Belgium GP 2012 - Race

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Another QF session full of unexpected results.  With very little practice time available McLaren chose 2 different rear wing configurations for their drivers: Button ended up 0.8 sec faster than Hamilton (8th) to claim his first pole in 3 years and his first for McLaren.  The Saubers are flying with KOB in second and Perez in 5th. Maldonado is always an enigma in his Williams, this time he turn up third best but he collected a 3 grid position penalty (for blocking Hulkerberg in Q2) thus moving Raikkonen to third. The sister Lotus is 9th, Grosjean confessing his lack of familiarity with the track. Alonso was fast in every session but finished only  6th ; Webber was 7th but will collect a gearbox change penalty (5 positions) and 10th was DiResta pushing Vettel to 11th in the last moments of Q3. The biggest disappointment? Mercedes & Red Bull. Schumacher is 13, Rosberg will start 23th after a 5 gearbox change-penalty; Vettel admits the car ‘cant’ go any faster’, he was 4 tenths slower than Webber.

For us this was another lost opportunity: zero point across the board in QF, nothing new, actually it’s the second time we went blank this season (as in Monaco).

After penalties were issued at the end of qualifying (MAL & WEB) this is the grid for tomorrow:

BUT  KOB  RAI  PER  ALO  MAL  HAM  GRO  DIR  VET – WEB 12th

Passing will not be an issue in Spa. The DRS activation zone is set for the Kemmel straight between corners 4 & 5, but with its fast straights and hard braking zones there are at least two other areas that offer plenty of opportunity. Race distance is 44 laps; at 7 kilometers Spa is the longest circuit on the calendar. The pitlane takes only 18 seconds to traverse, but with the very high average speeds it’s best to minimize the number of stops. As we saw from QF the top runners were already saving options tyres, meaning the strategy will be based on 3 stints on the medium compound and one on the prime hard-rubber. Let’s see...

I think you’ll like to check results from P3, the only meaningful dry session test the teams had to prepare for the race: 1- ALO 1.48.683 2- RAI (-0.141) 3- PER (-0.308) 4- KOB (-0.321) 5- BUT (-0.549) 6- MAS (-0.550) 7- WEB (-O.622) 8- GRO (-0.724) 9- VET (-0.750) 10- DIR (-0.840) 11- MAL (-1.019) 12- HAM (-1.079).

Alonso has won in 19 different GP circuits in his career but never in Belgium (he was on the podium back in ’07 & ’08). In the last 10 editions only 4 winners came from the pole position, 7 from the front row. The Safety Car has appeared in six of the last 10 races.

It is time to work. Looks like Mission Impossible to me....

Cato – RAI ALO BUT HAM PER MAL

Enjoy!

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