US: pre-qualifying 2018

George Russell has been named as a Williams driver for next year. The youngster has had an impressive record in lower motorsport categories, and had been previously mentioned as a potential Force India driver, though there are a billion reasons why he didn’t end up going there. Let’s hope Williams can provide him with a rather more competitive car than this year’s effort.

Just as an aside, if Force India had been allowed to keep their pre-takeover points, they’d be best of the rest, again. Staggering and depressing that such a successful midfield team can struggle to survive financially.

WSeries is a new motorsport category, recently announced and due to start next year. It’s also women-only and has drawn much comment, with opinion split (a majority against but a sizeable minority for). I’ve got to say I think it’s a bad idea. Women can, and should, compete directly against men in motorsport. Intended or not, the underlying message of a women-only formula is that they can’t quite hack it against men. I hope we see female racers in F1, but this feels like a retrograde step to that goal.

Unusually, I backed a short odds and (for me) relatively long term bet. Backed Force India at 1.57 (1.6 with boost) to beat McLaren in the Constructors. Since the former lost their points due to the takeover, they have, over the course of five races, accrued 43 points. In the same period, McLaren have won just 6. Even stripping out the unusually good result in Belgium, that’s 25 against 6 over four races. The current tallies are Force India 43, McLaren 58. I don’t think this is a dead cert, but perhaps an 80-90% chance of occurring.

After some consideration I also backed at 8.5 (9 with boost) a special on Hamilton to win 92 or more races. Remember, kids, if you make long term bets make a note of the bet ID just in case the bet goes missing.

Anyway, on the Monday after the Japanese Grand Prix I backed Bottas each way to be top 2 in the US, based on his recent performances (8.5/9 with boost). We’ll see whether that proves clever or not.

Gasly and Hartley both have penalties for changes to their power units and start at the back. Vettel has a 3 place grid penalty for insufficiently slowing under red flags during practice.

First practice was pretty wet, mostly halfway between intermediate and full wets. However, the final results were mostly normal. Hamilton and Bottas were fastest followed by Verstappen. The Finn was over a second off his team mate and less than a tenth ahead of the Red Bull. Verstappen was half a second up the road from Ricciardo, with Vettel close behind and Raikkonen far behind. Sainz, Grosjean, Leclerc and Ericsson rounded out the top 10.

Second practice was even wetter. Some drivers didn’t do any running, Ricciardo and Bottas amongst them. Fastest was Hamilton, again, but second quickest was Gasly. He looked consistently quick, clocking times just ahead of Verstappen and over 2s ahead of his team mate. Verstappen and Alonso followed, then came Hulkenberg and Hartley. Ericsson, Vandoorne, Raikkonen and Vettel followed (I do wonder if the Ferraris were fat with fuel).

Third practice, contrary to expectation, was dry. Vettel was fastest, followed by Raikkonen and Hamilton but all three were covered by less than a tenth. Bottas was seven-tenths off the ultimate pace but his was set much earlier in the session, and I think was on the supersoft rather than the qualifying ultrasoft. Verstappen and Ricciardo were a little further back. Leclerc, Perez, Sainz and Grosjean followed.

It’s very tight in the midfield, and potentially between Mercedes and Ferrari. Red Bull seem (again) to be in their own No Man’s Land ahead of the midfield but behind those contesting pole. Pretty hard to try and call pole, could be any one of the four.

At the time of writing qualifying and the race are expected to be dry.

I was waiting to see if any of the top four had weirdly long odds. And Raikkonen did. He’s 13 for pole despite being a tiny margin behind Vettel in third practice. In a tight four horse race that’s too long. Backed him to top qualifying, each way (third the odds top 2).

Incidentally, be aware that although qualifying is on at the peculiarly late time of 10pm (UK), the race itself starts shortly after 7pm. Not sure why there’s such a difference, perhaps there’s a US sporting event qualifying would otherwise clash with. [Apparently it’s because the concert, usually after qualifying, is before it. This seems unnecessary and daft].

The pre-race ramble will be up tomorrow.

Morris Dancer