"Cato Batista" 23/08/2014 17:31:29 ID #645

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The Mercedes boys split the lead on Friday’s sessions with Nico ahead in the first by 9 hundredths and Lewis reversing the order in the much faster second practice by a huge 0.6 seconds margin ahead of Nico. Ferrari showed up with many aero-revisions and an increment of 18hp on engine power moving ALO as the best of the rest in 3rd on both sessions. With its long straights (4 km out of the 7 km-lap) Spa was supposed to be WIlliams territory, but as is the story lately ALO shines in the FP sessions as MAS & BOT are nowhere, but then QF and Race comes and the white cars are flying. BUT’s McLaren is looking strong too as the teams with Mercedes power are taking their extra HP to good use. Not the case for Renault engines of course, RIC couldn’t get any higher than 8th (FP2) and VET had yet another failure that required and engine replacement, something that take 4 to 5 hours with these new units and left him without any track time in the afternoon session. This is now a serious problem for the World Champion because this was his 5th and last new engine of the season, it seems inevitable that he will incur in penalties in the near future as the new rules punish with 10 grid-positions for every engine used above that allowance. The only driver with Renault power in the top 10 was once more impressive rookie KVY in the Toro Rosso. The only accident of the day came courtesy of MAL. I wonder if Lotus is now running out of spare parts...

P1 - ROS (1.51.577) HAM ALO BUT RAI PER MAG HUL RIC BOT

P2 - HAM (1.49.189) ROS ALO MAS BUT BOT KVY RIC MAG HUL

Part of the challenge of this circuit is its micro-climate, showers are always in the picture but they are difficult to predict accurately. As of today the forecast calls for intermittent rain Saturday with a lower chance of precipitation for Sunday. Let’s be prepared for anything, including a QF with mixed conditions and a few surprises.

So far this year our QF results had been substandard, the leader in this department is Santiago with 14 points in 11 races (this is the 12th round, not 11th as I wrote yesterday, sorry). Next is Uwe with 12 and then 3 of us with 11. Our collective average so far is really bad: just over 1 point per member per race. Let’s see what we make out of this opportunity.

Let me go first: Cato - HAM ROS f*MAS

Your turn, good luck!