"Cato Batista" 23/08/2013 5:18:40 ID #470

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Our patience will be rewarded. After a month in the dry we are going to F1’s favorite circuit this weekend: Spa Francorcharms for the 11^th round of the Championship.

The attention in the last weeks has been on the driver’s market with Kimi at the center of the 2014 driver move speculation. Rumor was he was going to Red Bull, then Ferrari but  now it seems he might just stay put at Lotus. With Alonso publicly showing his displeasure at Ferrari’s poor form the gossip was that he will join Vettel at Red Bull, although the German made clear he doesn't like the idea at all. Alonso is signed to 2016 but in F1 contracts are just expensive pieces of paper, they don’t really mean a lot. For next year the most coveted openings will be Red Bull’s and Ferrari’s number 2 seats, or possibly Lotus if Raikkonen takes one of those, and from the available drivers’ market the best offer is Hulkenberg, so in the end we may not see drastic changes except for Ricciardo taking Webber’s place and (hopefully) Hulkenberg in Massa’s seat (or anybody else in the second Ferrari!). Let’s see.

Last year’s Belgium GP winner was Manbos with 8 points, one ahead of Carlos and Erik. This place is traditionally hard for the CFA. 

And as much as the drivers love Spa they all count their share of glory and failure in the same measure. Take Alonso for example, who speaks passionately about Spa: he’s never won here, not even ever started on the front row or has been on the podium since 2007; 3 of his 4 last races ended in accidents. Ferrari had not had a car in the front row since 2008! its last pole was in 2007 and its last win was back in 2008 with RAI. Kimi is definitely the one to watch, every year he raises his game at this track. The Finn has won it 4 times –more than any other active driver and only behind the great Senna and Schumacher (6 wins each). Two of those victories were accomplished with noncompetitive cars, like in 2004 with McLaren (beating Schumacher) and 2009 with Ferrari, both those cars didn't win again in those seasons. Hamilton won in 2010 but hasn't seen the checkered flag since (he was disqualified in ’08) he’s crashed 3 of the last 4 races. Rosberg best result ever is a 5^th place.

So get ready, we are back at work tomorrow!

Until then

Cheers