Canadian GP 2013 - Race

Ladies and Gentlemen,

They were the best Q1 & Q2 sessions I ever remember. Conditions keep changing every moment pushing all the drivers to lap continuously to be on track at the right time. The entire QF was run on the green intermediates. The eventual lottery winner was Vettel with an early run in Q3 that nobody could beat even though several drivers were faster than him in the first 2 sectors. The first surprise of the weekend (I bet we have a few more coming tomorrow) was rookie Bottas splitting the Mercedes in third place, and it was no fluke, he was very fast in Q2 too (4th).  The first time this season a Willimas makes it to Q3. Webber was next ahead of Alonso, the Ferrari showing none of his Friday’s form in the wet. Massa crashed (again) and were last in Q2. The 2 Toro Rosso made it top 10 with one Force India (rain specialist Sutil) and Raikkonen. The sister Lotus of Grosjean was out early (19th), he is carrying a 10 place penalty for crashing into Ricciardo in Monaco. Both McLaren were caught out in the crazy conditions but they clearly are losing ground to the front of the pack.

In another futility record by the CFA experts, nobody prognosticated first or third QF positions, Hamilton in second place saved some dignity with single points for 8 of you: Alberto, Curro, Fredrik, Lou, Rocco, Rodrigo, Sebstian & Tim.

The revised grid for tomorrow – Raikkonen & Ricciardo incur 2-grid position penalties for improperly lining up exiting the pitlane in that mad dash with 2 minutes to go in Q2 after Massa’s red flag incident. This slight changes elevated Hulkenberg into 9th place:

VET  HAM  BUT  ROS  WEB  ALO  VER  SUT  HUL  RAI 

The weather is now changing to higher temperatures and decreased chances of rain. If it is a dry race the teams will have very little data, the morning session was run mostly on inters but we got to see every compound color tried out, with the inters being the wise choice. Vettel’s Red Bull was on rails, he was definitely the most comfortable driver on  the unforgiving surface although the Mercedes had the speed to match. The question is how will they handle tyre wear, it’s a long 70 lap race and nobody wants to predict (particularly me) the number of stops to be made tomorrow. The possibility of showers is still hanging in the air. This is always a race of attrition: very high brake and tyre wear, 73% of the lap at full throttle. Safety Car has been deployed 5 of the last 9 times. Passing with 2 DRS straights and 3 hard braking zones should not be an issue; the polesitter has won ‘only’ 14 of the 33 GPs in Montreal.

Another GP impossible to predict, I know they all are but this is getting more difficult every time! Surprises tomorrow? You can bet on that.

Cato – VET  ALO  HAM SUT RAI WEB  

Enjoy!

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