Car-Vid Classics: From birth to Monaco

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When it comes to promo videos for an upcoming race, it is hard to beat the BBC's effort from 2012. While your traditional promo might highlight the location and past highlights from previous events held there, for the Monaco Grand Prix that year, the BBC went an entirely different route...

Instead of a flyover of the track, the British broadcaster instead went for a first-person flyover of a racing driver's entire life - literally from the crib to the grid.

Monaco is considered the jewel in the crown of Formula One, retaining a glamorous allure to drivers and fans alike, despite the fact that the tight, twisting street circuit is wholly unsuited to modern F1 cars which thrive in high speed, high downforce settings.

The BBC's promo vid captures that allure perfectly, showing us a driver's eye view from childhood, watching F1 on the telly and getting their first car, before heading through the lower ranks of karts, club and feeder series racing to their eventual debut in Formula One.

But the video doesn't end there, and we see the glamorous (fancy hotels, boozy parties, groupies...) and arduous (all that training...) aspects of an F1 driver's life in a frenetic rush of action and adrenaline before coming to a sudden awestruck silence when we gets to the pitlane in the iconic track for the first time, with things fading to black as the driver pulls on their helmet.

It's a wonderfully evocative video that gives a unique insight into the life of an F1 driver and certainly builds hype for the most hyped race of any F1 season.

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