"Cato Batista" 23/10/2016 4:13:30 ID #1030

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Mercedes dominates as usual but this time is HAM the fastest of the two Championship contenders by a large 4-tenth margin. The new faster surface and particularly the modified off-camber corner 15 has been more than a challenge for everyone. Red Bull has been improving with every session and now is ahead of Ferrari, in fact VER was only 0.156 seconds slower than ROS with teammate RIC only 41 thousands behind in 4th place. Both Ferraris will start in the 3rd row 7th tenths away from HAM’s pole time with Force India taking 4th row for PER & HUL. BUT has a McLaren in the top 10 again but ALO has 45 (!!) grid position penalties and didn’t even bother trying a QF time. MAS’s Williams is 10th with the sister BOT’s car being the best outside the shoot-out. Not only the 4 front rows are lookouts by the same car, most teams are lining up with their drivers side-by-side making evident the technical nature of the circuit (meaning the driver doesn’t count as much here).

Our CFA marks are showing that 75% of us collected 2 points from HAM beating ROS, but only Carlos ventured something different other than a Ferrari in third (Tim also) to score the full 4 bonus points with 1-2-3 in the right order. Not too bad considering Nico has been beating Lewis lately in QF.

http://f1.manbos.com/userbets.asp?t=2016&gpn=Malaysia&nevent=qualifying

It was tough QF session because it was very easy to ruin a good lap when pushing to get close to the limit in the recent laid asphalt, or particularly when negotiating the corner 15 that now presents a negative banking that so far seems not to have an ideal line, either braking into the apex of placing the car in the right place to power out of the turn. That’s going to be a tricky place to attack or defend tomorrow during the race, and many sets of Pirellis will be destroyed there.

In the past 17 GPs in Sepang the polesitter has won only 9, one the lowest ratios in F1. HAM has now 4 pole positions here, but is VET the driver with most wins: 4.

Please excuse my previous mistake regarding Pirelli tyre selection for Sepang, the compounds available are orange/hard, white/medium, yellow/soft.

This is what the top 11 drivers now have to cover the 56 laps/310 km race: (including their starting set)

3 USED sets of soft & 1 set of NEW medium for: HAM, ROS, MAS, HUL & PER

3 USED soft & 1 set of USED medium for: VET, RAI, VER

2 USED & 1 NEW soft, plus 1 set of USED medium for RIC

3 USED & 1 NEW soft, plus 1 set NEW medium for BOT  

4 USED soft, NO medium left, 2 NEW hard: BUT

Two other considerations: the right hand side of the track near the lights (even-number starting slots) is still covered with fire foam from a F3 car earlier fire, and...it may rain tomorrow between 3 and 5pm local time (!)...

Here we go again: Cato - HAM VER RIC ROS VET RAI

Enjoy!