"Cato Batista" 01/04/2016 22:04:38 ID #892

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The Mercedes are massively ahead of the rest. Nico has been steadily faster than Lewis to lead the timesheets in both Friday’s sessions. In fact, most of their fastest laps in FP2 were set with the soft compound as the rest couldn’t even get close in the super-softs. The best Ferrari could do was Kimi in fourth place a hefty 1.8 seconds behind Nico in the same soft compound. But the eye opener was BUT’s McLaren Honda in 3rd place in FP2 when all the field concentrated working in the 2 softer rubber seleccions (the medium/whites were mostly tried in FP1). The sister McLaren is in the hands of Stoffel Vandoorne, the reserve driver who was hastily flown from Japan where was to compete this weekend. The Belgian was 11th fastest, he has never driven the MP4-31 before. VET stopped his Ferrari on the side of the track after 15 min of  FP2 when he felt the rear wheel was becoming loose, losing out the rest of the session.

ROS’s best time of the day was even quicker than HAM’s last year pole time (by 1.5 seconds!) just to confirm the constant level of progress shown by the German team.

P1- ROS (1.32.294) HAM RAI RIC KVY HUL SAI VER GRO MAS (VET 11)

P2- ROS (1.31.001) HAM BUT VER RAI VET KVY BOT RIC MAS

(HAM pole time in 2015 was 1.32.571)

FP2 was run about the same time the race will take place on Sunday giving the teams similar temperatures expected on Sunday evening, an opportunity to test the longevity of the 2 softer compounds as it’s widely anticipated that every team will use the medium tyre for a long race stint since the surface in Sakhir is the most abrasive in the calendar. To give an idea of how good the Merc chassis is, the best mileage in medium compound tires tyres was by PER extracting 22 laps of a used set, compare that to ROS doing 23 laps in a used set of softs!. The time differential between sets is about 1.5 -1.8 seconds between the whites and the reds.

The heavily criticized 90-second elimination format was retained from Australia despite objections from every front as the teams were not able to unanimously agree over reverting to the old system or modifying the new one. And nobody was more angry than the drivers themselves. So scratch what I said yesterday (Q1 & Q2 new system, Q3 - old format), and get prepared to see an empty track at the end of Q2 & Q3 when normally we were treated to the most exciting moments.

(...should we give up on this F1 mess and move to MotoGP? Or get Tim to tutor all of us in the intricacies of NASCAR?...)

Decision time - Cato -  ROS HAM RAI

Your turn

PS- to cheer up your day, I’ll copy/paste a fabulous proposition coming our way by of one of the most influential CFA members. Enjoy.

“I think in keeping with the increasingly ridiculous rules and mismanagement of the sport, we should put in place something appropriately ridiculous in the CFA.

I propose that for each race, the previous race winner gets to select a bet for each of us to make, which is worth one point to those that choose correctly.  These could be tabulated as ‘CVC’ or ‘Bernie’ points.  They could be virtually anything other than that which is already scored as part of the race today.  For example:

·      Will Alonso race

·      Number of passes made during the race

·      Who finishes last

·      How many Haas cars finish the race

·      Number of safety cars

·      Who will win this race in the CFA membership

·      How many points CFA members score in the race

·      Etc

I believe this is a fitting addition to our pool, and will even make it more interesting.  Want to keep it really in line with F1 today, it is the last place finisher from our previous race that should get to do this!

I am not kidding, this is for real.”

'Bernie' / 'CVC' points?  I’m all for it!