Paul di Resta - classic F1 2011

Scotland's Paul di Resta, who has made such an impressive start to his grand prix career with Force India this season, is the latest driver to feature in our revised classic Formula 1 series.

Ahead of the Canadian Grand Prix, the 25-year-old has picked his five favourite all-time F1 races. We will broadcast highlights of each of his choices in this blog and on the BBC red button to whet your appetites for the action to come in Montreal this weekend.

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

The drivers have all taken a different approach to this task. Vettel, for example, picked only races from his own career, while the others drivers we have showcased so far have all to one degree or another chosen a mix of races in which they featured and ones from before their own time in the sport.

Di Resta has raced in only seven grands prix so far, so it is no surprise that four of his five choices are from the archive.

His first is this year's Australian Grand Prix - after all, a driver will always remember his F1 debut fondly.

The rest are as follows:

The 1968 German Grand Prix, which has gone down in history as one of the great Jackie Stewart's most extraordinary victories, and one of the greatest of all time.

Di Resta says he "read about it in Jackie's autobiography - sounded exciting". The race, memorably described by Stewart himself, was held in teeming rain and dense fog, and Stewart was in a league of his own, winning by four minutes in his Matra.

The next choice is the 1979 French Grand Prix, famous for the thrilling duel over second place between Ferrari's Gilles Villeneuve and Renault's Rene Arnoux in the final three laps, the two men passing and re-passing, banging wheels in lurid, thrilling fashion, until Villeneuve finally prevailed.

It was one of the iconic Villeneuve's landmark performances, a man of sublime talent transcending the limitations of his machinery and taking on faster cars.

A similar description can be applied to Di Resta's next choice, the 1993 European Grand Prix at Donington Park, which has entered F1 folklore as one of the late Ayrton Senna's greatest wins.

In a race of constantly changing conditions, Senna moved from fifth to first in the course of a stunning first lap and raced off into a league of his own. Such was his superiority that at one point he had lapped the entire field.

Finally, Di Resta has chosen the climax to the 2008 world title fight at the Brazilian Grand Prix, when, as he puts it, "the championship went to the last corner".

Many will recall that Ferrari's Felipe Massa would overhaul McLaren's Lewis Hamilton and take the title if the Brazilian could win, with Hamilton finishing lower than fifth.

Massa completed his part of the bargain and, as he crossed the line to take the chequered flag, Hamilton was down in sixth place, having recently been passed by Toro Rosso's Vettel.

In the Ferrari pit they celebrated, but with rain falling all was not lost for Hamilton. Ahead of him the Toyotas, which had decided not to stop for wet-weather tyres, were struggling, and the Englishman passed the gripless Timo Glock at the last corner of the race to sneak the place he needed.

As regular readers will know, we pick one of the driver's choices to highlight and I have to admit that the initial inclination was to run Di Resta's choices ahead of the German Grand Prix and show the '68 race at the Nurburgring.

Highlights of that race do not exist in the BBC archive, though, so instead we have moved Di Resta to Canada and chosen the '79 French race because of Villeneuve, after whom Canada's F1 track is named.

So the full 'Grand Prix' highlights programme broadcast on the evening of that race is embedded below - it has never been shown since that day 32 years ago.

Beneath it are links to long and short highlights of last year's Canadian Grand Prix. It was arguably the best race of the season last year, featuring a thrilling battle between all five of the men who fought out the championship - Hamilton, his McLaren team-mate Jenson Button, Alonso's Ferrari and the Red Bull drivers Vettel and Mark Webber.

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

The details for the BBC red button on digital television in the UK are as follows:

Long highlights from France 1979, short highlights of Europe 1993, Brazil 2008 and Australia 2011 plus extended highlights of the Canadian Grand Prix 2010 will be broadcast on satellite and cable from 1500 BST on Wednesday 8 June until 1700 BST on Sunday 12 June.

Unfortunately, a lack of bandwidth because of the Queens tennis tournament means we are unable to broadcast these highlights on Freeview.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/andrewbenson/2011/06/paul_di_resta_-_classic_f1.html

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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 Tracks the Atlanta Motor Speedway

The Atlanta Motor Speedway is in Hampton, Georgia (a suburb of Atlanta) and has a 1.54-mile oval track with turns banking at 24 degrees. Because these banks and their smooth surface, car speeds have been known to reach 190 mph on occasion. However these sustained high-throttle speeds make it hard on engines at the Atlanta Motor Speedway. You will see a variety of action here as cars will race closely side-by-side along with a lot of pushing and cutting off. All this action at the Atlanta Motor Speedway is made even more exciting by the high speeds.

The Atlanta Speedway offers a variety of options to see the races from premier seating to facilities for camping. The raceways premier seating is the Club One option. Fans purchasing this seating option sit in a location with a great view on top of the Winners Grandstand. It has 65 video screens along with a first-class bar and menu. Probably one of the most exciting features of Club One is the fans get a pre-race pit stop pass.

The Speedway can be rented for all sorts of group occasions too. They have custom packages for weddings, wedding receptions, theme parties, birthday parties, group meetings, and other special gatherings.

You can bring your recreational vehicle or popup tent and camp at the Atlanta Motor Speedway too. Shower facilities are available.

The Speedways website is excellent and has all the information you need. It even has a frequently-asked questions link where you can see the answers on subjects such as getting drivers autographs to bringing your cooler inside the track.

If you ever wanted to get into racing marketing, NASCARs Atlanta Motor Speedway gives you the opportunity through its internship program. This is an unpaid internship program but it gives you the experience needed to get into the career of NASCAR marketing by allowing you to gain working experience at the Atlanta Motor Speedway. Plus, with this experience, one can be competitive in the market for the paid NASCAR marketing positions. The qualifications are that the person must be a college-level student (B.A. or B.S.) and a marketing communications major. You will help with the public relations, advertising, and event duties at the track.

The Atlanta Speedway is also the venue for numerous NASCAR driver schools where one can purchase a fantasy racing package and experience the thrill of being a driver for a short time. Now these are not schools to train you to be a professional driver. There is no career path like that. These are schools for the amateurs who just want to do something different and experience the thrill of the drive. There are different levels and of course price ranges. It is patterned a somewhat after the Major League Baseball fantasy camps where you get to play games and train alongside Major League Baseball players.

Richard Petty, the King of NASCAR, runs a driving experience school along with others who have their schools and use the Atlanta Motor Speedway track.

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The NASCAR Championships-Craftsman, Nationwide and Sprint

NASCAR is a competition and has its own set of championship series just as the World Series in Major League Baseball or the Stanley Cup Playoffs in the National Hockey League. Probably the most famous NASCAR championship series is the Sprint Cup Series. Note that the Cup Series will become the Sprint Cup Series because of the merger of the Sprint Corporation and NEXTEL Communications.

The history of the Sprint Cup Series began as the Strictly Stock Series in 1949, the Grand National Series between 1950 and 1971, and the Winston Cup Series between 1972 and 2003. Innovators of the Sprint Cup Series have made it so that drivers can score more points and even get 5 bonus points any time they take the lead for even one lap. And the lowest spot in the race result gets at least 34 points.

This model results in much more competition to the very end plus makes NASCAR more competitive with the National Football League in numbers of television viewers watching the racing sport. The series has also consists of a competitive series in the last 10 races known as The Chase. This is where the top drivers are selected based on accumulated points (those tied for a position too) after 26 races. There are many winners in this series. The champion gets 5 million and the others finishing in the top 10 positions each get 1 million. There is even something for the 11th place driver a 250,000 bonus. All this is designed to keep competition and excitement at a high level throughout the season.

Craftsman Truck Series is another one of the NASCAR championships with racing trucks designed from modified pickup trucks. The season runs from February through November. The beginning race is the Chevy Silverado HD 250 run at the Daytona International Speedway. The trucks run without restrictor plates to limit max speed like the NASCAR Sprint and Nationwide Series however because trucks are not as aerodynamic, they cannot reach the speeds the cars do.

The Busch Series is another of the championships and it is equivalent to the minor leagues of NASCAR racing. However, unless you are an expert, you cannot easily spot the differences between Nationwide Series competition and Sprint competition. The difference is in the cars. The cars of the Nationwide Series have a shorter wheel base 105 inches as opposed to 100 inches and the spoiler is larger too. At the end of the 2007 season, Busch has announced that it will no longer sponsor the Busch Series and now other sponsors like Wal Mart and Subway Sandwiches were trying to win a spot as the events primary promoter. Nationwide is what it will officially be called.

And then there is the championship among the auto makers known as the NASCAR Manufacturers Championship. This championship has been held ever since 1949 and it works by points being awarded to the different automobile manufacturers represented in each race. The auto manufacturer at the end of the season with the most points wins. Chevrolet won this NASCAR championship in 2006.

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_Figures and NASCAR Flags all at the best prices everyday! I'm not only the owner of NASCARsupershop.com

Article Source: The NASCAR Championships-Craftsman, Nationwide and Sprint

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NASCAR Tickets - Yates Racing's Kvapil Loses Ride

Even a season-best 18th place finish couldn't keep Yates Racing's Travis Kvapil and his No. 28 Golden Corral Ford Fusion in the running of the 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series after last week's Food City 500 at the Bristol Motor Speedway, and the Tennessee race was likely Kvapil's last race of the season. The 39th ranked Sprint Cup driver has had incredible difficulty keeping a sponsor this year, and Yates Racing had to make the tough choice this week to pull the plug on his 2009 racing career, suspending operations for this Wisconsin native's car in the wake of hard financial times.

Geoff Smith, president of Roush Fenway Racing (also partner with Yates Racing,) made a statement this week regarding the Kvapil decision, saying, "It's difficult to be in a situation when you have to deal with the consequences of the economy. We're in a situation where there's no extra cash to support running an unsponsored car for any period of time." While this means that the near future isn't looking so bright for Kvapil, Smith did say that "if the economy picks up later in the season maybe we'll be able to pick up something for that team."

Travis Kvapil had a hard break this year after failing to gain substantial backing in the form of a sponsor. Yates Racing and Roush put as much money as the teams could into Kvapil's car, but the demands to keep this stock car running were ultimately more than the team could handle, leaving No. 28 behind. Yates and Roush have been scrambling for sponsorship money for their drivers for a while now, and speculation is also starting to arise about other Roush drivers like Carl Edwards and Matt Kenseth, as Edwards is currently sponsored by the ailing Aflac and Kenseth's deal with DeWalt expires after this season.

This frustrating situation is tough for the ousted Travis Kvapil to stomach, yet the NASCAR driver is still being optimistic about his Cup Series run in 2009, saying, "We've just had bad luck [in 2009] and haven't had the results to show for it. [Sunday] we ran in the Top 15 most of the day but got the car a little bit off on one run and that hurt us and got us a lap down. I was hoping for a little bit better result to give us something more to sell, but I thought overall we did an OK job. It was fun to drive up through there and race hard. I leave here knowing in every race so far we've had competitive racecars - but it's gonna be a bummer when we realize it might be the end."

While the door has (temporarily?) closed for Travis Kvapil, Yates Racing's other driver Paul Menard is still in the running to rev his engine on race days to come, thanks in part due to his hefty sponsorship with his father's own chain of Menards home improvement stores. Menard is currently ranked 38th in the Sprint Cup Series, and now that Kvapil is gone he has the chance to fend off his position even more. Even though Travis Kvapil has been cut from the NASCAR circuit, the racing must go on, and NASCAR tickets are available now online.

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Article Source: NASCAR Tickets - Yates Racing's Kvapil Loses Ride

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Nascar Devotion Is Resilient When Change Occurs

There have been many changes to Nascar over the years, but changes are expected by fans and also by driver's who are circling around a racetrack at speeds that exceed 200 miles per hour at times. The driver is an expert at changing speeds and lanes and changing speeds once again to be within the legal limits of those speeds posted on pit row.

Most of the changes in Nascar racing have occurred over time and have been directly related to the high-speed pursuits around million dollar raceways. Some of those changes have been painful ones but the Nascar family has remained strong through each of them. Some of the most violent experiences that occasionally occur at a raceway will no doubt cause some people to rethink their past relationships with sponsors, owners, and family.

The cascading effects of those thoughts might lead drivers to other action and cause them to change their driving commitments and their relationship with the world of Nascar excitement. These changes will in turn, put them on a new career path that is a welcome change but a change that might not be a delight to all fans who do not have a full understanding on why those changes needed to happen.

Some of these changes are due to a repositioning of priorities by a team owner or the change might occur because a driver needs to take a step back and rethink things long enough to begin establishing a new view on self-worth and on the view that commitment to self should take precedence and priority over family persuasion and other control factors. No changes that occur in Nascar should directly impact the drivers ability to keep the commitments that are expected by fans. Fans expect their favorite drivers to give their all to win the race they are in, no matter what team they are driving for that year.

Some changes in Nascar racing can keep that from happening though. In an instant, enthusiasts may have more action than they bargained for when they must see the gut wrenching tragedies unfold in front of them. These tragedies can change people in an instant because the action comes from race cars that inadvertently crash at inopportune moments into the various turns of any raceway. Other drivers are lost while they are enroute to the track.

Fare affected by the change and are committed to remembering those moments many times through the years with reverence. The commitment of fans to Nascar and their driver is what keeps changes from dampening the endearing spirit of the crowds. There is one change that will never occur. The fans will always be there on race day and every day after in some small way.

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Paul di Resta - classic F1 2011

Scotland's Paul di Resta, who has made such an impressive start to his grand prix career with Force India this season, is the latest driver to feature in our revised classic Formula 1 series.

Ahead of the Canadian Grand Prix, the 25-year-old has picked his five favourite all-time F1 races. We will broadcast highlights of each of his choices in this blog and on the BBC red button to whet your appetites for the action to come in Montreal this weekend.

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

The drivers have all taken a different approach to this task. Vettel, for example, picked only races from his own career, while the others drivers we have showcased so far have all to one degree or another chosen a mix of races in which they featured and ones from before their own time in the sport.

Di Resta has raced in only seven grands prix so far, so it is no surprise that four of his five choices are from the archive.

His first is this year's Australian Grand Prix - after all, a driver will always remember his F1 debut fondly.

The rest are as follows:

The 1968 German Grand Prix, which has gone down in history as one of the great Jackie Stewart's most extraordinary victories, and one of the greatest of all time.

Di Resta says he "read about it in Jackie's autobiography - sounded exciting". The race, memorably described by Stewart himself, was held in teeming rain and dense fog, and Stewart was in a league of his own, winning by four minutes in his Matra.

The next choice is the 1979 French Grand Prix, famous for the thrilling duel over second place between Ferrari's Gilles Villeneuve and Renault's Rene Arnoux in the final three laps, the two men passing and re-passing, banging wheels in lurid, thrilling fashion, until Villeneuve finally prevailed.

It was one of the iconic Villeneuve's landmark performances, a man of sublime talent transcending the limitations of his machinery and taking on faster cars.

A similar description can be applied to Di Resta's next choice, the 1993 European Grand Prix at Donington Park, which has entered F1 folklore as one of the late Ayrton Senna's greatest wins.

In a race of constantly changing conditions, Senna moved from fifth to first in the course of a stunning first lap and raced off into a league of his own. Such was his superiority that at one point he had lapped the entire field.

Finally, Di Resta has chosen the climax to the 2008 world title fight at the Brazilian Grand Prix, when, as he puts it, "the championship went to the last corner".

Many will recall that Ferrari's Felipe Massa would overhaul McLaren's Lewis Hamilton and take the title if the Brazilian could win, with Hamilton finishing lower than fifth.

Massa completed his part of the bargain and, as he crossed the line to take the chequered flag, Hamilton was down in sixth place, having recently been passed by Toro Rosso's Vettel.

In the Ferrari pit they celebrated, but with rain falling all was not lost for Hamilton. Ahead of him the Toyotas, which had decided not to stop for wet-weather tyres, were struggling, and the Englishman passed the gripless Timo Glock at the last corner of the race to sneak the place he needed.

As regular readers will know, we pick one of the driver's choices to highlight and I have to admit that the initial inclination was to run Di Resta's choices ahead of the German Grand Prix and show the '68 race at the Nurburgring.

Highlights of that race do not exist in the BBC archive, though, so instead we have moved Di Resta to Canada and chosen the '79 French race because of Villeneuve, after whom Canada's F1 track is named.

So the full 'Grand Prix' highlights programme broadcast on the evening of that race is embedded below - it has never been shown since that day 32 years ago.

Beneath it are links to long and short highlights of last year's Canadian Grand Prix. It was arguably the best race of the season last year, featuring a thrilling battle between all five of the men who fought out the championship - Hamilton, his McLaren team-mate Jenson Button, Alonso's Ferrari and the Red Bull drivers Vettel and Mark Webber.

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

The details for the BBC red button on digital television in the UK are as follows:

Long highlights from France 1979, short highlights of Europe 1993, Brazil 2008 and Australia 2011 plus extended highlights of the Canadian Grand Prix 2010 will be broadcast on satellite and cable from 1500 BST on Wednesday 8 June until 1700 BST on Sunday 12 June.

Unfortunately, a lack of bandwidth because of the Queens tennis tournament means we are unable to broadcast these highlights on Freeview.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/andrewbenson/2011/06/paul_di_resta_-_classic_f1.html

Bertrand Gachot Patrick Gaillard Divina Galica Nanni Galli