We have a special treat for the audience of our classic grand prix series this week -extended highlights of two great past races rather than the usual one.
As regular readers of this blog will know, we ask you to tell us which is your favourite of four races we choose from the BBC Sport archive. We read those views and then select a race from which to broadcast the full 'Grand Prix' highlights programme shown at the time.
It is not a 'vote' per se, but this time it was such a close call between two of the races that we have decided to show the 'Grand Prix' programme for both, as well as the shorter highlights we cut for all the races.
As the idea is to whet your appetites for this weekend's Singapore Grand Prix, we are also broadcasting both short and long highlights of Lewis Hamilton's victory at the Marina Bay Circuit last year.
The two classic races we have chosen are the 1982 Detroit Grand Prix and the 1985 San Marino Grand Prix. The long highlights of these are embedded in this blog, with links to the other races - the 1979 Dutch Grand Prix, 1980 French Grand Prix and Singapore last year - at the bottom.
The classic races will be brodcast on the BBC red button on satellite and cable television in the UK from 1500 BST on Wednesday 22 September until 1055 on Friday 24 September. They will be on Freeview from 2300 on Thursday until 0645 on Friday.
Why two? Well, when we counted up the 'votes' from respondents, there was only one in it. Both are thrilling in their very different ways, so we decided both merited the full treatment.
I described all the races in my blog last week, but will give the two 'winners' a brief run-through here.
The 1982 Detroit Grand Prix featured a brilliant drive from Northern Irishman John Watson, who won after qualifying 17th.
In order to see this content you need to have both Javascript enabled and Flash installed. Visit BBC Webwise for full instructions. If you're reading via RSS, you'll need to visit the blog to access this content.
It was one of two similar performances he produced for McLaren in the US within nine months of each other - the other came at Long Beach the following year, when he won from 22nd on the grid!
Even though he did not start from quite so far back, Watson's performance in Detroit was arguably better, because overtaking was probably more difficult there than in Long Beach.
The Detroit race, held on downtown streets in 'Motor City' around the Renaissance Center skyscraper complex, was characterised by a high number of right-angled bends, although it also had two hairpins and a tunnel.
The difficulty of overtaking on the narrow, bumpy track was highlighted by a number of incidents - including one that forced the race to be stopped on lap seven, by which time Watson was already up to 13th.
Later on, Watson's team-mate Niki Lauda inadvertently proved it, too. After Watson had taken the lead from Williams's Keke Rosberg, Lauda then made a mess of trying to pass the Finn and took himself out.
The other highlighted race is the 1985 San Marino Grand Prix, one of the closest races of the great mid-1980s period, with a quite extraordinary finish.
In order to see this content you need to have both Javascript enabled and Flash installed. Visit BBC Webwise for full instructions. If you're reading via RSS, you'll need to visit the blog to access this content.
Ayrton Senna led much of the race in his Lotus-Renault but he was under intense pressure for many laps, first from the Ferrari of Michele Alboreto, then the McLaren of Alain Prost.
There was some quite brilliant racing throughout, but things became almost surreal in the last three laps.
First Senna retired having run out of fuel, and then Stefan Johansson, having taken the lead and seeming set to take a win for Ferrari at home in Italy in only his second race for the team, did the same.
That put Prost into the lead - and he duly took the flag, only to run out of fuel himself halfway around his slowing down lap.
"I bet you'll never see a grand prix more exciting than that," Murray Walker said at the end of the race.
As was so often the case, though, Murray spoke too soon - Prost's car was found to be 2kg under weight and the Frenchman was disqualified, handing the win to Senna's team-mate Elio de Angelis.
The highlights of the other races are linked below:
WATCH SHORT HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 1979 DUTCH GRAND PRIX
WATCH SHORT HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 1980 FRENCH GRAND PRIX
WATCH SHORT HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 1982 DETROIT GRAND PRIX
WATCH SHORT HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 1985 SAN MARINO GRAND PRIX
WATCH SHORT HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 2009 SINGAPORE GRAND PRIX
WATCH LONG HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 2009 SINGAPORE GRAND PRIX
No comments:
Post a Comment