NASCAR Drivers Training- The Physical and Mental Stresses

So maybe you are fascinated with NASCAR and would like to choose this as a career. How does one go about participating in race driver training so as to become a driver? There are drivers training schools but all are very expensive and there is no guarantee that you will become a real NASCAR driver. So what kind of training makes a professional driver?

Well, just as in other professional sports, the competition to be a driver is very tough. But more than that, the majority of people dont get there because of a lack of driver training. It usually is because of who they know, who their family is, and where they started. These drivers start when they are very young and run the go cart circuits. Their fathers were probably race car drivers. They probably ran into a promoter or sponsor somewhere along the way that gives them their big break.

NASCAR driver training includes the physical portion and also stresses mental conditioning. Although to the fans it looks easy, a drivers brain has to work very fast to be alert to other cars around him while trying to take the lead and maintain it.

The best training has been learned in the early years by most of these drivers when they were just children. Growing up around tracks and being able to drive the cars at young ages allowed the driver training to become somewhat instinctive. This is very important because later on during professional competition, the carbon monoxide levels can get very high inside of the drivers compartment. Carbon monoxide can cause confusion. The way to overcome confusion is to depend on instinct. Training accentuates the instinct.

The physical conditioning of the driver is the subject for an article all its own but you can think about it as somewhat like an astronaut preparing for his or her first launch. The G forces are very significant for a race car driver and driver training includes getting conditioned to them. Astronauts experience significantly more G forces but the NASCAR driver should include conditioning for them nonetheless.

The training also includes the drivers education from a young age. You might ask what non-driving education has to do with NASCAR driver training. Well, a driver is going to be promoting the products of some very large and prominent companies. That means that along the way he or she will have to give an endorsement of the products. If these guys get in front of the camera and cannot use proper grammar it would not look too good.

Another reason why education is important in NASCAR is because the driver wont be able to drive forever. Once a driver gets into middle age, it becomes tougher. So he will need to be able to branch out into other aspects of the racing business. He will probably still be running the team but will have to think more of the business aspect of things. This is where business and marketing education would be most beneficial.

Many of the retired drivers such as Richard Petty operate driving schools as well as serious driver improvement programs when they are offering NASCAR driving experiences for those wondering what its like to be as a NASCAR driver.

For the largest selection of Nascar Merchandise along with up to the minute News, NASCARsupershop offers this and more. We carry everything NASCAR including NASCAR Jerseys and NASCAR Jewelry all at the best prices everyday! I'm not only the owner of NASCARsupershop.com I'm also the senior editor, website developer and a HUGE fan of NASCAR!

Article Source: NASCAR Drivers Training- The Physical and Mental Stresses

Source: http://www.articlespan.com/article/101622/nascar-drivers-training-the-physical-and-mental-stresses

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Nascar And The FX Race Technology

With the coming of engineering in the 21st century, reality television has made the front seat. As more and more proficiencies are formulated to make TV more interactional and advanced, sporting events are not left far behind. Nascar has started the race F/X technology, which has enhanced the interest further amongst TV audiences. Well, the technology was primitively started by FOX, which started trailing the hockey puck on national television. The trick was hot, and it became an instant hit.

Nascar brought in a synonymous technology to track their cars. But tracking a puck on a hockey field and tracking a car moving at 200 mph on a racing circuit are two different matters entirely. In Nascar, the commentators talk about a car and then the car is spotlighted with a glowing halo around it. It looks incredibly cool on television. The statistical information about the car is also presented just above the car.

The Technology Behind The Trick
Race F/X uses a wide range of parameters to showcase their final product. GPS orbiters form an integral component of the Race F/X technology. They are used to dig up the cars as they move around the circuit. They work in tandem with an earth-based navigation system. The tracking is so accurate that the car is tracked up to 20 millimeters distance from its real position.

In-car sensing elements in the cars also play a important part in enhancing the telecasted event. They help the GPS locate the cars and also help the networks to collect as much statistical data about the car as possible. The info is highly detailed and contains minute contingents like RPM, acceleration, speed, fuel consumption, and even braking. This information is gathered at the speed of ten times a second. So you can rest assured that it is most recent information that you see on top of your favorite Nascar cars.

You Will Be In It
The day is not very far when you will be able to control the Nascar cars race F/X technology and you will be able to select and highlight the car that you want to follow. This will be done with the help of a set top box, Nascar says. A video game variation of Nascar is also on the advent. This will enable you to race your own virtual car on the racing circuit with the greats of racing. So the days are not far when your own car will be racing beside Jeff Gordon and you will be in your living room all the time. Now isn't that cool?

This will propel Nascar racing into a entirely different realm altogether. So, get ready, get set, GO!

This author is a HUGE fan of NASCAR licensed merchandise

Article Source: Nascar And The FX Race Technology

Source: http://www.articlespan.com/article/111182/nascar-and-the-fx-race-technology

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Why the Monaco GP still packs a punch

Once a year Formula 1 absolutely lives up to its billing as the most glamorous sport in the world and that time comes at the Monaco Grand Prix.

On Friday morning, I had to gingerly step aboard a tender and then climb a rope ladder dangling from the side of a yacht to interview Renault's Nick Heidfeld on deck. Yes, this really could only happen in Monaco.

Without a doubt, the glamour and prestige of the tiny principality, where residents are required to have a significant sum in the bank, inflates F1's wow factor.

"I love it here, it is fantastic," crooned Lewis Hamilton, a Monaco race-winner in 2008 for McLaren. "Wow, this is such a beautiful place to be."

A panoramic view of the course

Monaco's street circuit provides a unique thrill for spectators (Getty)

After a muted showing in recent years, the harbour is once again crammed with multi-million pound yachts. Force India owner Vijay Mallya held a Bollywood-themed party on the Indian Empress while the imposing Force Blue made its return with flamboyant owner and former Renault boss Flavio Briatore on board.

Red Bull and Toro Rosso have also taken to water in their floating motorhome - complete with its own swimming pool - while Ferrari have gone one better by putting up their personnel on a yacht.

With such exotic playthings at hand it's hardly surprising the guest list includes Hollywood A-listers Scarlett Johansson and Leonardo di Caprio.

But for all the privilege and status on show, the Monaco Grand Prix also provides unrivalled access for fans.

The more affluent spectator can fork out up to £3,800 for Sunday's race but the cheapest seat is £65 and offers amazing trackside views and a party atmosphere from the Rochers hill along the side of the royal palace.

It's also the only paddock where fans can walk along the waterfront and peer into the teams' inner sanctums before posing for photos with their heroes as they emerge from the motorhomes.

And when the racing is over and dusk falls, the party begins on the track as fans sip a biere or two at the Rascasse bar.

Girls at a promotional event

Glitzy promotional events are par for the course in Monaco (Getty)

When Stirling Moss raced here during the Sixties he developed a habit of waving at female fans sunning themselves along the harbour.

Moss said he even used it as a ploy in the 1961 grand prix when he was under pressure from Richie Ginther's chasing Ferrari. Moss took his hand off the wheel to salute a girl and prove he wasn't feeling under pressure.

But can McLaren driver Jenson Button, a Monaco playboy turned triathlete, still have a sneaky glimpse at an average speed of 100mph? "No," he answered sternly.

Whatever you think of Monaco's champagne and celebrity, the yachts and those who pose upon them, Button is spot on - none of it detracts from the racing through the streets.

The miniature land, stacked on a rocky lip of land between France's Mont Angel mountain and the Mediterranean, is just made for the fastest cars in the world to hurtle around.

First comes the noise, the hum hidden among the biscuit-coloured buildings that gathers to a roar as the cars flash past.

Watching the cars fly by the grand Casino, weave nose-to-tail round the hairpin, thunder through the tunnel and then out again in a blink of light past the water and back round to Rascasse is mesmerising, and often nail-biting.

The late Ayrton Senna, who won in Monaco a record six times, spoke of an out of body experience as he glided between the barriers and round the twisting curves.

Driving precision is everything here and there is virtually no let-up, no straights to clear the head over 78 laps.

Two-time Monaco winner turned BBC pundit David Coulthard commented: "For me there's no better challenge for the driver than Monte Carlo and no more glamorous grand prix. For me it's still a thrill."

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/sarahholt/2011/05/once_a_year_formula_1.html

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Has F1 made overtaking too easy?

There have been five grands prix so far in the 2011 Formula 1 season and every single one of them, in its own way, has been a cracker.

The introduction of faster wearing tyres from new supplier Pirelli, the DRS overtaking aid and the return of Kers power-boost systems has led to a perfect storm of close racing, overtaking and pit stops.

This has made for an exciting season even though Red Bull driver Sebastian Vettel is running away with the championship after four wins and a second place in five races.

Yet there is disquiet in some parts of the Formula 1 paddock.

There is a purist view that what the world is seeing is some kind of pale shadow of what F1 really should be. Superficially the racing has improved, some are saying, but is it real? Is this F1 or a tainted, cheapened version of it?

After years of complaints about overtaking being too difficult in F1, about races tending towards the processional, about a general lack of entertainment, it might seem a somewhat perverse thing to say.

But the sense, in some quarters, is that in trying to spice up the show, the sport has veered a little too far towards showbiz and lost some of its true essence.

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He is careful about he expresses it, but Vettel's team-mate Mark Webber is one of the chief exponents of this view.

Ironically, Webber has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of the new rules so far.

In China, where he qualified close to the back, the Australian used a clever strategy to benefit from the huge grip differences between new and old, hard and soft tyres, as well as the DRS, to climb up to third place by the end of the race, just seven seconds behind winner Lewis Hamilton.

So great was his pace advantage over his rivals in the latter stages that had the race been three laps or so longer Webber would have won. From 18th on the grid. In a race in which there was only one retirement. Even allowing for the superiority of the Red Bull, that is astonishing.

And yet Webber said afterwards that it felt a little hollow. Sure, he had enjoyed himself, and he was pleased with the result. But passing tough, world-class competitors such as Fernando Alonso so easily when they were effectively defenceless did not feel quite right. The racing, he says, is "less intense" than it was.

Webber brought up the subject again in Spain at the weekend, pointing out that the lap times F1 cars were doing on worn tyres and high fuel loads were only eight seconds faster than those of the GP3 cars, two categories down the motor racing ladder.

"We still need to be the pinnacle," Webber said. "We need to be able to push the cars to the limit throughout a grand prix and have very strong lap times, man against machine.

"Pirelli are working hard but we need to make sure the degradation and pace is still of a sensible magnitude and the cars can be put on the limit and not get too far on the showbiz side of things."

It's not just Webber, either. Last week, influential Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo weighed into the debate, too.

Di Montezemolo said: "Listen, I want to see competition, I want to see cars on the track. I don't want to see competition in the pits.

"A little bit, yes - but in the last race (Turkey) there were 80 pit stops. Come on, it's too much. And the people don't understand anymore because when you come out of the pits you don't know what position you're in.

"I think we have gone too far with the machines, too many buttons. The driver is focusing on the buttons, when you have the authorisation to overtake. We have gone too far."

Much of the criticism has, as Di Montezemolo said, focused on the DRS. This is a clever device that moves a part of the rear wing, reducing drag, and therefore increasing straight-line speed.

A driver can use it in a specified zone on the track, on the longest straight, when he is within a second of the car in front at a predetermined point before the DRS zone. The driver defending his position cannot use it.

The idea was to make overtaking easier - but not too easy. The problem is that people have looked at the Turkish race, and the number of times drivers sailed past rivals down the long back straight, and concluded that DRS is making overtaking like driving past someone on the motorway.

That, though, is a misunderstanding of what is actually happening. In Turkey, as in so many of the other races, what promoted the overtaking was the differing grip levels of the tyres at various stages of their lives.

As Charlie Whiting, the race director, points out, in a lot of the cases in Istanbul, the driver behind already had a massive speed advantage over his rival even before he got to the DRS zone. Because his tyres were providing him with so much more grip, he could slingshot out of the preceding corner so much faster.

In those circumstances, the pass would have been easy regardless, DRS or not.

"Our view has always been we shouldn't make it easy, we should make it possible," Whiting says.

"In Melbourne we didn't have quite enough length (in the DRS zone). I think it worked perfectly in Malaysia and China. But we're all learning here. I definitely don't think we've made it too easy.

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"I don't think anyone is under any illusion that it's the DRS that's allowing the overtaking. Opinions vary presumably, but tyres probably have a bigger part to play at the moment. I don't think we've gone over the top with the DRS, and we certainly don't want to. We've got no intention of doing that. We believe it's a good tool and hopefully you agree."

Although I share some of Webber's reservations, I also do not want to see fast cars stuck for ever behind slow ones just because the laws of aerodynamics dictate that drivers cannot follow closely enough to overtake. The DRS is a way of using technology to get F1 out of a hole that technology has got it into.

So, fundamentally, as long as governing body the FIA can find the right balance, I think Whiting is right on this, and the proof came in Sunday's Spanish Grand Prix.

Vettel spent the first 18 laps bottled up behind the fast-starting but slow Ferrari of Alonso. Red Bull tried to jump the Spaniard with an early first pit stop, but just failed when Ferrari responded and got out in front.

So they tried again and despite Vettel having to pass three cars on his out lap and Ferrari responding next time around, the German blasted past the pit exit just as Alonso was emerging.

Last year, with much slower wearing Bridgestone tyres meaning smaller pace differentials between the cars, Vettel would never have been able to pass three cars on his out lap, and he may well have spent the entire race behind Alonso.

At the same time, the difficulties all drivers had in passing down the main straight, the DRS zone, when they were able to pass elsewhere - around Turns Four, Five, 10 and 11, for example, where overtaking was previously very rare - proved that it was the tyres not the DRS that were making the difference.

"Barcelona had the possibility to be a drone-a-thon," Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said after the race. "Two years ago here, Sebastian drove around looking at the exhaust of (Ferrari's) Felipe Massa for the whole grand prix.

"This has really changed the dynamics of that and a track where it's traditionally difficult to overtake and produce close racing has produced an absolute thriller. The regulations have obviously contributed and created that. They're working."

It's true that the tyres' fragility is stopping the drivers exploiting the full potential of their cars all the time. This may not always be desirable but, as my colleague Mark Hughes points out in his column, this season it probably is.

If the cars were all on rubber that allowed them to push to the limit in the race, Red Bull would probably be able to tap into more of the speed that gives them such a huge advantage in qualifying. In which case Vettel wouldn't just be winning, he would be driving off into the distance. The tyres appear to be making the racing close, and introducing competition that might not otherwise be there.

Despite Vettel's domination, all the races have been close and exciting to watch and that is having a startling effect on the television audience.

You might expect, for example, that a German winning nearly everything would cause TV audiences to switch off in the UK, but in fact the opposite has been the case.

The BBC F1 audience has been up at all but one race so far this year. China had the highest number of viewers that race has ever had. During the Spanish race, the peak audience was 1.2 million higher this year than last.

But far more telling is the behaviour of the audience during the race. In the past, there would usually be a peak at the start, a significant dip in the middle, another peak at a moment of high excitement - a crash, a pit stop etc - another dip and a peak at the end.

This year, though, the audience has started higher than before - and stayed there throughout the race. People dare not switch off for fear of missing something. Far from the races being too confusing - as some newspapers have said - they are proving to be gripping from beginning to end.

I'll leave the final word to Jenson Button. He was asked if F1 had veered too far towards 'showbiz'.

"There are more positives than negatives," he said. "Of course it's a show; that's what any sport is. We need viewers to exist and the viewers have gone through the roof supposedly. I don't think we've done anything wrong. We've definitely gone in the right direction."

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/andrewbenson/2011/05/has_f1_made_overtaking_too_eas.html

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NASCAR The Drivers Physical Conditioning

So does NASCAR driver physical conditioning matter. Some would debate that drivers are not athletes but one must consider the conditions inside of a stock car race vehicle. The interiors of these cars are not designed for driver comfort with air conditioning and surround sound. Everything about a stock car is focused on speed not on comfort. So NASCAR driver physical conditioning must be such that it builds a drivers endurance to withstand some harsh conditions and Gforces. And, the NASCAR driver physical conditioning is very similar to athletes in other sports except different areas are built up.

The temperatures in the drives cockpit of a race car can reach around 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Combine this temperature with a 500 lap race at 200 mph along with lack of air flow and you will see that NASCAR driver physical conditioning to build in endurance is critical. Plus, a NASCAR driver will need to steer and maneuver a 3,400 pound vehicle around curves, other cars, and over bumps. This can cause a lot of impacting against the driver plus just the strain of controlling the steering wheel. Then there are the G forces that will result from banking turns at speeds close to 200 mph causing pressure on the drivers torso as it presses against the side of the vehicle.

Oxygen is a problem too. Since the cars are very aerodynamic so as to increase speed, the air is guided around the car but does not reach the inside. The drivers cockpit is not pressurized like an aircraft. So, the driver has to be able to process what oxygen he gets very efficiently. Therefore, NASCAR driver physical conditioning will include aerobic exercises so as to optimize the processing of oxygen by the body.

Part of any good physical athletic training is the proper amount of nutrition and rest and NASCAR driver physical conditioning is no exception to this. By including the proper amount of nutrition and rest in NASCAR driver physical conditioning, the driver can maintaining alertness and quick reflexes which are crucial to a safe drive. Not getting the proper amount of rest can cause a driver to make mistakes which at 200 mph could be dangerous and even fatal.

Without the proper nutrition and rest in the drivers physical conditioning, a driver can become confused and disoriented during the race. This is especially true when combining the lack of air in the cockpit mixed with carbon monoxide fumes and tremendous G forces which cause disorientation as well. G forces can also affect vision but proper nutrition and vitamins combat against their effects.

NASCAR driver physical conditioning also includes weight training but not in order to build mass. The weight training performed by a driver is to build up strength for steering and breaking. It is also so that the drivers body can withstand the abuse from bouncing around and getting slammed from excessive Gforces.

NASCAR driver physical conditioning separates those who can make it for an entire racing event and those who would wear out during the qualification races. It is very important and the sport should be taken just as serious as any other professional sport.

For the largest selection of Nascar Merchandise along with up to the minute News, NASCARsupershop.com offers this and more. We carry everything NASCAR including Nascar Car Flags and Nascar Baby Pajamas all at the best prices everyday!

Article Source: NASCAR The Drivers Physical Conditioning

Source: http://www.articlespan.com/article/102519/nascar-the-drivers-physical-conditioning

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F1 in a spin over Bahrain

Three days after motorsport's governing body, the FIA, reinstated the Bahrain Grand Prix on to this year's Formula 1 calendar, the likelihood of the race actually taking place remains as uncertain as ever.

As FIA president Jean Todt was telling the BBC on Monday that the situation in Bahrain was now back to normal following the civil unrest that led to the race being postponed in February, the F1 teams were discussing what to do next.

I understand that the teams all feel that going to Bahrain this season is not a good idea, and that their objections are based on two main points:

Logistical - as Mercedes team principal Ross Brawn has pointed out, the F1 team members have been working flat out since January, and shoe-horning an extra race into an already crowded season's end, and extending the championship until mid-December, is a step too far.

Ethical and moral - trying to bring such issues into sports scheduling raises all sorts of difficult questions, such as exactly where you draw the line. After all, Bahrain is not the only country on the F1 schedule about which human rights groups have concerns. Which is why sports' bodies generally try to stay out of politics. But the teams feel that if holding a grand prix in a strife-torn area is likely to exacerbate the situation, then that is on the wrong side of the line.

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No team has made these views public yet, with the only official statement so far emerging from their umbrella group Fota, stating that the issue would be discussed internally and that a joint position may be defined. It may be that this will happen over the course of the Canadian Grand Prix this weekend.

In the meantime, F1 is in a state of limbo that reflects badly on it on several different levels.

How, many outside the sport will ask, can it have taken so long to come to this decision? And how, having done so, can there still be uncertainty about whether the Bahrain Grand Prix will be held this year?

There are different versions of exactly what happened on Friday in the meeting of the FIA World Council that resulted in Bahrain's reinstatement.

FIA insiders have said that while the governing body may be aware of the teams' reported unease, it has received so far only a letter from Brawn and one from the Grand Prix Drivers' Association, outlining their concerns about safety.

So if the teams felt uneasy about the race, why did not any of their representatives raise an official objection?

Equally, though, with the world's media and Amnesty International reporting continuing human rights abuses in Bahrain, was the FIA right to conclude in its own report that the situation is now "very stable and very quiet", as Todt put it?

Even as he justified the world council's decision, though, Todt may have been laying the ground for calling off the race - he gave himself some 'wriggle room'.

After a lengthy exposition on how all major parties in Bahrain backed the reinstatement of the race, and how United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon was talking about "restoring a good situation in this part of the world", Todt added: "But we are talking about 30 October, so it will be monitored and things will be taken into consideration. The decision to go ahead was taken regarding how things are now."

Could that be the signal that another U-turn is on the cards?

I'm told that over the next few days the teams are likely to quietly begin to lobby the FIA to reconsider, pointing out that far from helping heal the wounds caused by the violent suppression of February's pro-democracy protests, the decision to hold a race already looked to be doing the opposite.

Only on Monday, the Bahrain Centre of Human Rights indicated that it would be calling for a "day of rage" on 30 October, the date of the rescheduled race, while the UK sports minister warned that holding the race would lead to a "disaster".

While all the teams are uneasy (even McLaren, whose biggest shareholder is a financial group owned by the Bahrain government), I'm told that the greatest concerns are held by three organisations - Renault, Mercedes and tyre supplier Pirelli, none of whom were available for comment.

As the three biggest corporate entities in F1, this would not be a surprise. They have well developed corporate social responsibility programmes, and they have the most to lose from a PR point of view from the inevitable negative fall-out that holding a race this year would create.

Todt acknowledged that it was "their choice" if they wanted to boycott the race - and there is precedent for that in F1.

In 1985, Renault and their fellow French team Ligier refused to take part in the South African Grand Prix, in a country still nine years away from the end of apartheid, following pressure from their country's government. And a number of sponsors of the teams that did take part removed their logos from the cars.

I understand that a boycott is not, for now, on the agenda. Even so, having just announced that the race will go ahead, the FIA finds itself in a difficult situation. But there is a way out.

Suppose, quietly, behind the scenes, the teams make it clear that they are unhappy about the Bahrain Grand Prix going ahead. As part of this pressure, it is made clear to the Bahraini authorities that if they insist on holding the race, some teams and sponsors will not attend. There is even the chance that the sport's tyre supplier would refuse to participate - meaning a race could not happen in any event.

In those circumstances, Bahrain would be faced with a choice.

They could go ahead with the race in the wake of a stream of statements from major global corporate stakeholders that they felt the event was untenable - not exactly a desirable situation for a significant international banking hub.

Or they could quietly announce that, given the circumstances, the risk of further protest, of putting pressure on a sensitive situation, in hindsight they believed that the best action would be to call off the race after all.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/andrewbenson/2011/06/three_days_after_motorsports_g.html

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Fernando Alonso - classic F1 2011

It is the turn of Ferrari's Fernando Alonso to pick his five favourite all-time grands prix in the latest edition of our classic Formula 1 series.

We have asked all the drivers to do the same, and are broadcasting their choices - and highlights of the relevant races - ahead of each grand prix this season to whet your appetites for the action to come. Highlights will be shown on this website and on the red button in the UK.

Alonso follows in the footsteps of Sebastian Vettel, Michael Schumacher, Sebastien Buemi and Rubens Barrichello so far this season.

We have chosen Spain's double world champion this time because it is his home race this weekend, and among his choices is a grand prix from the Circuit de Catalunya that has hosted the event since 1991.

That choice is the 2006 Spanish Grand Prix, which Alonso won to become the first Spaniard to win his home race. Of his 26 career victories, and 162 grands prix, the 29-year-old says this one "may be for me still the most emotional race".

Alonso has picked only two races from his own career, the other being his remarkable victory in last year's maiden Korean Grand Prix.

Those who remember his manic cackle over the radio on the slow-down lap - part disbelief, part sheer joy, part cartoon villain - will not be surprised that he has chosen that race. You may, though, be as surprised as I was that he did not choose his superb victory in the Italian Grand Prix last year, in his first season at Ferrari, which he likened to his Spanish victory.

For Alonso, Korea last year marked the climax of a quite brilliant fightback in the world championship battle.

Leaving the British Grand Prix, the 10th of 19 races last year, Alonso was 47 points off the championship lead. His victory in Korea, seven races later, put him at the top of the standings. Of course, he went on to lose the championship by just four points to Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel after a catastrophic strategic error by Ferrari in the final race in Abu Dhabi.

In Korea, Alonso was engaged in an intense race-long battle for the lead with Vettel and McLaren's Lewis Hamilton which was finally decided in the Ferrari driver's favour when Vettel suffered an engine failure in the closing stages.

But that was not the only reason Alonso remembers the race so fondly - in fact, he did not even mention that he won it.

He said: "I will always remember the first race in Korea because the conditions were so extreme in terms of light.

"It was completely dark and it was so wet. It was one hour delayed because of the wet. We could not follow the safety car because of the spray.

"There were so many things in one race that it remains quite shocking what we did in Korea."

Alonso's other three choices are ones that have already proved popular among the other drivers.

He has chosen the two notorious Japanese Grands Prix of 1989 and 1990, in both of which Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost collided to decide the destiny of the world title. These were also chosen by Buemi.

And finally there is Belgium 2000, featuring Mika Hakkinen's famous pass of Schumacher, as the two went either side of the backmarker Ricardo Zonta. This race was also chosen by Schumacher.

Alonso says: "One of my favourite races was Senna-Prost fight in Suzuka when in Turn One they finished both in the gravel (1990), and the year before, when one of them (Prost) finished stopped in the chicane.

"I also like, and have seen many times on TV, the race at Spa with Mika and Michael, when they overtook Ricardo Zonta at the end of the straight. That was a super race - from both of them."

An interesting footnote about that weekend in Belgium in 2000 is that it was also crucial in Alonso's career.

He was racing in Formula 3000, the forerunner of today's GP2 feeder series, driving for the Astromega team, who were not one of the better outfits.

In terms of bald statistics, it was not a great season. At Spa, though, on one of the world's great driver circuits, Alonso was in a league of his own, taking pole position, a dominant victory and fastest lap.

His performance impressed many of those watching the race in the F1 paddock, among them a certain Flavio Briatore, who pretty much immediately signed Alonso up for his driver management business.

The next year, Alonso was driving for Minardi in F1, the year after that he was test driver for Briatore's Renault team, in 2003 he was promoted to a race drive and the rest is history.

In Hungary that year, Alonso's became the sport's youngest ever race winner and two years later its youngest world champion, and a year after that the youngest double champion.

Now, back to classic F1.

In these blogs, we pick one of the driver's choices to highlight. Logically, this time it would be Spain 2006, this being not only Alonso's favourite race but also the one that is most directly related to the forthcoming event.

The victory hinged on a blistering opening stint from Alonso - he was making a first stop much earlier than Schumacher's Ferrari and for a while there some tension about whether he was doing a three-stop strategy to Schumacher's two, and whether he would pull out enough of a gap to make it work.

As it turned out, Alonso did only two stops, with a long middle stint, and while it was a powerful and impressive drive, the race was pretty uneventful. So we have decided instead to showcase last year's Korean Grand Prix, which was completely the opposite.

So, long highlights of that race are embedded below. A link to the short highlights is underneath, along with long and short highlights of Mark Webber impressive victory for Red Bull in last year's Spanish Grand Prix. Highlights of the other races Alonso picked are linked out of the relevant point in this blog.

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CLICK HERE TO WATCH SHORT HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 2010 KOREAN GRAND PRIX
CLICK HERE TO WATCH SHORT HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 2010 SPANISH GRAND PRIX
CLICK HERE TO WATCH EXTENDED HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 2010 SPANISH GRAND PRIX

On digital satellite and cable television on the BBC red button in the UK, we will be showing short highlights from Japan 1989, Belgium 2000 and Spain 2006 as well as extended highlights of Korea 2010 and Spain 2010 from 1500 BST on Wednesday 18 May until 1200 BST Sunday 22 May.

On Freeview we will be showing short highlights from Japan 1989, Belgium 2000 and Spain 2006 as well as extended highlights of Korea 2010 from 1040 BST until 1250 BST on Friday 20 May.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/andrewbenson/2011/05/fernando_alonso_picks_his_five.html

Denny Hamlin David Carl Allison Gregory Jack Biffle David Lee Blaney