I wanted to make a post about trading F1 and my strategy etc but as soon as I started I realised it would be a massive post. I’ve decided to break it up into a series of posts, each concentrating on specific area. This first post will be a kind off ‘dummies guide’ to the make up of an F1 race weekend, because this alone gives you some advantages over other sports.

An F1 weekend consists of the following.

• The teams arrive at the circuit during the week and by Thursday each team will have made a press statement about their hopes for the race and what they think about the track. Also an official press conference is held with selected drivers and team officials.
• Friday consists of two practice session, each 90 minutes long. Here the teams will try to ‘dial’ the cars into the track. The data from these sessions is analysed over night so they can start to make a plan of attack for the rest of the weekend.
• Saturday morning has another practice session which is 60 minutes long. This will allow them to fine tune the cars, making changes based on yesterdays data etc. They will also practice their qualifying runs.
• Saturday afternoon holds the qualifying session. These days it consist of three parts with the worst 6 cars being eliminated from the first and second.
• Sunday is race day. For the teams and drivers this is the only thing that matters as the race is the only event from which points can be scored.
  
  

So how does all this help with trading and betting? Well apart for the press conference for obvious reasons you can bet on all of the events independently. More importantly, as each event happens it has a direct reflection on the odds available.

Imagine a football game where everyone watched the teams in the 15 minute warm up. Imagine if the odds on Liverpool moved from 2.1 to 3.1 before kick-off because Torres missed 7 shots out of 10 in his warm-up.

As F1 is also about technology there is lots of data freely available which, if used correctly, can provide a good insight into how things may unfold. Torres missing 7 shots out of 10 in a WARM-UP is not a reason for the odds to drift – Ferrari being over 1 second quicker than McLaren in practice would be a good reason for the odds to change (unless this was expected). In my opinion too much is made of the practice results in terms of odds movements but I’m not going to complain – they should move at times but you will often see an over reaction followed by a correction.

Unfortunately you can’t trade on the outcome of practice sessions, but any qualifying and race markets can be. Therefore anything that happens in on the preceding events will move their odds. As you have nearly a day to review the data and do some research between the events you have plenty of time to make your choices. It also gives you time to scan all the bookies/exchanges to find the best odds. I have tried trading other sports but I’m not really one for making quick decisions based on a hunch. With F1 I can take my time and base choices on hard facts.
In total you have 3 practice sessions and the first 2 qualifying phases before anyone makes an attempt for pole position. It’s like football teams playing a few games as a warm-up before they play the ‘official’ one. You have all of the data from these sessions to help you make a prediction as to who will get pole – and therefore be in the best position to win the race.

Of course things sometimes don’t happen as you would expect and last weeks pole from Kubica was probably one of those times for a lot of people. I mentioned the press conference above because you can pick up some great tips from the teams and drivers. If you then go back and review past races at the track along with the seasons data so far, you can learn huge amounts about team’s strategies.

For those wanting to just dip in and out of markets trading the odds without doing research or understanding F1, there are some markets which will allow this (I will post about these later). For the majority of my ‘betting’, hours of research and a good understanding of F1 are the basis for most of my trades.

To round –up:

• If a team’s technical director says “our car will suit this track” he’s saying it because the car probably will. It may not mean it will win but if, for example, it’s a car on the brink of points in each race, it may be worth looking into entering the ‘points finish’ market. Used with your own research it will help you make a choice.
• F1 is as much a technology as a sport. This means any data/stats provided are usually a good indicator (unlike possession in a football game which has no direct link to the score line)
• The F1 weekend provides loads of data and stats which you can use to enter/exit from trades before anything has actually happened in terms of that market.
• If you get things wrong you can (sometimes) exit the market with a small loss. Apart from a retirement form the race, the odds will generally move in one direction or the other and not jump erratically all over the place. If you are quick enough you should be able to minimise losses and let winning trades run. Comparing this to football again, a goal not in your favour will cause the odds to instantly drift to a much longer price and may mean an instant loss on some markets.

This is just a simple overview so future posts will select one market and explain them in more detail.