"Cato Batista" 26/09/2015 20:33:26 ID #822

Ladies and Gentlemen,

A spectacular accident by KVY brought Q3 to a premature halt preventing all the top runners to complete their final flyers. Mercedes takes the front row with Nico ahead of Lewis; Williams & Ferrari will alternate rows 2 and 3 followed by RIC and GRO in row 4. PER couldn't complete a lap in Q3 and will share row 5 with with HUL after his Force India teammate was promoted one spot because KVY requires a new chassis and will start from the pitlane. It was “the worst accident of his career”, his Red Bull was demolished but the Russian walked away from the 20G impact (!).

Since BOT wasn’t considered by anybody we didn’t score any plenums in CFA QF, but 8 of you were smart to predict that this time Nico was going to beat Lewis. Interestingly all this double points came in the midfield making the standings even closer as none of the leaders in the top 7 places made any points. So 2 points for Alberto, Carlos, Erik, Joe, Lorenzo, Ricardo, Santiago & Uwe.

The grid for tomorrow:

ROS HAM BOT VET MAS RAI RIC GRO PER HUL

With only session P3 for data collection all the teams split the tyre workload between drivers, little time was used for single lap set-up and then we couldn’t see the fastest cars real potential because KVY brought out the red flag. As a result of that all the top 10 drivers have an extra new set of the prime-medium rubber. With an eye on the weather forecast and the possibility of a wet track, the fastest way to complete the 53 lap-race is a 2 stopper using the hard tyres once and the mediums twice.

In the 26 Japanese GPs at Suzuka the winner has come out of the front row 22 times, 12 from the pole, the standout exception was Kimi in 2005 winning from 17th place. In the last 10 races the poleman has won 5. Ferrari has not won here since Schumacher in 2004, but their star driver VET has won 4 of the last 6. The possibility of Safety Car intervention is a very high 75%.

With Mercedes back at front (Nico, Lewis?...Lewis, Nico?) we have a hard choice to make between Williams and Ferrari and to keep an eye on the very fast Red Bull of RIC with GRO and PER as the outsiders. 

OK, it’s time to foresee the future: Silver, and then White or Red?...maybe taking risks to make (or lose) ground with a surprise?

Let me: Cato - HAM  ROS  VET  BOT MAS RAI

Good luck, enjoy!