Japanese GP 2012 - Race

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Fourth consecutive Suzuka pole for Vettel, Red Bull has the front row with Webber second. McLaren choose the wrong set-up for Hamilton and ended up ninth, Button was best-of-the-rest in third but will serve a 5 grid penalty to start 8th.  Sauber found the speed was expected from them around here to get Kobayashi in 4th and Perez in 6th, with Grosjean in between them and just ahead of Alonso’s Ferrari. Raikkonen spun out in his last effort in Q3 and couldn’t improve from 8th. Force India’s Hulkenberg was last of the shoot-out but will drop 5 positions for ‘box change moving Massa to 10th.

For only the third time this year we scored a QF plenum with Fernando picking up the full 4 points. Joe and Tim were next with 2 points with 7 others rescuing at least one point. In general it was another disaster for our glorious Institution, up to nine of us went blank keeping our season average as the worst ever.  With this mark Fernando has taken the lead in the QF department with 15 points, that means 1 point per race, and he is the best among all of us! 

The revised grid for tomorrow:

VET  WEB  KOB  GRO  PER  ALO  RAI  BUT  HAM  MAS

Last year Button won this race nursing his tyres and staying out 2 more laps than Vettel to overtake him on the first round of pitstops.  We might see strategies comparable to Silverstone where Pirelli provided the same compound selection and it’s got similar downforce, tyre load and high speeds. Webber won the British GP on a soft-hard-hard.  The difference in laptimes between the 2 compounds are much higher than anticipated, up to 1.2 seconds, that will make 3 stops an alternative for the 53 lap race but the top runners will stick to 2 stops and as always the drivers who better preserve their rubber will have better options to decide when to pit. It’s very difficult to overtake in Suzuka, basically the only chance will be on the main straight with the help of DRS.

Talking of pitstops, check the following list with the average times teams are taking to service their drivers: 1-McLaren 2.94 seconds, 2- Red Bull 3.12, 3- Ferrari 3.19, 4- Lotus 3.37, 5- Mercedes 3.55, 6- Toro Rosso 3.79, 7- Force India 4.03, 8- Sauber 4.04, 9- Caterham 4.1, 10- Williams 4.23, 11- Marussia 4.65, 12- HST 6.44.

Another critical issue at this stage of the season is the number on engines each driver has used so far. With the high demands of Suzuka  five drivers had installed their 8th and last new unit: Button, Hamilton, Rosberg, Schumacher & Kobayashi. So far the Ferrari motors had been the most durable, both Alonso and Massa still have 2 new units  at their disposal, they are running the same used ones since Italy (2 races plus this one). Both Red Bull mounted new engines for this race, their 7th, same as Schumacher and both Lotus. This could represent a significant development in the last part of the Championship.

The poleman has won 7 of the last 10 races in Suzuka; the trend in 2012 has been 8 wins from pole in the past 14 races; Ferrari hasn’t won here since the glory days of Schummi (2004); the Safety Car has a 50-50 chance of making an appearance.

And here we go again for another chance of glory (yeah, right)

Cato- VET  WEB  ALO  PER  BUT  GRO

Enjoy!

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