Ladies and Gentlemen,

The pole went to ROS but he is under investigation after going off causing a yellow flag in the final moments of QF. The shootout was a battle of hundreds, no tenths of a second between Mercedes teammates and HAM was up in the first sector by 2 hunderds when ROS slid down at the escape road braking for Mirabeu. HAM was adamant that he would have taken the pole but for ROS’s  accident. Red Bull and Ferrari qualified by pairs in the second and third rows respectively; both Toro Rosso drivers made it into Q3 with impressive Rookie KVY in 9th in his first visit here, one McLaren (MAG, his first time here also) and one Force India (PER) rounded off the top 10.

In our side we had mixed results. Three of us collected full QF plenums -Santiago, rookie Iain and myself- three more got 2 points -Joe, Sebastian and rookie Lorenzo- and then we had 10 members with 1 point...and then big zeros for the remaining eight. But wait, let’s see what happens after the stewards’ investigation, if there are radical changes to the top 3 we might just cancel all the points across the board for the session.

The grid for tomorrow, pending final stewards’ decision:

ROS HAM RIC VET ALO RAI VER MAG KVY PER

Opinions along the pitlane were mostly one-sided and unapologetic : ROS provoked the yellow flags. What Schumacher did a few years ago at Rascasse is still very fresh in everybody’s minds, ‘it’s a German thing’ said ironically more than one on the opposing teams. As ROS celebrated pole in his hometown HAM was noticeable upset, meanwhile Race Steward Derek Warwick summed the Mercedes engineers in charge of ROS’s telemetry.

The Monaco GP is decided almost every time in the opening 220-meter sprint to St. Jovite. The pole sitter has won 9 of the last 10, HAM the exception winning from 3rd in 2008. DRS is good only in the 669 meters-long start-finish straight, not much help. There were only 5 overtaken manoeuvres with DRS last year, 8 without it  (5 of them by PER). There’s is 68% possibility of an appearance by the Safety Car, and that’s the main consideration for all the teams to prepare their strategies. Pirellis for this race are Soft (yellow)  Super Soft (red). The pitlane is 301 meters resulting in pitstops longer than 25 seconds, but still the ideal strategy is a 3 stopper for the 76-lap race. Drivers will be asked to preserve their tyres for an alternative 2-stop race, but the name of the game is to react quickly to the inevitable Safety Car.

Monaco is all about survival, not making mistakes. For us is always a big lottery, let’s get ready to play the game!

Cato - HAM RIC ROS ALO VET RAI

Stay tuned for the latest. Make your predictions after the investigation on ROS has concluded and we have the official final grid positions confirmed. I’ll will send another e-mail in case there are any changes.

Enjoy!