"Cato Batista" 01/09/2016 21:58:23 ID #998

Ladies and Gentlemen,

We are going to the fastest F1 track this weekend at Monza for the Italian GP, 14th round of the season.

This morning after 15 years in F1 Felipe Massa announced his retirement from racing. He chose Italy to make his decision public as a homage to Michael Schumacher because it was 10 years ago when the 7-times champion left Ferrari to inherit his place to the Brazilian. MAS is out of contract at the end of the year and with practically no options to continue with another team.

Rumor in the paddock is that BUT will replace him at Williams. MAS’s career will reach the 250 GPs mark by the end of the season at Abu Dhabi.  

After Spa all the talk has centered in the VER versus RAI & VET saga, with opinions divided between Max’s over the limit dangerous driving to comparing him to Senna and Schumacher and their brilliance as well as their disregard for the safety of others.  It was a surprise to many that the Dutch wasn’t called to Race Control after cutting off RAI at 320kph, the matter, as per the FIA stewards, was going to be dealt with at the next race drivers briefing, but now the issue is set to be discussed today in private between Charlie Whiting and the 3 drivers. There is particular interest among all the drivers to know where the governing body stands on what is and is not allowed on track, since it seems that Max has his own way of interpreting how to defend track position “with only one move”...

So dear colleagues, let’s get ready to enjoy the Ferrari vs Red Bull 2016 battle for the next 8 rounds. These two teams are not moving all their resources to the new 2017-spec cars, they both will fight tooth and nail for second place in the Manufacturers Championship. Lost in the results from Belgium few noticed Ferrari latest progress, and Kimi’s in particular. The popular Finn was as fast as winner ROS in single and race trim, and he has out qualified VET in the last 4 races. Red Bull is now ahead in the standings, but we can expect the Scuderia to try their hardest at their home track. The other rivalry to watch for is between Force India and Williams for 4th place and the huge amount of money that it will represent in bonuses for next year.

One last piece of valuable information for Monza - drivers’ tyre selection for the 5 top teams:. =Medium/Soft/Super Soft

http://f1.manbos.com/post.asp?topiccode=v8q8b4x1mul7j8g5qam1t9ss3y4j2p (Thanks Santi)

HAM 1/5/7

ROS 2/4/7

VET 1/5/7

RAI  2/4/7

RIC  2/5/6

VER 2/5/6

PER 3/3/7

HUL 3/2/8

BOT 1/5/7

MAS 2/4/7

Most of them are relying in the super-soft, as usual, but if track temperatures are as high as Spa we could see another crazy weekend tyre-wise for everyone.

Until tomorrow

Cheers

Cato