Another working class hero won on Cote d'Azure this weekend: Jarno Trulli

[AP]

Michael Moore, from Flint, Michigan won the Golden Palm in Cannes and the next day, Jarno Trulli won his first Grand Prix in over 100 starts.

Trulli entered formula one about the same time as another Italian, Giancarlo Fisichella. Fisichella, from Rome, was the favorite of the Italian racing federation from early on. Fisichella parents were loaded. Trulli's parents were very poor. Throughout their careers Fisichella always got more attention and it traces back to the attention Fisichella got earlier thanks to coming from a wealthier background.

Even now, while most F1 drivers live like royalty in tax havens like Monaco and Switzerland, Trulli lives in a normal apartment in a converted mansion near his team's factory in the UK. His best friends in the UK are a couple of central Europeans immigrants who live in his building. I think they're asylum seekers and just regular people with normal jobs.

Everything about this guy's career has been the essence of hard work and about coming up from the bottom and not forgetting what the bottom was like.

It's great that he finally won a race (from poll position) and that it is probably the best race on the calendar, and that it was on the same weekend that another working class hero won the most important film prize just up the road.

2004 might just turn out to be a great year.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/motorsport/formula_one/3738831.stm