"Cato Batista" 18/03/2016 16:37:21 ID #884

Ladies and Gentleman,

Not much of an opening. Rain ruined the party on Friday, the track was never dry enough to allow any relevant slick-tyre testing. In many cases the teams didn’t even bother going out to lap in the wet surface. It may be premature to say this but for the little we saw Lewis could be on his way to a third straight title.

Both Mercedes ventured out in the conditions trying wet and dry rubber (when the dry line appeared) and one ended up on top of the sheets and the other in the repair shop. Nico aquaplaned off hitting the wall, nothing too serious, more like a damaged wing nose and a bruised ego. It speaks of the high level of preparation at the Mercedes camp that they had a new of the very elaborate new-spec noses ready for him to continue, compare that to many other teams that didn’t send their drivers out in the conditions risking damaging the cars, spare parts are scarce this early on the season. About half the field did only installation laps, the most active teams were McLaren-Honda still working on their pre-season programs and the rookie drivers for Manor Wehrlein and Haryanto.

Friday’s results:

P1- HAM (1.29.725) KVY RIC HUL VES ROS ALO BUT PER MAG

P2 -HAM (1.38.841) HUL RAI RIC SAI ALO BUT VET PER KVY

Times from FP1 were set on the soft compound (no more ‘prime’ and ‘option’ talking for this year)

therefore the 9 seconds difference to the intermediates used on FP2. Temperatures were a low 17 deg.

We move into Saturday without any reference point except the confirmation that Mercedes continues in great form. Red Bull and Toro Rosso are looking competitive, McLaren is much improved although that doesn’t mean a lot after their 2015 disaster. Ferrari didn’t bother clearly waiting for better weather. The most interesting development today was when PER pushed the Force India the first time in slicks in FP2 when a dry line finally appeared and he was faster than HAM in the first 2 sectors only to find heavy showers in the last sector and had to abort the lap. Teammate HUL was second fastest in FP2 and 4th in FP1 on mediums, so let’s keep a close eye on Force India this weekend.

ROS has won the last 6 poles, but HAM beat him 11 to 7 for the top spot in 2015.

Time to forecast, or rather guess what’s going to happen tomorrow in the first QF under the new ‘musical chairs’ format. That’s going to be a good show!

For the first points of 2016 -  Cato - HAM ROS VET (boring, I know)

Cheers!