This is our 206th and last grand prix with ITV. It’s been a great run and I’ve loved pretty much every second of it.
I’m also the only member of the crew who has been at every single race during the twelve years.
The most vivid memories are of the really dramatic races like Jerez 1997, where Michael Schumacher rammed Jacques Villeneuve off the road, and Indianapolis 2005, where only six cars started.
Jerez was electric from the moment we arrived on Thursday.
Somehow Schumacher’s presence in a title showdown always gave the thing a real edge, much more than this year’s finale, for example.
It was an extraordinary weekend, with the first three cars in qualifying setting exactly the same time to thousandth of a second.
Then after qualifying we had a loaded press conference with Schumacher asked directly whether he would ram Villeneuve to win the title as he had done with Damon Hill in 1994.
Schumacher was angry at the suggestion and said that it was important to have ‘fair play’. Of course he didn’t play it that way the next day…
He was a huge character in the sport and the ITV years were pretty much dominated by him.
The first three seasons were the nearly years where he and Ferrari came up short each time, then of course he broke his leg at Silverstone in 1999.
He won the world title in 2000, launching a Ferrari era, which rather unhelpfully coincided with me being promoted to lead commentator after Murray’s retirement in September 2001.
Making F1 races seem exciting in Schumacher-dominated seasons like 2002 and 2004 was at times a bit like pushing water up a hill – but I have always been passionate about this sport, which I was born into, and I have always found something exciting and interesting to talk about in even the most tedious procession.
I liked Michael and got on well with him. I wrote his biography in 2006 and had many interesting chats with him.
We did quite a lot of interviews together in the days when I was a pit reporter.
I remember the one at a Mugello test in Feburary 1998, his first with us since the Jerez episode.
He was contrite but still refused to accept that he’d done anything really wrong.
He grew up in F1 in the Senna/Mansell/Prost era, where that kind of thing went on and where drivers regularly played high-speed games of chicken with each other.
But Max Mosley had changed the culture and Schuey failed to notice, so when he did the ram-raid attempt in Jerez, he got hammered for it and I think he was very resentful of that, given that Senna and Prost got away with it.
The best race was probably the Japanese Grand Prix of 2005, although Spa this year was quite high up the list as well.
The Suzuka race stands out because Kimi Raikkonen, Fernando Alonso and Schumacher all started near the back of the grid after a rain-hit qualifying session and they all came through, with Kimi passing Giancarlo Fisichella on the final lap to win and Alonso passing Schumacher around the outside of the fearsome 130R corner.
I was not happy in Austria 2002, when Ferrari switched Rubens Barrichello and Schumacher at the end of the race. It was so early in the season and they clearly had a huge car advantage.
It seemed really unsporting to me and I said so, and I got into plenty of trouble with Ferrari and the powers-that-be in F1 for it. But there we are. Bridges were soon repaired on both sides.
I loved the weirdness of Indy 2005 when all the Michelin teams pulled out.
It seemed a huge own goal by the sport at the time, but it bounced back as it always does.
Commentating on the ‘race’ was completely different from any other race, as the story was as much about how the situation had arisen, how the crowd was taking it and where the sport would go next as it was about race action.
I loved the challenge of that.
My first commentary, standing in for Murray when he bust his hip, at Magny-Cours in 2000 was quite nerve-wracking, but it was good that I had an early chance to do the job and see what it was like and plenty of time to think about what I needed to improve on.
I was always pretty confident that when Murray decided to retire I would get the gig, but never anything less than utterly self-critical and seeking to improve with every race and every year, which I think I’ve done.
It’s a very difficult and high-pressure job, because with 20 cars there are 20 different points of focus.
You have to read the race, using a TV picture and the timing screens, while speaking at the same time and still leave spare brain capacity for talking to the producer and thinking about what comes next.
And as it’s live and it’s all happening very quickly it’s very easy to make a mistake, which is why you always need to allow yourself a margin.
Having a brilliant communicator like Martin Brundle as a partner helps a great deal too.
I take a journalistic approach to commentary, I’m a storyteller; it’s my job to tell the story, not to be the story.
Of course there are many people at home in their armchairs who think they could do it better and one of the challenges for me was that I replaced Murray just as the internet opened up to allow everyone to have their say in chat rooms and forums.
But I know from market research and viewer feedback that the pros massively outnumber the vocal minority of cons.
I’m very proud of the work that we have done with the North One production team over the years and we have 2 BAFTAs and 12 Royal Television Society awards to prove that the TV industry, like most viewers, rate our work very highly.
For more James Allen content go to www.jamesallenonf1.com