"Cato Batista" 01/04/2016 22:03:52 ID #891

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Second round coming up this weekend for the Bahrain GP at the Sakhir Circuit.

The news today are that Alonso will not be racing this GP and he’ll probably skip the next one also in China. His latest CT scan revealed broken ribs that could affect his lungs. It’s not clear if he will be fully recovered in 2 weeks for the following race.

Other developments as of late is that the new QF system ‘musical chairs’ will not be eliminated after all, it will be used again this Saturday. Different from Australia is that Q3 will be run in the old format with the top 10 from Q2 advancing and they will not be eliminated every 90 seconds but like in the past, they will have the full length of the session to establish their times. It was revealed that McLaren and Red Bull were against the universally disliked 2016 format for which this new compromise has now been found.

In a rare sign of unity, the F1 drivers through their association, the GPDA went public this week exposing what we all know and complain about:  the F1 as a whole is terribly mismanaged: “The people in power has taken our sport to a never ending crisis”. The drivers recognized that despite being the most important component of the sport they are totally ignored and segregated in all decisions. Just to confirm that nobody is listening to them at the same time Bernie revealed that he’s got a contract to race in Las Vegas next year and that the Italian GP will be dropped, and that the announcement of the disastrous new QF system will be used again in Bahrain after all.

To manage our frustration let’s concentrate on what we really enjoy: the racing itself.

This is the race that starts at dusk and ends under the floodlights (starts at 6pm local time) so check the timetable in your part of the world for live coverage. The huge drop in track temperatures is a major challenge, on top of the very green track that has very little use the rest of the year and the surface that is constantly changing from the sand blowing in from the surroundings. Not an easy place to race…

Will talk tomorrow

Cheers

Cato