Brundle laughs at the abyss: Sky F1’s gridwalk “will finish my career one day”
Martin Brundle has never been shy about the peril baked into his most famous party trick. The Sky F1 stalwart, fresh from another dash through chaos at Monza and then Austin, says his gridwalk will probably be the thing that finally does for him.
“This is the grid walk,” he told actor Glen Powell as cameras rolled on the Circuit of the Americas grid last weekend. “It’s car‑crash television. It’s one take and one take only. It’s going to finish my career one day because I’ll make myself look really silly.”
He says it with a grin, but the point lands. In an era of meticulously managed media, Brundle’s live, unscripted wander through pre-race mayhem is one of the last truly unpredictable bits of Formula 1 broadcasting — part sport, part theatre, part ambush journalism with a microphone and quick feet. You can’t rehearse the Serena Williams stare, the Machine Gun Kelly mime-off, or the moment a security guard decides the bloke with the Sky mic is today’s problem.
Brundle, 66 and awarded an OBE earlier this year, has earned the right to play on the edge. Before becoming the voice — and occasional chaos conductor — of British F1 coverage with ITV, the BBC and now Sky, he started 158 Grands Prix between 1984 and 1996 for Tyrrell, Benetton, McLaren and others, banking nine podiums and a lifetime of paddock currency. That experience is why the drivers stop, why the bosses look wary-but-willing, and why the audience still leans in when he ducks under a camera crane to chase a story.
The gridwalk, of course, is bigger than a cutaway gag. It’s the sport’s rawest live lens — a minute-by-minute study in composure, anxiety and celebrity choreography. One second it’s Max Verstappen’s race-face, the next it’s Mariah Carey or Cara Delevingne pretending not to hear. The hits are unplanned, the misses go viral, and Brundle knows the margins. Earlier this season he admitted he’s “terrified” of the segment, acutely aware that one clumsy sentence in the wrong ear could end more than just a TV bit.
He keeps doing it anyway. That’s the draw. When it flows — a sharp question, a revealing aside, a human beat before the lights go out — it’s proper television. When it doesn’t, well, that’s proper television too, the kind you can’t tidy up in post. Brundle’s superpower isn’t perfection; it’s the ability to surf a live grid’s chaos without losing his cool, or forgetting to say what the rest of us are thinking.
There’s a wider point here about modern F1’s image management. The grid is now a red carpet with torque: brand ambassadors, actors, moguls, athletes from every other sport. It’s the show before the show and, sometimes, the story before the story. Brundle occupies that awkward intersection — the journalist in a tuxedo party — and he’s made it work because he treats everyone the same way: respect first, gimmicks last, and if you’re on the grid, you’re fair game for a question with teeth.
Will the gridwalk “finish” him? Maybe that’s the joke. Brundle has always lived at the sharp end, whether it was wheel-to-wheel in a Benetton or trying to grab a sentence from a superstar while a mechanic wrestles a tyre blanket inches away. The risk is the point. Strip away the trip hazards and security elbows and you’re left with something safe and forgettable — which is everything the gridwalk isn’t.
If there’s a legacy to protect here, it’s not just Brundle’s — it’s live F1 broadcast at its bravest. The sport has never been slicker. It shouldn’t forget how to be spontaneous. And if the man who helped define that edge insists he’s a sentence away from catastrophe? That’s not fear talking. That’s quality control.
