Monaco: pre-race 2018
Qualifying was really
rather interesting and close. Behind Ricciardo, who dominated it
throughout.
Verstappen had buggered
his car (crashed in third practice) sufficiently it couldn’t be
mended in time. So, he starts last and has a five place grid penalty
for a change of gearbox into the bargain. Slightly surprisingly,
Magnussen was the slowest man to set a time (the Haas has been oddly
ropey all weekend, the only car to struggle to find pace on the
hypersoft), with, less surprisingly, Stroll just ahead of him.
Hartley and Ericsson were also eliminated.
Q2 was quite
interesting in that every driver eliminated came from a different
team. Hulkenberg, beaten for the first time straight up by Sainz, was
fastest of those departing, a tiny margin ahead of Vandoorne, with
Sirotkin close behind. Leclerc managed to qualify just ahead of
Grosjean. During Q2 the Mercedes chaps tried qualifying on the
ultrasoft, but after the first run both were in the elimination zone
so they wisely opted to switch back to the hypers.
In Q3, after the first
run, Ricciardo was a day and a half (nearly half a second) ahead of
the rest. However, Hamilton was just two-thousandths ahead of Vettel,
who was three-thousandths ahead of Raikkonen. Rather close. After the
second runs, Ricciardo acquired pole, Vettel got closer but will
start 2nd, and Hamilton will start 3rd.
Raikkonen will be directly behind his team mate and right beside
Hamilton.
Bottas and Ocon
comprise row three, but there was six-tenths between them on pace.
Alonso and Sainz, separated by two-hundredths, make row four a
Spanish affair, with Perez just edging Gasly on the fifth row.
Very rarely does
someone win in Monaco who doesn’t start on the first two rows.
Lucky safety car timing can help a lot, and passing is very
difficult, but Verstappen should have sufficient pace advantage to
rise several places on-track.
Naturally, DNFs happen
fairly often and can be due to either making a mistake or being
unlucky enough to have someone plough into you.
To be honest, the only
bet that sprang to my mind was Ricciardo to win. Because he’s the
fastest and he starts top. However, his odds are 1.36.
And so commenced the
ancient tradition of perusing the markets, hoping something had been
horrendously mispriced.
To my surprise, I saw
something. There’s a market on Ladbrokes, Winner Without Ricciardo.
Each way pays out a third the odds for the top 3 places. I’ve
backed both Raikkonen and Bottas at 10 and 19 respectively, splitting
a single stake so it’s more or less equally profitable either way
(and green overall if either of them is top 3 behind Ricciardo).
The top three teams are
miles faster than the rest so it’s highly likely one of them will
be at least 4th. If Vettel/Hamilton have trouble, both
could do it. If you’re feeling frisky, then a pound or two on
someone like Alonso (67) might be worth a look.
Anyway, give this Year
of Woe has typically seen terrible misfortune or horrendous
misjudgement, I’m intrigued to see how the race turns out.
Morris Dancer
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