"Cato Batista" 28/05/2011 18:26:21 ID #46
Ladies and Gentlemen:
We couldn’t see the favourites full potential, the end of Q3 was an anti-climax following PER’s accident. The latest news are very encouraging though, the Mexican didn’t suffer any serious injuries but his participation in tomorrow’s race is in doubt.
VET secured another pole with an early flyer almost half a second faster that BUT and WEB, but ALO and HAM didn’t have the right conditions to improve on their first runs and will start 4th and 7th respectively.
The grid for Sunday’s race: VET BUT WEB ALO SCH MAS HAM ROS MAL PER
It was our worst QF session of the year after Australia, collectively we scored only 14 out of 84 possible points. Ricardo was our winner with 2 points with other 11 members barely rescuing 1 each.
As we know, the race will be decided mainly by these factors: tire preservation, calling the right pitstops -with an eye on the Safety Car’s 60% likelihood of intervention- and the always present possibility of driver’s errors. The polesitter has won 6 of the last 10; VET is the only one of the current 5 world champions on the grid that has never won in Monaco. The last time Ferrari won in here was 10 years ago, in fact the Italians had won this GP only 3 times in the last 27 years compared to McLaren’s 15.
I wonder if this is the hardest forecast we have in our hands for the longest time. Conditions are expected to deteriorate as race progresses with the racing line becoming narrower by marbles building up from the disintegrating Pirellis. Monaco is always a race with high attrition and luck has famously changed the outcome in a regular basis. We shall see varied strategies, in paper it is a 2 stopper for the lead drivers who are starting (as per regulations) with their semi-used QF super-softs, followed by 2 sets of softs. But most likely this will be a game of improvisation and very fast decisions. The weather will not be a factor; Sunday will be partly cloudy with a high of 25degC.
So here we go, for another chance of glory:
Cato – VET BUT WEB ALO HAM SCH
Enjoy!