Ladies and Gentlemen,

Let’s get prepared, the 9th round of the Championship is coming up in Austria this weekend. We’re going to the Red Bull A1 Ring, by far not the most exciting track since it was sanitized to get back in the calendar in 2014. It’s short, without challenging corners or technical sections and there’s no room for passing. Mercedes power has taken all the podium finishes these last 2 years with ROS on top, even though he didn’t start from the pole, something considered very important in here.

The most talked topic among us in these last days is RAI’s future. Is he past his shelf life? His numbers since returning to Ferrari are not really encouraging when compared to his illustrious teammates ALO & VET: he’s scored about half the points (53%) to each of them and has been out qualified 35 to 9 times. His major contribution to the Scuderia is his huge fan following, he is the most popular driver in F1, but the point is that there is a new generation of gifted drivers that could flourish given the right opportunity and we know our old dear Kimi is not going to get any better. There are 5 names mentioned to take his seat next year: RIC, BOT, PER,  SAI and maybe GRO. Red Bull just announced they are resigning  RIC (the italians number one candidate) and SAI for another 2 years; BOT is a free agent for 2017 making him the frontrunner and there are rumors PER’s sponsors are preparing “an 8 digit offer” to get the Mexican his dream job. Ferrari has the key to the driver’s market since there are no other openings in the winning teams now that Mercedes is trying to re-sign ROS -particularly if he wins the Championship.

Are we ready for embrace the new guys? Is about time BUT, MAS, RAI ...and ALO to leave and make room for the new generation? Let me know what you think.

Our last year’s Austrian GP winner was Rodrigo with an impressive 14 points from full marks in 1-2-5-6 positions, I don’t think this time we will able to match that, let’s see…

Until tomorrow

Cheers

Cato