RISING STARS No3: Paul Di Resta

After featuring 2 of the continent's young starlets, i thought why not have a look at what old blighty (thats Britain to you and me) has to offer, and who better than this immensely talented scotsman.

Paul Di Resta from West Lothian in Scotland has certainly carved a huge reputation for himself in the lower formulae and now is a frontrunner in Eurpoe's leading touring car series, the German DTM, through that he is getting huge publicity as a driver for the factory Mercedes team in which (at the time of writing) is in the running to win that prestigious title in his very first season.

After a successful karting career, he stepped up to British Formula Renault in 2003, in which he had a solid first season out of the spotlight (a certain Lewis Hamilton won that title that year) and won on his final outing of the season at Oulton Park, hopefully a sign of things to come. A much better season in 2004 brought 4 wins and 3rd place in the championship behind new champion Mike Conway (now a regular in the GP2 Series.)

For 2005 he followed Lewis Hamilton to Germany and the Formula 3 Euroseries, at first Di Resta struggled to adapt to the new and more powerful car he was driving compared to his Formula Renault machine, but he soon got over his inexperience, with a sring of strong points finishes which included a great podium finish at the Norisring, this helped him finish in the top 10 of the championship on 32 points, again he was behind Lewis Hamilton, who won a staggering 15 out of the 20 races that season. With Hamilton progressing to GP2, the championship's leading team ASM needed a replacement and Di Resta's mid-season form caught their attention and as a result, they signed him up for the 2006 season, he didnt let them down, now with the best team on the F3 Euroseries grid, Di Resta could display his potential to the full, resulting in a glorious championship win with 5 victories and finishing ahead of the likes of Sebastian Vettel, Kazuki Nakajima, Romain Grosjean and Sebastien Buemi, themselves going on to future stardom.

However though, there were few opportunities available in higher formulae like GP2 and the Renault World Series, so Di Resta decided to pursue a career in tin-tops (touring cars) in the form of the DTM, a German series for V8 powered touring cars, being a rookie, he was given a chance in a 2 year old Persson motorsport run Mercedes, it was in this car that Di Resta finally got the attention of the higher echelons of the motorsports world, consistently beating the newer cars, getting 4 podium finishes (2 of them were 2nd places) and 5th spot in the championship beating Mercedes's star works drivers Bernd Schneider and former F1 World Champion Mika Hakkinen in the process. This earned him a test drive in a McLaren Mercedes F1 car, and also a deserved works drive in Mercedes latest 2008 car in the DTM. Di Resta thrived on his new found status as a works Mercedes driver winning twice and with 1 race to go, left himself with a wonderful opporunity of taking the overall title, with one race to go, he is just 2 points behind Audi's Timo Scheider, and heres hoping he pulls off another success.

Also during 2008, he was touted as being in contention for a F1 seat at Force India and got as far as having a test with them, before they confirmed Giancarlo Fisichella and Adrian Sutil as their drivers for 2009, as for Di Resta, he may have another season in DTM, but dont rule out another crack at single seaters either in Europe or North America.

CHINESE GRAND PRIX - Advantage Hamilton

Lewis Hamilton answered all of his critics in the week leading up to the race with a sublime and dominant display in a race in which he finally made his weekend dominance count, as a result, he now stands to become Britain's first F1 World Champion since Damon Hill in 1996, a finish in the top 5 at Interlagos, Brazil in a fortnight will guarantee that.

THE RACE

Hamilton, like he did in japan affirmed his weekend dominance with a comfortable pole position, but unlike Japan, he got a perfect start and raced into a lead of more than 2 car lengths going into the long spiraling 1st corner, a lead he would never relinquish in a race which would be best described as a precession, compared to Japan there was hardly any controversy or action whatsoever apart from Heikki Kovalainen's appalling luck continuing with a puncture while running 5th.

Basically all afternoon, nobody could live with Lewis Hamilton's pace, his McLaren was beautifully hooked up to the circuit, leaving the Ferrari engineers scratching their heads in disbelief as to how Hamilton was going so much quicker, There were no pitstop dramas, including Ferrari for once (who had finally ditched their controversial traffic light system in favour of the lollipop.)

In the end, Hamilton had won by a comfortable margin of nearly 15 seconds, ahead of both Ferrari's and both BMW's

DRIVERS STANDINGS - 1. Lewis Hamilton 94, 2. Felipe Massa 87, 3. Robert Kubica 75, 4. Kimi Raikkonen 69, 5. Nick Heidfeld 60, 6. Fernando Alonso 53, 7. Heikki Kovalainen 51, =8. Sebastien Vettel 30, =8. Jarno Trulli 30, 10. Timo Glock 22, 11. Mark Webber 21, 12. Nelson Piquet Jr 17

CONSTRUCTORS STANDINGS - 1. Ferrari 156, 2. McLaren Mercedes 145, 3. BMW Sauber 135, 4. Renault 72, 5. Toyota 52, 6. STR Ferrari 34, 7. Red Bull Renault 29, 8. Williams Toyota 26, 9. Honda 14, 10. Force India Ferrari 0

JAPANESE GRAND PRIX - Alonso Doubles Up

Im sorry i didnt post my Japanese Grand Prix report earlier, i have been pre occupied recently, anyway, here it is

Fernando Alonso was the unlikely winner of the Japanese Grand Prix at Mount Fuji (his 2nd win on the trot) in an incident filled and controversial race.

THE RACE

McLaren's title contender, Lewis Hamilton qualified well on pole after dominating the weekend up to that point. Thats where his dominance was to end though.

As the lights went out, Hamilton made a total mess of his start allowing Kimi Raikkonen to nip in front, Hamilton though gained momentum down the long straight and pulled out of the Ferrari's slipstream in an attempt to re-pass Raikkonen, however he left his braking way way too late, ran wide, taking half the field with him in the process and amidst all the chaos, Robert Kubica who started down in 6th all of a sudden found himself in the lead ahead of Alonso, Hamilton found himself down in 6th BEHIND title rival Massa. During the 1st corner chaos, David Coulthard and Sebastien Bourdais had made contact and Coulthard spun as soon as he floored the throttle as the contact ruined his rear suspension, in the process, he clattered into Kazuki Nakajima and removed the Japanese driver's front wing completely ruining any chance the young son of former Grand Prix Driver Satoru Nakajima had of scoring a good result in front of his home fans.

The action continued on the very next lap except this time, this incident would look to have massive implications in the title race. Hamilton got a great run on Massa coming into the hairpin/chicane complex, after faking an inside run, Massa then ran wide allowing Hamilton to switchback to the inside and take 5th spot, but then Massa proceeded to run across the grass on the inside of the chicane and clash into Hamilton's left sidepod, sending Hamilton into a spin that would put him down to 18th and last, costing him any chance of a points finish, to make matters worse, Hamilton was forced to pit for new tyres after flatspotting his fronts in that 1st corner lock-up.

Nothign much happened after that until the first round of pitstops, when Massa AND Hamilton both recieved drive-through penalties for their earlier transgressons (Hamilton for Dangerous Driving, Massa for making contact with Hamilton) this would put Massa well down the field as well, Alonso in 2nd stayed out longer than Kubica on a different fuel strategy, in that time, Kubica came out in bad traffic, Alonso set some very quick laps and came out in front of the Pole. During all that came a very big rarity, an engine failure in a McLaren, Heikki Kovalainen's Mercedes engine had packed up, the first time a Mercedes engine has failed in nearly 2 years, he was running 4th at the time and his retirement seriously dented McLaren's hopes of the constructors championship.

After the 2nd round of pitstops came the biggest talking point of the race. Massa despite his penalty had fought his way up to 8th spot and a points finish (Hamilton would eventually finish 12th) but then came across Sebastien Bourdais who had driven an excellent race to run up in a net 6th spot, Massa had the outside line on Bourdais coming into the first corner, Bourdais had no-where to go, Massa tried to hog the inside line and then drove into Bourdais's sidepod and then spun (probably in frustration) Massa had only himself to blame, but the implications of that incident would be far reaching.

Alonso in the menatime had a trouble free run to his 2nd win of the season, the 21st of his career ahead of Kubica and Raikkonen, Massa recovered to finish in 8th spot. But in an outrageous move, the stewards decided to penalize Bourdais (who had finished 6th) for his role in the incident with Massa even though he had done nothing wrong. This dropped him to 10th and promoted Massa up to 7th, giving him an extra point. Hamilton though despite his troubles, left Mount Fuji with a 5 point lead

A1GP: Fauzy and Duval prosper in Dutch deluge

A logistical nightmare, cars being built and delivered late and to top it all, monsoon consitions to greet the first race day of the new A1GP season, but through it all, the series came out with an enhanced reputation thanks to 2 exciting races in which 3 teams dominated

SPRINT RACE

The dutch car driven by Jeroen Bleekemolen dominated qualifying to take pole in front of the home crowd, the only downside being 17 cars were to participate instead of the expected 23 because 6 teams (Germany, Great Britain, India, Canada, Mexico & Pakistan) did not recieve delivery of their cars in time. But we did see the debut for 2 brand new teams, Monaco and South Korea, the former qualifying in the top 5. The race however was started behind the safety car because of the terrible weather, there was drama as the safety car pulled in so the race could start as Ireland's Adam Carroll spun at Lyuendyk corner taking out both him and the Monaco car driven by Cilvio Piccione. As the sprint race progressed, the first 4 cars began to open up a sizeable lead and Bleekemolen, looked comfortable at the front until a mistake at the chicane let through New Zealand's Earl Bamber into the lead, and later on Bleekemolen woul lose a further 2 places to 2 hard chargers, Fairuz Fauzy (Malaysia) and Loic Duval (France), Fauzy himself would later catch Bamber and pass him coming out of Tarzan corner, and he would go on to win ahead of Bamber, Duval, Bleekemolen, Switzerland's Neel Jani and Adrian Zaugg finishing 6th for South Africa. Italy's Fabio Onidi and American Chalie Kimball rounded out the points scorers in a race shortened by the accident of Brazil's Felipe Guimaraes.


FEATURE RACE

Fauzy (thanks to his sprint win) sat on pole for the feature race again started behind the safety car. After it went in, the conditions worsened further as the rain fell heavier, Carroll and Kimball were 2 that were caught out early on and later Neel Jani retired with a flooded gearbox. Onidi and Zaugg both crashed out soon after meaning only 12 cars were still running after just 8 laps but even more controversy arose after the first round of pitstops. Jeroen Bleekemolen came into the pits again complaining of gearbox problems and demanding his steering wheel was changed, they didnt and Bleekemolen decided to persist with the problem until the 2nd round of pitstops.

Before that though, Satrio Hermanto (Indonesia) crashed out but Filipe Albuquerque (Portugal) suffered a very scary off himself which forced the safety car to come out, that meant only 10 cars were left running meaning the 2 debutants (Monaco & South Korea) and Lebanon (after 3 years of trying) would be guaranteed to score their first points. Out of all the madness though, France's Loic Duval had quietly kept the race lead ahead of Malaysia and New Zealand and this was the case after the 2nd round of pitstops. USA driver Charlie Kimball then spun off immediately after setting the fastest lap much to the disappointment of team boss Michael Andretti. 2 laps later though came the incident that ended the race.

Lebanon's Daniel Morad failed to brake for the first corner sending him into a terrifying spin, he went head on into the barrier taking China's Ho-Pin Tung with him, both drivers came out fine, this meant the race finished behind the safety car with Duval taking (by his standards) a pretty much straightforward win ahead of Fauzy and Bamber, only 7 cars officially finished the race.

NATIONS STANDINGS TOP 10
=1. Malaysia 22, =1. France 22, 3. New Zealand 18, 4. Netherlands 11, 5. Australia 8, 6. Monaco 5, =7. South Korea 4, =7. Switzerland 4, =9. South Africa 3, =9. USA 3

DRIVERS TOP 10
=1. Fairuz Fauzy 22, =1. Loic Duval 22, 3. Earl Bamber 18, 4. Jeroen Bleekemolen 11, 5. John Martin 8, 6. Cilvio Piccione 5, =7. Jin-Woo Hwang 4, =7. Neel Jani 4, =9 Adrian Zaugg 3, =9. Charlie Kimball 3