Ladies and Gentlemen,

Mercedes appears very dominant, more so than usual, but Ferrari introduced a new spec engine using all their last remaining 3-development tokens and they are closing in the silver machines. Both Seb and Kimi are now into their 5th and last engine for the season.

Pirelli is confident the super-soft compound will have a much longer life than in Spa, and Mercedes so far was able to do 20-lap race simulations in the red tyres. The fastest laps today were set in the super-softs (about 1.1 secs faster than the soft) except in FP1 where Mercedes was around 1 second quickest that the rest in the yellow-soft, such is their superiority.

Ferrari is looking better than Red Bull so far, and Force India is showing enough speed to probably challenge for 3rd-best. Both PER and HUL spend FP2 testing the medium-white rubber in preparation for race day, but their performance in FP1 and their numbers at the speed traps will have Red Bull worried. RIC admitted they knew Monza was not going to be a good track for them. “Ferrari has a big margin on us” he said earlier, “we know were are off a podium spot. We are not in a bad place on the long runs”, meaning their disadvantage comes from the single-lap super-softs but they have good race pace.

FP1- ROS (1.22.959) HAM RAI VET PER GRO BOT VER GUT RIC

FP2- -HAM (1.22.801) ROS VET RAI VER RIC ALO BOT GRO BUT

Haas is using updated Ferrari engines to show up in the top 10 setting up a crowded battle with McLaren and Williams to advance to Q3 tomorrow. “Our cars is capable to get in Q3 and in the points every race from now on” a confident ALO declared. Still, the British-Japanese team is having their traditional mechanical problems, the Spaniard lost most of FP1 with a leaking connector.

Red Bull boss Horner has revealed that VER was given a ‘warning’ by Charlie Whiting about his driving conduct during a private discussion this morning. “Charlie was keen to show him a replay of Spa,” Horner said, “it was a gentle warning, he made clear a repeat of such action would risk punishment”. Charlie spoke separately with VET and RAI, and VER’s driving will likely be talked about at length in Friday night’s F1 drivers briefing.

Time to pick: Lewis or Nico? Sebastian or Kimi? Or a different daring move? Not much to choose from, I know…

Cato - HAM ROS VET

Cheers

I’d like to share this that came from one of our good CFA friends about Felipe Massa.

http://www.bbc.com/sport/formula1/37244253

Enjoy