F1 TV's Will Buxton with a microphone jab against a shot invader. F1 TV’s Will Buxton with a microphone jab against a shot invader. (@FormulaReaction on Twitter.)

People wandering through a shot is one of the (many) hazards of live TV reports. But it’s unusual to see an on-camera personality take as direct of an approach to rectifying that as F1 TV’s Will Buxton did Sunday at Monza, jabbing the offending person with his microphone:

https://twitter.com/FormulaReaction/status/1698385208997814658

That wound up having at least some of the desired effect, with the interloper never getting quite in between the camera and Buxton. But he did subsequently walk back through the right side of the shot, so he got a few more seconds of fame. But at least he didn’t fully cut off the shot.

Buxton has had a long career covering F1. He started as a print/digital journalist for GrandPrix.com and the official F1 magazine in the early 2000s, then joined Speed in 2010 as a pit lane reporter for F1. When NBC won the F1 rights ahead of the 2012 season, Buxton moved over to their coverage (producing a great Beastie Boys parody along the way) and worked there until 2018, when F1 owner Liberty Media took broadcast production in-house as part of their new deal with ABC and ESPN. He then joined the Liberty team as a digital presenter for streaming service F1 TV, and in addition to reporting and producing digital features and race coverage segments for them, has appeared in all five seasons of Drive To Survive to date. And he has quite a microphone jab.

[@FormulaReaction on Twitter]

About Andrew Bucholtz

Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.