A completely green track and then the rain made for very little running on Thursday, the opening practice day. Most of P1 was sat out by the bit teams to save tires on the green circuit, Alonso and Grosjean traded the top spot on the timesheets with Perez next. The Ferrari driver was working the wheel noticeable more than the Lotus’, but at least both red F2012s looked very drivable around the narrow streets and Massa was closer than usual to his teammate.
On P2 there was a rush by all the teams to set a time in the dry before the expected showers came 15 minutes into the session. Button, the only one on super-softs did a flyer 4 tenths faster than the ever present Grosjean and 8 tenths faster than the Ferraris. Pirelli recons the super-soft should be 3 tenths faster than the prime-soft around here, which gives Button’s time an indication of McLaren’s potential this weekend.
There’s no other GP where qualifying is more critical than Monaco. Seven of the last 8 victories came from the pole, and since 1986 all the winners with one exception started on the top 3 positions on the grid. That pushes the teams to dedicate a large part of their preparations for single lap, low fuel QF trim, even these days where races are won or lost understanding the narrow operating window of the Pirellis.
It’s difficult to measure Red Bull’s form at this stage, their customary approach to QF is not showing their cards until the last moment, but both their drivers are Monte Carlo specialists and you can expect them to be next to Lotus very close to McLaren. Ferrari ...
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Welcome to the 6th round of the very exciting 2012 Championship. As you might remember Monaco is unique in more than one sense as they hold the opening practice sessions on Thursday without activities on Friday. For us is regular schedule submitting our QF picks on Friday or Saturday before qualifying starts.
I have very important news to tell you, but before that let me give you a quick picture of what happened in track today in advance to a more in-depth analysis for tomorrow.
P1- ALO (1.16.265) GRO PER HAM MAL MAS KOB BUT VET ROS
P2- BUT (1.15.746) GRO MAS ALO MAL ROS WEB KOB SCH VET
There was rain 15 minutes into the 2nd session which meant all the times were set early on, but as I said, we’ll get back to this in our Friday mail.
Now, I need your attention. From now on, all our race picks will be kept secret until the start of the race. The main change is that we’ll not be able to see the rest of the group’s race picks as well as keeping our own from the others. And here comes the best part: when planning and executing all of this very elaborate changes, Manbos is now providing us with a full chart showing the number of votes each driver receives from the group including its percentages.
For example, our forecasts for the Spanish GP looks like this:
http://f1.manbos.com/estadis.asp?t=2012&gpn=Spain
To access this feature click GP Results from the bottom menu, then select Grand Prix / Race, and to right click “Race Statistics Forecast” in bold letters.
The columns show the driver, number of picks, percentage of the votes, driver’s ...
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Spanish GP 2012 - Results - Joe by a mile
by Cato Batista, 13/05/2012 22:43:40
Ladies and Gentlemen,
This was a shocker for the times. From nowhere Maldonado and Williams became front runners to beat former World Champions Alonso and Rokkonen clean and square. Fifth different driver, constructor to win the opening 5 rounds of the season. This year is shaping up to be to most unpredictable ever and we are poised to struggle accordingly, as you’ll see below.
I don’t know how Joe’s found some divine intervention to score an amazing three of the futility-record-total of 10 full marks we achieved collectively. With Rodrigo in second place (10 & 9 points respectively) they more than double the average of the rest of group! It was a day we set many records of the bad kind, and we had not rain or strange events to blame for . Fourteen of our panel of experts (I’m starting to question that) scored 4 points or less, and the rest of us (6) not even get past 6 points, 2 below the black horse/starting grid.
http://f1.manbos.com/userbets.asp?t=2012&gpn=Spain&nevent=race
In their private contest Matias came out a of Uwe and Erik ( 6 points to 4) to claim victory in the Bahrain GP from 3 weeks ago. With Maria, Uwe, Manbos and now Joe, he’s our 5th winner in the same number of races
In another record first, no one predicted the winner of the race. Our failed overwhelming choices were Alonso (14) and Raikkonen (8), what’s more, only six of you considered Maldonado to finish in the points (Erik, Matias, Fermando, Santiago, Ricardo & Lou). We only scored full points with Alonso in second (4 of us), Grosjean in fourth (3 of you), 2 with Vettel in 6th and ...
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Spanish GP 2012 - Race
by Cato Batista, 12/05/2012 20:14:21
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Many surprises in QF today. Hamilton’s McLaren was clearly the fastest car in all sessions but his unlikely closest pursuers were a Williams and a Ferrari. The sister McLaren car didn’t make to Q3 same as one of the Red Bulls. Lotus now has out qualified Mercedes and this time Sauber has both cars in the top 10.
Following our disastrous QF 2012 pattern we collected a record low 6 points among all of us. Five members got a single point from Hamilton’s pole (Champ Ian, Fernando, Fredrik, Rocco & Rodrigo) and a special mention to Ricky for picking Alonso in third. His loyalty has been rewarded.
The grid for tomorrow:
HAM MAL ALO GRO RAI PER ROS VET SCH KOB - BUT 11th, WEB 12th
We are not used to a starting grid like this in Barcelona. Maldonado was a shocker in the very fast single-lap-trim Williams, same for Alonso who always pulls something extra in front of his home crowd. VET admitted his Red Bull was no good for a top 5 today, he did only one slow lap (on softs) to be classified a of Schumacher and Kobayashi. The Mercedes driver did not go out to save tires and being able to pick the best compound option for the race. Button never found the balance to progress out of Q2 and in Webber’s case it was the team’s mistake not to send him out with a new set of rubber when conditions were improving at the end of the session. He said he had the car to be in the front row.
The most intriguing bit is that McLaren doesn’t exactly know what happened to Hamilton’s car when they order him to stop it on the track on the cool down lap. The car is ...
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