"Cato Batista" 20/06/2015 18:27:09 ID #775

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Mercedes has now being on pole for an entire race calendar, their 19th in a row, 7 out 8 of for HAM this season. But it wasn’t as easy as it sounds, it was a very eventful QF session. The showers that interrupted P3 left the track still wet by the time Q3 went underway making tyre choice very difficult under the tricky changing conditions. Notable victims in the first cut were RAI and PER. Then on final moments of Q3 both Mercedes drivers ended up in the gravel under pressure trying to take pole from each other. VET qualified behind them as expected almost 3 tenths clear of MAS as the Williams were not fast enough to repeat their 2014 performance, in fact the surprise on the day was HUL in 5th splitting the white cars, the Force India driver still hot from his 24 Hours of Le Mans victory last weekend. Teenager VER has been consistently top 10 in all sessions, his spectacular ‘F3 driving style’ somehow working well around this short circuit, he’s 7th, the best Renault powered car just a blink ahead of KVY in 8th -the Russian will start 17, see below-. Last 2 making the shoot out were NAS in 9th and GRO in 10th, the French not going out at all in Q3 in the Lotus to save his last set of new red-super-softs for race day.

In CFA results 4 of you score QF plenums -Fernando, Manbos, Lou & Ricardo. With only 3 drivers taking the top 3 places practically every QF session this year -and almost always the same two in first and second- we still struggle to make the best out of this forecast. This time it was Nico who disappointed us as 12 of us thought he was going to beat Lewis for once. It was an important gain for the four members bagging the 4 points since the rest of us were left either with 1 point or nothing. I don’t remember we ever had a QF when nobody score 2 points!

The grid for tomorrow:

HAM ROS  VET MAS  HUL BOT  VER NAS  GRO MAL

KVY (to start now 17th), RIC (18th), ALO (19th) & BUT (20th-last) all have have grid penalties -BUT has accumulated 25 grid position penalties!- As consequence MAL has moved up to 10th on the starting grid and PER to 13th.

The Red Bull Ring is not only the shortest but the simplest layout with only 9 corners, but it is a very tricky circuit, one of the hardest places to find rhythm or to put a lap together without mistakes. And it's very fast too -227kph fastest lap average. Corners 1 and 2 are hairpins coming from long straights with elevation changes at the braking areas, the perfect conditions for tyre flat-spotting; the lap closes with the double right-hander 8 & 9, a very fast combo with astroturf on the outside that makes the cars to snap-off at minimal contact. Despite its 4 straights there is very little passing around here, opportunities arising only when the driver in front makes an error, but these are F1 drivers and they rarely put a foot wrong, so don’t expect much of excitement tomorrow. Having said that, last year we saw HAM and PER with great charges through the field; the Mercedes driver from 9th to second and the Force India’s from 15th to sixth.

We will not see much in terms of strategy either, even this new Pirelli soft and supersoft compounds are durable enough to last the 71-lap race distance, so it will be a straight 1 stop at about a third of the distance for the top runners.

And here we go again. Is there any room to take changes in our predictions? somebody?...

Cato (...the current CFA Champion languishing in 10th place…) HAM ROS VET MAS BOT HUL

Let’s hope for a good race - and Good Luck!