Martin Brundle and David Croft send messages as Sky Sports F1 presenter quits

Martin Brundle and David Croft have both paid tribute to outgoing Sky Sports F1 colleague Rachel Brookes after the presenter confirmed she has left the broadcaster. 

Ahead of the Austrian Grand Prix on Wednesday, Brookes confirmed that she had left Sky Sports with immediate effect after 17 years working at the company. 

Sky Sports F1 co-commentator and analyst Brundle sent Brookes a goodbye message. 

“Good luck Rach. It’s been a pleasure to work alongside you on Sky F1. Your professionalism shines through,” he wrote. 

Brookes replied: "Thankyou MB. An absolute pleasure to work with you too. Hope our paths cross again.”

David Croft, the lead commentator for Sky Sports F1, also paid tribute to Brookes. 

“Good luck for the future Rach, we’re gonna miss ya xxx,” he wrote in response to Brookes’ Instagram post. 

Meanwhile, fellow Sky Sports F1 presenter Simon Lazenby said: “We will miss you Rach xxx.” 

Former F1 driver Karun Chandhok, who works as a pundit for Sky Sports F1, added: “Will miss you on tour Raquel.”

Harry Benjamin, who acts as Croft’s stand-in when he misses races, said: “Good luck Rach, see you in paddock soon.”

Brookes, 51, teased that she is “moving on to exciting new ventures” that would see her remain involved in F1 in some capacity. 

"After many years at Sky I am moving on to exciting new ventures and looking forward to what comes next,” Brookes wrote on the social media platform X. 

“I have left the Sky F1 team but F1 still has my heart & so I’ll still be involved in it. I’ll keep you posted, in the meantime see you at Silverstone!”

Brookes recently revealed she received “horrific” abuse from online trolls following an interview with Max Verstappen last year. 

“I got a lot of messages from people in broadcasting, in sports broadcasting, saying: ‘Well done for asking the question’,” Brookes told the Road to Success podcast. 

“Because nobody else in that pen that day asked him that question – and even my colleagues said they wouldn’t have asked that question, because they’d have been too scared to ask it.

“But then the fans, the social media side of it, was horrendous. I got people telling me I should never be able to have children because I’m a bad example. I got the most horrific stuff you could imagine.

“And this is from a lot of these profiles with dads with kids with daughters and things like that, where you just look at it and think: ‘Take a step back. It’s a Formula 1 race. It’s sport’.

“But the stuff I got sent was horrendous, utterly horrendous. So I just closed my comments.”