Brands Hatch Jonathan Palmer's MotorSport Vision company completed the purchase of Brands Hatch and the other Octagon venues (Cadwell Park, Oulton Park, and Snetterton). Palmer immediately implemented a programme of improvements to the venue, designed to heighten customer experiences both for spectators and competitors. 25 September 2005, the inaugural A1 Grand Prix of Nations was held at Brands Hatch. A1 Grand Prix was a single-seater one-make series where the drivers represented their nation, as opposed themselves or a team. The first race, an 18-lap Sprint saw Nelson Piquet, Jr. lead flag-to-flag to win for A1 Team Brazil, ahead of Alexandre Premat (France)
What Is a Nation? Anderson also points out that the reason many French citizens of Renan's time knew anything of these massacres was because they learned of them in state-run schools. Thus, the state itself preserved the knowledge which needed to be forgotten for national identity. In a 1995 book, "For Love of Country: an essay on patriotism and nationalism", Maurizio Viroli called Renan's essay "the most influential late nineteenth-century interpretation of the meaning of nation", because of its focus on the "spiritual principle" as opposed to race, religion or geography. Other authors, like Joxe Azurmendi, consider that really there is no such opposition