Ladies and Gentlemen,

Fridays are following the pattern of lately with Mercedes ahead of ALO, although this time the huge advantage of the Silver cars over the rest came as a shock. But the news are coming from the paddock rather than the track: Ferrari and ALO are heading for an imminent divorce. It’s not clear who’s leaving who but it seems it’s just a matter of days, hours for both parties to announce their split. When that happens the most expected outcome is for the Spaniard to join McLaren as requested by Honda; Ferrari in turn will aim for VET and Red Bull is not worried about it, at all. They are prepared to replace their 4-time Champion with a youngster from their junior stable, most likely rookie sensation KVY. One thing Red Bull doesn’t do is spending money on drivers.

But let’s get back to track action. ROS was 1.5 tenths ahead of HAM  in P1 and HAM 2.4 in front of ROS in the slower-P2. They are as close to each other as has been all year, but even themselves are surprised by their margin over the rest around this track. Suzuka is the most demanding circuit in the calendar for chassis and aerodynamics, any shortcoming is amplified and not even the best hands can compensate for that. ALO’s Ferrari was 3rd half a second behind in P1 and BOT’s Williams was 3rd 1.2 seconds (!) in P2. Red Bull with its prodigious downforce is usually the car to beat around here thanks to its superior high speed directional changes, a key asset in the very tricky ‘esses’ of sector one, but today they struggled with tyre temperatures, a problem that sent RIC into the wall at the end of the last session. This was supposed to be a fight for 3rd place between Ferrari and Williams for this race and for the balance of the championship, it now seems that Suzuka could be the closest battle for the “best of the rest” between the 3 teams. McLaren on the other hand was expected to struggle, instead they have both cars in the top 10.

P1-  ROS (1.33.461) HAM ALO BOT RAI MAG RIC BUT VET KVY (Verstappen was 12th)

P2- HAM (1.35.078) ROS BOT BUT VET RAI  ALO MAG KVY  RIC

Pirelli has brought their hardest compounds to cope with the high lateral loads of the very fast and long corners: hard/orange and med/white. But that seems irrelevant right now because all the weather forecasts are confirming heavy rain and thundershowers for Sunday. There’s talk of changing the start of the race by one or perhaps two hours ahead of schedule. Make sure you’re aware of this.

From their single lap simulations HAM appears to be faster than ROS, the order reverses in the long stint lap times. No one so far was able to get 20 laps without sudden drop in grip, no even Mercedes. In single-lap performance Williams was second best followed by McLaren, Red Bull and then Ferrari, all of them 1.2 to 1.4 seconds behind the Mercs. With fuel loads (doing 8-laps trials) the gap behind Mercedes were: Williams (0.8), Red Bull (1.2) McLaren (1.2) Toro Rosso (1.6) and Ferrari (2.2!)

Leisure time is over, let’s work for some QF points: Cato - HAM  ROS ….and then ….BOT

Your turn to scratch your head.

Cheers