Formula 1 World Championship 2003

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Editorial reviews

Synopsis
All the action and highlights of the FIA Formula One World Championships 2003.

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Customer reviews

review by: f1_fan date: 2004-07-04 rating:
Very disappointing
This is a very very poor dvd that doesen't do justice to what was a great F1 season in 2003! It is far too short and misses out on lots of exciting bits!
It's really not worth the money!

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review by: ctrh date: 2004-02-03 rating:
F1 2003 Review
It is very good but I think they could do more interviews and more qualifying footage. The footage, apart from that, is okay.

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review by: grahamacarter date: 2004-01-19 rating:
F1 2003 Review
One of the best Formula 1 Seasons Ever. Thanks to the rule changes.

The Whole DVD is great despite most of the GP coverage from ITV and other host broadcaster's around the world.

Improvements

I would make are add a season preview containing

Opening Titles - (which are not on the Austraila race section - only on the play review section), Recap on F1 2002, the teams and rule changes for 2003.

Background music on the races just like the 2001 and 2002 reviews.

Apart from the bonus footage being the pole position lap from qualifying.It's a great review if you injoyed F1 2003. I did

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review by: crazeetaxi date: 2004-01-18 rating:
F1s best season for years becomes the worst review in years!
Whoever has ultimate responsibility for the F1 Review series of videos and DVD's really just doesn't know quite what to do with itself.

The VHS reviews of the mid-90's were the highpoint of F1 season reviews and they used to generate a real sense of excitement with plenty of footage of the pre-season build-up with car launches and plenty of driver interviews, then a good amount of pre-race footage with the latest news (prior to each race) more short interviews, relevant qualifying footage and the edited race highlights that still managed to convey how exciting the races had been.

Unfortunately the only two F1 Reviews available on DVD so far (2000 and 2003) are absolutely terrible.

The first one (2000) was all style over substance. They really tried to use the DVD players capabilities by offering multiple camera-angle choices or the ability to watch just the pitlane during a race, stuff like that. But come on, who really wants to watch some footage of team managers wandering around in the pits ?

For the 2003 DVD they've tried to go back to the old VHS style by basically saying: Here it is in one go, just sit back and press play.

I was initially pleased to see the review go back to this format because with the previous DVD I simply got sick of fiddling with the remote every 2 minutes to watch the next segment.

Unfortunately this DVD has none of the old VHS reviews' charms. There's absolutely no pre-season footage, zero driver interviews and the qualifying footage is lamentable.

What little qualifying footage there is turns out to be completely irrelevant. Instead of showing you maybe the laps of the top 5 or 6 cars you instead get to see a complete no-name spinning wildly off the track. At the end of the day, rarely does a driver in the bottom 10 qualifying positions have any great effect on a race, so showing someone qualifying 20th is utterly pointless.

There's little onboard footage (although the technology is still in use as seen on ITV, despite the digital television feed not running anymore). Over the whole of the review I don't recall hearing any car-to-pits radio talk at all. This might not sound like much if you're not a big F1 fan, but it's often fascinating to hear what is actually being said - stuff you often wouldn't imagine, so to be denied this is pretty bad really. Ever since the French GP I've been waiting for this review so I could finally hear Montoya screaming at the Williams team, supposedly more or less just accusing them of destroying his race. Except they've missed this great opportunity...I mean, they did have the option of bleeping the swear words after all.

2003 was the best season we've had since perhaps Hakkinen's Championship years and they've ruined the memories of 2003 by producing this appalling record of the year that would have most viewers thinking the season had actually been incredibly dull.

The only time I really sat up and paid any real attention was the Monza press conference footage featuring a nice little argument between Ferrari's Ross Brawn and Williams' Patrick Head. Yes, in a sport featuring 200mph cars the best part of it's 2003 review was a mild argument between two "techies" !!!

Absolutely avoid this DVD at all costs. If you're looking for a lookback at some F1 then do yourself a favour and get basically ANY of the VHS reviews available between 1980 and 1999 !!!!

After that....hmm, well F1 fans can only come equal to me, not bigger - and I remain unconvinced by any of the Y2K+ reviews.

And Ben Edwards? He truly is the greatest commentator on the planet (even when Murray Walker was commentating) but he's absolutely wasted talking over this rubbish.


review by: sandy130674 date: 2004-01-17 rating:
Not too bad, but not too generous.
It seems that the producers of the 2003 review have reverted back to the pre-2001 ethos of keeping things succinct. Now this is not a bad thing, considering the amount of unnecessary "tourist info" that linked each grand prix in the previous two years. However, I would have thought that with the DVD format and a very eventful championship battle at their disposal they could have presented the best review to date. But they haven't: it's only average. Commentary by Ben Edwards is faultless, there is no irritating background music, picture quality is superb and the extra footage showing the fastest qualifying lap from each grand prix is commendable. Unfortunately 140 minutes is insufficient to properly tell the story of one of the closest championship fights in years. It lacks information on teams, car launches and drivers at the start, qualifying is not really featured and each race is covered so swiftly that it is difficult to follow what's going on. Also, where are all the extras and bonus footage?

Entertaining to a point, but could have been so much better.

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Similar products

FIA Formula One World Championship 2004
Formula One 2005 Review
Formula One Review 2006
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Similar categories

Video . DVD & VHS . Categories . Sports . All Sports
Video . DVD & VHS . Categories . Sports . Motor Sport . Formula One
Video . DVD & VHS . Refinements . Format (binding_browse-bin) . DVD
Video . DVD & VHS . Refinements . Release Date (feature_three_browse-bin) . 2000 and later
Video . DVD & VHS . Refinements . Region(feature_browse-bin) . Region 0
Video . DVD & VHS . Refinements . Editions (feature_two_browse-bin) . Standard Edition
Video . DVD & VHS . Refinements . Language (theme_browse-bin) . English

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