UK: pre-qualifying 2018

On Wednesday news emerged that Eric Boullier has resigned from his position as racing director. Not too surprising. McLaren has not been performing well for years, and Zak Brown has estimated it will take between two and 10 years for the team to return to the sharp end. That does, of course, assume it’s possible.

Bottas has a fresh engine (no penalty) after his Austrian breakdown.

Mercedes has replaced part of its fuel system (pump or filter, I think) following reliability ropeyness last time out.

Hamilton has a very strong British record, but then, he did have that in Canada and it didn’t stop him underperforming significantly.

In first practice, he led Bottas by close to half a second as Mercedes dominated the time sheets. Vettel, Ricciardo, Raikkonen, and Verstappen were all covered by four-tenths. Grosjean was just two-hundredths behind Verstappen. Perez and Ocon were next, half a second off Grosjean but separated from one another by just three-thousandths. Stroll completed the top 10.

Second practice was a more competitive affair at the sharp end, with Vettel edging Hamilton by two-tenths for the top spot. Bottas, Raikkonen, and Ricciardo came next, with Alonso clocking the sixth fastest time. The Spaniard was followed by Hulkenberg, Ocon, Perez and Leclerc.

Third practice had Hamilton fastest, barely a tenth ahead of Raikkonen (although track times continually improved and the Finn set his earlier). Bottas was half a second further back, with a similar gap to Vettel (who only did a handful of laps). I think it could be close and rather distrust the oddly large gaps here. Verstappen and Ricciardo were a tenth off Vettel and six-thousandths off each other, with Leclerc just over a tenth off the Aussie. Magnussen, Grosjean and Ericsson complete the top 10, which had a distinctly Ferrari engine flavour.

It was notable for Vettel’s neck, which caused his low running. Hopefully he’ll be able to make qualifying. Thankfully, Hartley was not injured when he suffered a suspension failure that ripped his front left tyre from his car (the straps keeping it loosely attached), causing a heavy impact into the barriers. Gasly did no more running in the session, it’s unclear if he’ll be there for qualifying.

I did have a quick look at the fastest qualifier market after P3, but nothing appealed to me.

Because of the weird, and unwelcome, change in Ladbrokes’ approach, whereby it only puts up a bare handful of markets between qualifying and the race (I hope that’s temporary, maybe they’ve shifted staff to World Cup markets), I offered a few betting suggestions ahead of time. Namely:

Hartley, not to be classified 2.75

Raikkonen, fastest qualifier, each way 21

Raikkonen, win, each way 17

I also backed Mr. B’s 2.2 tip on fewer than 16 classified finishers, which I think is just about value. Whilst I was checking the last few results for Silverstone, I noticed that Raikkonen has outqualified Vettel here for every season they’ve been paired up. No guarantee it’ll happen this time, of course, but it does suggest it’s a realistic possibility and that the Finn’s odds might be too long.

Hartley has the worst record on the grid, with 4/9 DNFs this year.

Qualifying is at 2pm. It remains to be seen if Vettel, Gasly or Hartley will be there. I suspect they will be, but it’s possible they’ll have to give it a miss.

Morris Dancer