Friday 29 October 2010

Your classic Italian Grand Prix

The 1991 Italian Grand Prix is the selected race in the latest edition of our classic grand prix series.

The full 'Grand Prix' highlights programme from the time is embedded below, with the links to the shorter edits of it and all the other races we gave as options in my blog last week underneath it.

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WATCH SHORT HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 1987 ITALIAN GRAND PRIX
WATCH SHORT HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 1991 ITALIAN GRAND PRIX
WATCH SHORT HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 1996 ITALIAN GRAND PRIX
WATCH SHORT HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 1998 ITALIAN GRAND PRIX
WATCH SHORT HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 2009 ITALIAN GRAND PRIX
WATCH LONG HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 2009 ITALIAN GRAND PRIX

The highlights will be available on satellite and cable television in the UK from 1500 BST on Wednesday 8 September until 1000 on Friday 10 of September. Unfortunately, because of a lack of bandwidth, they will not be available on Freeview.

As regular readers will know, we make the decision about which race to highlight after reading your responses to my previous blog.

It is not a 'vote' per se - in that it is ultimately our decision which race to show the extended highlights for - but we do take your views very seriously. And this was one of the closest calls we have had to make.

In terms of your responses, there was almost nothing to choose between the 1987, '91 and 1996 races. By my reckoning, '87 and '96 were tied in terms of backers, with '91 only three ahead.

In the end, though, Nigel Mansell's victory for Williams in 1991 is a deserving choice.

The Englishman won after a three-way battle between himself, team-mate Riccardo Patrese and McLaren's Ayrton Senna, who was Mansell's rival for the title that year.

Senna led from the start, tracked closely by both Williams drivers, who were also engaged in their own private fight.

In 1992, Mansell utterly dominated Patrese and the rest of the field in the FW14B, which was fitted with active suspension. In 1991, though, the two men were closely matched in its predecessor, the original FW14, which had standard suspension, and Patrese flat beat Mansell on some occasions.

When Patrese passed the Englishman at around half-distance, when the two men were still hounding Senna, Monza looked like being one of those times. But the Italian then spun on the very next lap, leaving Mansell to challenge Senna alone, and he passed the Brazilian a few laps later.

It was an important victory for Mansell, who had spent the summer trying to eat into the big lead Senna had built up by winning the first four races on the trot, at a time when Williams were struggling with reliability problems.

Following his Monza victory, with the faster car under him and momentum apparently riding with him, it was beginning to look as if Mansell might do it.

There were more wins to come - including in Spain, where he and Senna famously went wheel-to-wheel millimetres apart down the main straight - but ultimately the title slipped through Mansell's fingers. The end of his challenge was a mistake early in the Japanese Grand Prix, when he ran off the road and out of the race.

He would have to wait another year before finally getting his hands on the title.

You, though, can watch these videos right now. I hope you enjoy them.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/andrewbenson/2010/09/your_classic_italian_grand_pri_1.html

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