"Cato Batista" 02/11/2015 4:53:15 ID #852

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Finally Nico put one up on Lewis, his first win since Austria 9 races ago. You really wonder if HAM was his hungry-for-victory usual self, he’s been deservedly in party mood, enjoying himself in the Mexican festivities. BOT climb to the third step of the podium taking revenge on RAI when they disputed the same piece of tarmac. If the Russian disagreement was not still fresh in their minds they might had found a little room for each other. As it happens, this was the first time since 2006 that both Ferraris were DNFs, and today the cars were not to blame for it. VET had a very eventful day that ended up in the wall after a rather scrappy drive. Good drives by the Red Bull pair for 4th & 5th to stay ahead of MAS’s more powerful Williams. The most memorable feature today was the enthusiastic sold out crowd, even by paying the most expensive GP tickets in the world. In Mexico the Gran Premio is not a race, is a national fiesta!

Eleven points was what Lorenzo needed today to win his second GP of the year. He score 3 triples, same as Carlos, Curro, Fredrik, Hector and Rocco (10 points each). We were divided 50/50 between Nico / Lewis or Lewis / Nico for the top 2 places; 20 of our 31 correct positions came from the Mercedes boys. No one had a hit with BOT in 3rd but we made OK with the Red Bull drivers in 4th & 5th (5 each for KVY and RIC) and only 2 of us score with MAS’s 6th.  We were looking to collect points with the odd pick but the dry race conditions eliminated much of the driver’s ability to overcome their car limitations, PER was in about half our listings, but yet another bad strategy call by his team left him in 8th. Our point average was 7.6, below the 8.6p race average of 2015.

The championship race carries on as hot as ever with Danny holding the lead against all odds in his first CFA season. After a long chase I was finally able to catch him to share the head of the table at 176 points. Maria recovered from a bad QF to stay in the hunt at 173. Overnight leader Fernando had an horrendous day with 4 points and now sits 4th at 172 just one point ahead of the up-coming hard charging Santiago. Two behind (169) Rocco/Joe Jr will need the best results of their CFA career to make the 7 point deficit to the top, same for Hector (168) and the fast approaching Curro (167). Lou’s late charge is probably over (166), and closing the top 10 are Erik and Manbos (tied at 164). Manbos’s historic run of 4-of-4 podium finishes probably has come to an end after a very promising start to the season.

In the bottom end the fear of spending a year in NASCAR going around in circles has made experienced veteran Uwe to improve his game, he is now 4 points clear of the messy battle between Alberto (137) and Matias (135). I don’t know how this is going to end, I don’t see the Californian or the Argentinian surviving in redneck racing…

This hasn’t been the best F1 season, however it’s seems we never have that problem with our pool! Our last two appointments of 2015 are in two and four weeks from now: Brasil (13-15 Nov) and Abu Dhabi (27-29 Nov).

We’ll be in touch in 10 days time, hang in there!

Cheers

Cato