Last Sunday, in the Spanish GP, Webber was on a race of his own. The Red Bull was super quick in Qualifying, totally dominating with a 1-2 race start but that was not the case on race pace where Hamilton and Alonso seemed to pace enough pace to keep up with them.

 

Standings after Round 5:
      Drivers:             Constructors:

News:

Last Sunday, in the Spanish GP, Webber was on a race of his own. The Red Bull was super quick in Qualifying, totally dominating with a 1-2 race start but that was not the case on race pace where Hamilton and Alonso seemed to pace enough pace to keep up with them. Hamilton even managed to pass Vettel because the Red Bull mechanics kept him 2 more seconds at the pits. Once again though, reliability was an issue for Red Bull and Vettel not only pitted one more time than the front runners but also had to slow down due to brake overheat on the front axis. Luckily, for him Hamilton had a puncture two laps before the end and he regained 3rd place which lost it to Alonso after his 2nd pit. A little further back the grid Button got stuck behind Schumacher after the pits and stayed there for the rest of the race with Massa right on his back. Meanwhile, Rosberg struggled a lot to get the new Mercedes car up to pace and fall back at the grid and didn’t manage to score any points (ruining our betting suggestion). Last but not least, all the drivers were very careful through the first lap and nothing happened apart from Bruno Senna going straight to the tyre wall.

Coming into this Grand Prix, after a few days only, there isn’t anything major to comment on apart from the usual minor updates that teams bring here in the tight circuit of Monaco. Only Mercedes comes into this race with its former car (the short one) because in circuits like Monaco with a lot of slow corners, maximum mechanical grip is needed and the short one car is more suitable for that job. Everyone is very curious to see if Rosberg will bounce back after a very bad at Spain, suggesting that the updates only managed to suit Schumacher rather than him.

Qualifying and Race:
After three practice sessions, we have some clues about what’s going to happen today and tomorrow.

•    The Red Bull doesn’t seem to have the performance advantage they had at Spain but are competitive enough for pole position. Last year, they struggled with the super soft tyres and this year the cars start with a lot more fuel. So, it will be interesting to see their consistency on their lap times.
•    Monaco seems to suit the Ferrari car with Alonso topping both Thursday sessions. Today though, he crashed the car at the Saturday practice session and the Ferrari mechanics are in a race with time, to manage to get the car ready for qualifying. He only managed to complete 6 laps today.
•    Kubica with Renault seems to have found something more from his car and today topped the times with the fastest time so far (1 tenth down from Alonso).
•    McLaren and Mercedes seem to be one click behind from the others above with Hamilton and Rosberg a little closer. Button is struggling to get some to his super soft tyres and complained about a couple of times through the team radio.
•    Monaco is the smallest and slowest circuit on the calendar with only a few escape routes out of the circuit. Any mistake results to a crash, so the drivers must be extra careful here.
•    Besides that, there is really no realistic way to pass a car here due the lack of space. So, prepare for a major traffic jam at Q1 with 24 cars on a small track like that. The drivers will have a lot of trouble to find a clear lap.
•    Finally, this track is very fond of Safety cars. And by that, I mean that we have seen a lot of them the last years. So, expect one, even on the last lap of the race.

Bridgestone brought the super soft and medium compound for this race. Super soft seems to perform good enough for a hot lap but some drivers experience some problems with getting up the heat. Meanwhile, last year, the cars that started on the super softs had a lot of degradation problems at the early stages (especially Red Bull) and maybe we will see some teams to start with the harder compound. Moreover, last year Bridgestone brought the soft compound which wasn’t that much slower than the super soft. This year however, we have the medium compound and that makes the dilemma I mentioned for the start of the race even harder to decide.

Betting Suggestions:

Last year, Brawn GP and Ferrari we very close at qualifying, and so they filled the 4 front places both at qualifying and race. This year Red Bull is once again the favorites for pole, but Alonso and Kubica seem quick to end their streak on pole positions with Massa right there behind. Unfortunately, Alonso crashed the car and we don’t know if he will lose pace at qualifying. Still though, we can bet on him to be on top 3 even with that crash. Moreover, the odds on a Safety car deployment are rather low, so we won’t bother with that. 1st  lap Retirement over 0.5 is considered a good one though. Last but not least, I like Kubica and I think we can bring the car at top 6 at Sunday’s race along with Massa who seems quicker on this track than the previous ones:

•    Qualifying Top 3 Finish - Fernando Alonso (1.65 at Bwin)
•    1st Lap Retirements - Over 0.5 (1.55 at Bwin)
•    Race Top 6 Finish – Robert Kubica (1.61 at Bet365)
•    Race Top 6 Finish – Felipe Massa (1.90 at Bet365)