How Formula One’s new gyro cam highlighted the Zandvoort banking

Formula One is constantly pushing camera technology and introducing new cameras such as its latest gyro cam into the live broadcast.

Unlike the oval circuits that make up a goodly proportion of the US Indycar series, the racetracks that Formula One visits worldwide rarely have banked curves. Zandvoort, nestled among the sand dunes on the North Sea coast of The Netherlands, is a glorious exception to all this though. 

It was remodelled in 2019 for the return of Formula One to the circuit in 2020, and turns 3 and 13 (the final one onto the pit straight) were given steep bankings of 18.7 and 17.7 degrees respectively. And the latest camera to be deployed by Formula 1 is a gyro camera that keeps the horizon level and showcases just how steep that looks to the drivers.

Here’s Lando Norris’s pole position qualifying lap so you can see it in action

It’s not the first time the Sony built camera has been used (Japan’s glorious Suzuka circuit looked marvellous on it) but it’s the most extensively it’s been dropped into the live feed. The technology was originally developed for Moto GP and can be adjusted on the fly, though to our eyes sometimes it didn’t stabilise quite as quickly on the flat parts of the track as it could have.

But then, as Dino Leone, F1's Onboard Camera Manager, says in the video linked below, “What we found, and what the people that manufacture that camera have found, is that there is nothing quite as hostile as a Formula One car. What works elsewhere doesn’t work on a Formula 1 car. So we’re working to make things more robust, more reliable. In the same way that teams’ technology does into road cars, so our technology goes into camera development.”

Currently that includes a new 360 degree camera that’s being tested but is not quite ready for live broadcast. For more, and some genuinely fascinating insights into the plethora of onboard cameras that F1 has designed developed and deployed recently, have a look at the video via the link.