatic, they’re relying on this broadcast product to complete their Sunday.
F1’s live broadcast comprises thousands of moving parts that culminate in a seamless live feed delivered to more than 60 broadcasters and televisions and mobile devices in more than 180 countries. In 2024, that culminated in a worldwide audience of 1.6 billion people.
With 20 cars on track and multiple flashpoints every lap, amounting to 477 hours of on-air time across a 24-race season, this isn’t a simple process.
We ventured trackside with F1 at a grand prix and then visited its headquarters to piece together the complex puzzle that is capturing and broadcasting the pinnacle of motorsport.
Williams F1 team members watch the F1 broadcast from their garage during the 2025 Azerbaijan Grand Prix
Cameras and microphones
Few, if any, other sports put as many eyes on the athlete as F1.
The world championship utilises 28 ultra-high-definition (UHD) cameras to capture trackside action, seven roaming cameras across the pit and paddock, a helicopter camera, and up to nine onboard cameras on each F1 car. In total, there are 96 cameras across the F1 grid on a grand prix weekend.
Numerous cameras can also be embedded in kerbs and barriers to capture the speed of an F1 car rushing by, including the cable-mounted camera mounted on start-finish straights that travels at 54 kilometres per hour.
George Russell’s F1 helmet (at the 2021 Italian Grand Prix) with the helmet camera circled (right)
The onboard cameras include a tiny 8-millimetre camera mounted inside the helmet and the ubiquitous T-Cam - a device so pivotal to the action that we’ve covered it in a separate article.
Formula 2, Formula 3, F1 Academy and Porsche Supercup all benefit from the same infrastructure, meaning up to around 170 onboard cameras can be present on cars over the weekend.
Sound is also a key component of the broadcast: F1 has 150 microphones around the track that output in 5.1 surround sound, capturing everything from pitguns whirring to crowds roaring.
The view from the onboard gyro camera on Fernando Alonso's Aston Martin F1 car, courtesy of Formula 1
The backbone of the broadcast
All of the footage goes to F1’s trackside hub, the Event Technical Centre (ETC) - a temporary but sturdy structure that’s present at every event of the F1 season. It’s quiet in here during a session; sometimes the hum of the computer equipment is the loudest sound.
The ETC is the first port of call for footage and data captured at the track. Not only does the ETC collect camera footage and audio, but all the live timing data relied upon by the governing body (the FIA), and fans.
It takes five days to build up the ETC, lay more than 54 kilometres of cables around the track and mount antennae. Forty timing loops are positioned around the track at 200-metre intervals to guarantee timing accurate to three decimal places.
Cabling and data is handled by F1’s partner, Tata Communications, which provides two 10 Gigabit per second (Gbps) fibre connections from the ETC to F1’s headquarters, the Media and Technology Centre (M&TC) at Biggin Hill, England. Tata Communications houses its own network technicians in a ‘pod’ next to the ETC.
The entrance to the F1 Event Technical Centre (ETC), image courtesy of Lenovo
More than 500 terabytes of data is sent back to the M&TC twice, through both fibre connections, to guarantee it’s sent properly. Before the weekend begins, numerous tests are conducted - including ‘breaking’ the connections.
This set-up yields ultra-low latency, under 300 milliseconds (even in Australia), when it comes to transmitting and receiving data.
Dhaval Ponda, Tata Communications’s VP & global head, media and entertainment, says to Raceteq that communications infrastructure has transformed the F1 paddock. Once home to a horde of satellite trucks and relevant personnel, the paddock and track have been streamlined radically.
“If you came to the paddock about seven to eight years ago, they [broadcasters] would send hundreds of people to do production on site,” he says.
“And instead of that, they are now able to do remote production out of Biggin Hill. Rather than sending hundreds of people to every location, they now send probably close to 40 to 50 people who are required to be on site, and then the majority of the production takes place in Biggin Hill.”
A screen inside the ETC showing an array of screens at F1’s headquarters, the Media & Technology Centre (M&TC), image courtesy of Lenovo
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Inside F1’s headquarters
That takes us from the track to the UK, where F1 is based. The M&TC is a large office building at Biggin Hill, a small town southeast of London.
It’s here at the M&TC that the footage and data is packaged into the broadcast that we see on television, thanks to more than 140 personnel
F1 directs its own world feed that is sent to broadcasters around the world as well as its on-demand F1 TV feed in what’s called the ‘gallery’ - a dark room filled with computers and arrays of screens that could belong at NASA - where camera feeds come in and directors and producers speak to producers and presenters at the track.
Some cameras can even be controlled from the M&TC, although F1’s experienced camera crews do most of the work trackside.
In the gallery, the director will choose which camera to bring to the world feed, for example, while a producer might relay important information to a producer trackside or a presenter.
Graphics teams also work to put statistics and information on screen - such as gaps between drivers, pitstop timings and championship positions - at a moment’s notice.
Producers and editors located in other rooms help with other tasks such as radio broadcast and transcription - which artificial intelligence also helps with. A 15-second delay is implemented to ensure the radio is fit for broadcast.
F1 staff produce graphics on the fly for its world feed, with Artificial Intelligence deployed in areas such as radio transcription and driver tagging, image courtesy of F1
“There's no other sport in the world where you can hear the athlete in the midst of something quite incredible like this, that you can hear their emotions, their reactions. And that gives you real insight into their personality,” says F1’s director of broadcast and media, Dean Locke.
AI is also used to tag drivers on screen and help broadcast replays of on-track action, something that’s a lot harder in F1 than it is in other sports, where there are generally fewer points to focus on.
Furthermore, AI is deployed in creating virtual trackside advertisements. Where there is a blank board, square of track surface, or patch of grass, F1 can insert a billboard or even a video screen onto its broadcast.
The M&TC houses the equipment needed to store the footage - large banks of servers - and edit hubs where footage is clipped for broadcast, F1 TV, and use on its website. It’s a huge operation that is now consolidated in one site. Recent renovations have only helped increase F1’s capacity to broadcast and edit.
“In the last five years, the amount of content we produce is just mind-blowing,” says Locke.
“I've been around here a long time, and going from [producing] a few different highlights now to where we are now is quite incredible.”
Behind every frame is an operation as complex and demanding as F1 itself. A motorsport that never sleeps - and a broadcast that never blinks.
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