Year: 2025
Role: Camera operator
Studio or network: Formula 1, ESPN
Type: Live and unscripted
The Formula 1 Heineken Las Vegas Grand Prix ran on Saturday night, November 22, 2025, over 50 laps of the street circuit on the Las Vegas Strip. Max Verstappen won for Red Bull, and the McLarens of Norris and Piastri were both disqualified afterwards for excess skid-block wear. In the United States, ESPN's broadcast averaged 1.5 million viewers, a record for the race and up nearly 70 percent on 2024.
Michael-Ryan Fletchall worked the Grand Prix as a camera operator. He is a camera operator, Technocrane operator and chief drone pilot with three decades on films, series and live broadcasts.
Motorsport is hard on a lens. Cars arrive and leave a frame in a fraction of a second, so an operator has to pick them up early, pan smoothly and keep them sharp against a background that is always moving. At night on a street circuit the light changes from one corner to the next, with signs, floodlights and deep shadow all in the same shot. Away from the track, the cameras also cover the garages, the grid and the people, which is where a race gets its faces. Steady work in each position gives the director options every time something happens, and in racing something tends to happen without notice.