Bahrain: pre-qualifying 2019


Ahead of the race weekend there was some more rumbling about bringing in financially fairer rules, including a cost cap (proposed to start at £200m before falling to £150m [think it’s pounds, may be dollars]) a few years later. The cost cap is meant to address the sport’s two tier nature, with Mercedes, Ferrari, and Red Bull the only chaps with a shot at winning on pace, a situation that’s existed since the hybrid era began.

It’s unlikely to go through. It didn’t last time and those three (four if you count Red Bull’s ‘sister’ team Toro Rosso, and five if you count Alfa Romeo [formerly Sauber] as Little Ferrari) have significant clout in the sport.

In other off-track news, it appears Patrick Head is returning to Williams. After the swift departure of Paddy Lowe for ‘personal’ leave, this does suggest Lowe may not be coming back. One hopes the team can turn things around rapidly, as right now they’re in a lowly third tier, by themselves.

Ahead of practice, on PB, I tipped Leclerc to ‘win’ first practice each way at 13 (14 with boost, fifth the odds top three). By a nice turn of luck, he topped the session. Right now, I don’t plan on betting on qualifying unless some odds look out of kilter.

Leclerc was fastest, as mentioned, in first practice, two tenths ahead of Vettel. Bottas was seven-tenths down the road, with Hamilton three-tenths behind his beard-enhanced team mate. Verstappen and Gasly followed close behind. Sainz was next, just a tenth off Gasly, suggesting the Mercedes and Red Bulls are engaged in competitive sandbagging. Hulkenberg, Kvyat, and Raikkonen rounded out the top 10.

Second practice again had a Ferrari 1-2 topping the timesheet, this time with Vettel three-hundredths ahead of his team mate. Hamilton and Bottas were over half a second further back. Hulkenberg was fifth, half a tenth ahead of Verstappen, who was followed by Magnussen, Norris, Grosjean, and Kvyat. Gasly was twelfth, about seven-tenths off his team mate (suspect a problem, if he’s genuinely that far off then his top flight career won’t last long).

Last year Ferrari got hammered in Australian qualifying then locked out the front row in Bahrain. Will history repeat itself?

It’s also going to be interesting trying to work out relative pace advantage from party modes in qualifying, and thus relative loss of pace from qualifying to the race. I think Mercedes have the biggest qualifying boost, with Ferrari and Red Bull seemingly quite similar in Australia. But we only have one race weekend so far to go on.

I’m posting this early as activities over the weekend make it probable I wouldn’t be able to put it up after third practice and ahead of qualifying. The pre-race ramble will be up either Sunday morning or Saturday evening, but more likely to the Sunday.

Of the top four in qualifying, Bottas had the longest odds at 5.5. Hard for me to find value there, so I’m not betting/tipping on qualifying.

Morris Dancer

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