My friends, we need to have a talk about Formula 1 in the US. And while I’ve been down on the quality of racing in F1 lately—as many of you have been—we have a bigger problem: NBC’s broadcasts suck.

In fact, the terrible job turned in by Leigh Diffey and his crew has done more to turn me off on the series in recent years than any problems with the actual racing itself, which is odd because NBC (and even Diffey) actually do a decent job with IndyCar. The real problem starts with how much of each race we don’t get to see thanks to interminable commercial breaks and pre-recorded videos that should have been saved for the pre- or post-race show.

Motor races are unlike most other forms of televised sports in that there are no scheduled stoppages like football, baseball, soccer, or basketball. Even domestic racing series like NASCAR and IndyCar don’t quite suffer in the same way; those two series have evolved to work better with US broadcasters’ love for commercials, frequently breaking up the action with full-course caution periods where the racing stops and the cars follow a pace car while whatever accident or incident that caused the caution is dealt with. (By contrast, Formula 1 will often use a local caution, where just a single part of the track is at reduced speed.)