Autosport International 2012 By Craig Styles (From Stourbridge News)

Autosport International 2012 By Craig Styles

4:39pm Sunday 15th January 2012 in Motoring Blogs By Craig Styles

Autosport International at the NEC in Birmingham traditionally starts off the Motorsport calendar. Grand prix stars like David Coulthard, Paul di Resta and Jonathan Palmer all available for everybody to get a glimpse of and to hear some fascinating stories about Grand Prix Life.

But a firm favourite of mine is Belfast born racer John Watson, 1981 British Grand Prix winner driving the McLaren MP4/1, the first Formula one car to win with a carbon fibre monocoque construction.

His driving style was clear from the outset, flat out all the way, no showboating, putting clear determination and skill racing alongside greats such as Niki Lauda and Mario Andretti.

These days John works as a commentator and my most exciting commentary John did was at the 1990 Monaco Grand Prix Weekend where Jean Alesi had his Tyrell sliding around the streets of Monaco and John made you feel that you were at the circuit, a fantastic piece of television.

Great to see John Watson or Wattie as Eddie Irvine would call him.

No Martin Brundle at the show this year, only his son F2 driver Alex Brundle - BBC and Sky people probably not the best to be together!

As most of us are aware the BBC will cover only 10 of the 20 races live and the rest will be highlights not a fantastic deal for the TV licence payers, while the BBC has kept Eddie Jordon, David Coulthard and gained Garry Anderson, they have lost Martin Brundle and radio 5’s David Croft - a massive loss.

Martin has been replaced by Ben Edwards the voice of the BTCC and the new radio 5 live commentator will be the respected James Allan.

All change on the TV front but it’s still a poor show by the BBC not to have done a deal with Bernie Eccelstone to have full live 2012 F1 coverage whatever the cost!

Back to a more positive point F1 will be fantastic this season Kimi Raikkonen back at Lotus (Renault), Lewis Hamilton and Felipe Massa further feuds? Or will Sebastian Vettel take his third World Championship.

An excellent weekend of Formula 1 stars and motorsport in general. If you have missed this year don’t miss next year’s Autosport International……..

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