"Cato Batista" 12/05/2012 20:14:21 ID #160
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Many surprises in QF today. Hamilton’s McLaren was clearly the fastest car in all sessions but his unlikely closest pursuers were a Williams and a Ferrari. The sister McLaren car didn’t make to Q3 same as one of the Red Bulls. Lotus now has out qualified Mercedes and this time Sauber has both cars in the top 10.
Following our disastrous QF 2012 pattern we collected a record low 6 points among all of us. Five members got a single point from Hamilton’s pole (Champ Ian, Fernando, Fredrik, Rocco & Rodrigo) and a special mention to Ricky for picking Alonso in third. His loyalty has been rewarded.
The grid for tomorrow:
HAM MAL ALO GRO RAI PER ROS VET SCH KOB - BUT 11th, WEB 12th
We are not used to a starting grid like this in Barcelona. Maldonado was a shocker in the very fast single-lap-trim Williams, same for Alonso who always pulls something extra in front of his home crowd. VET admitted his Red Bull was no good for a top 5 today, he did only one slow lap (on softs) to be classified a of Schumacher and Kobayashi. The Mercedes driver did not go out to save tires and being able to pick the best compound option for the race. Button never found the balance to progress out of Q2 and in Webber’s case it was the team’s mistake not to send him out with a new set of rubber when conditions were improving at the end of the session. He said he had the car to be in the front row.
The most intriguing bit is that McLaren doesn’t exactly know what happened to Hamilton’s car when they order him to stop it on the track on the cool down lap. The car is going to parc-ferme and they won’t be able to inspect until tomorrow before the race. They have reasons to be worried.
Track temperatures are expected to drop a few degrees tomorrow to bring a little relief to everybody’s degradation concerns and that may open the possibility to cover the 66 laps in 2 stops, but 3 stops will the norm given the abrasive surface. Last year Vettel did 4 stops to win the race, but this time around the key might just might having 4 sets of new rubber (3 prime & 1 option) like Kimi had in China where he came from 11th on the grid to almost winning the race. Despite the longest straight in Formula 1 (1.3k) where the DRS zone will be implemented expect most of the overtaking to be done in the pits. The strategy battle tomorrow promises to be fascinating.
The driver on pole in Montmelo has won 16 of 21 races, 9 of the last 10. Six different drivers had won the last six editions. We could see a 5th different winner in the opening five races of the season, something that had happened only once back in 1983.
We’ll have to work very hard to earn our money this time, at least it promises to be an exciting Spanish GP for a change.
Allow me (not that I know):
Cato – HAM GRO RAI VET ALO PER
Enjoy!
By the way, Uwe, Erik & Matias will have their own private battle to break the triple tie between them from the last GP in Bahrain. No pressure!