"Cato Batista" 23/05/2015 18:52:30 ID #759

Ladies and Gentlemen,

First Monaco pole for HAM, and not only he denied ROS his third consecutive in this circuit, the World Champion will start the race with a critical advantage when ROS was looking the most comfortable with the setup of his car. VET was third again albeit 7 tenths slower and just ahead of RIC who’s Red Bull was even faster than the Ferrari but had the wrong engine mapping in his last flyer. The Red Bulls dialed maximum downforce to extract their best qualifying of the year with KVY taking fifth 4 hundredths behind his teammate. RAI said his sixth was ‘another disaster’ -he’s being out qualified by VET every race so far. Great performance by Monaco specialist PER in seventh using only his last set of super-softs left, beating the faster Toro Rossos and the Lotus of MAL, another driver that always goes well in here. SAI was again impressive beating rookie teammate VER but failed to stop at the weighbridge (“the red light -to warn you to stop for weight checking- is in a place where I can’t see it!” he said). He will start from the pitlane promoting BUT to 10th in the grid- and he will now have free option of tyres to start the race. As we knew, Williams struggled more than anybody heating up the tyres; they are not in contention this time.

We may not be very happy with how predictable F1 is these days, but I’m sure the 14 of us with full QF points are not complaining at all. Maria, Curro, Erik, Fernando, Manbos, Hector, Ian, Joe, Lorenzo, Ricardo, Rocco, Santi, Tim and I raked up 4 points each to our personal accounts. Nice.

The Grid for tomorrow:

HAM ROS VET RIC KVY RAI PER VER MAL BUT

When it comes to strategy Monaco is a the bottom of the list, there’s no room to be creative negotiating the 78 laps race-distance. With tyres lasting longer on the low-abrasion surface and a long pitstops it is basically a one stopper switching from options to primes as late as you can. This is not a race about goinf fast, it's a matter of survival, not making mistakes.

ROS has won the last 2 Monaco GPs from the pole. In fact, the poleman has won 9 of the last 10 (HAM won from third in 2008, the only exception) In its whole history (61 editions) the race has been won 43 times from the front row. And of course there is almost no passing around here: a total of 6 overtakes last year, all without DRS. 

Last Ferrari victory: Schumacher in 2001. At 260 Kms. this is the only GP in the calendar with a race distance below the mandatory 305 Kms.

Well, after 11 perfect scores so far this season, this GP looks anything but easy to predict. Isn’t is the way we like it? And by the way, the Safety Car gets in action 80% of the times.

Cato - HAM ROS VET RIC RAI PER

Good luck, enjoy!