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This weekend see’s the F1 circuit visit the first of two new tracks this season. Valencia may be classed a street race but with newly laid tarmac one of the highest top speeds on the calendar, it’s not going to be a Monaco style street track. The talk from the teams is this will be similar to Canada, with a set-up not much different to Hockenheim.
Normally in the build up to a race weekend I take a look through the history books, check out recent form and build up a picture of how things may pan out. Obviously this time around I can only use recent form as a measure of what may happen but this is something I use very loosely. In fact recent form in F1 can often be misleading and is one of the ‘errors’ I look to take advantage of when scouting the odds. Pat Symonds (the brains at Renault) made a great comment in his race preview when asked what he thinks the pecking order is. Read it here. The media and some F1 fans are often far to fickle when it comes to changes in the pecking order. After the French GP it was all "Ferrari have the fastest car", then when McLaren went and won the next two races it was "McLaren have the fastest car" - then Massa showed the Ferrari was very quick in Hungary and everyone gets all confused about who has the fastest car. In reality the performance of the car depends on a lot of factors (downforce levels required, tyres used, brake usage, did the driver have a skin full last night?) and things will chop and change. What you should look at is the general trend over a number of races and that’s something I try to do with a couple of excel sheets I use to collect data.
I will be entering very few positions before the weekend starts on Friday with the practice sessions. Usually practice sessions can be taken with a pinch of salt but this weekend they will play a crucial role as teams try to dial in their set-ups.
At first look you would have to say the McLarens look favourite for pole, with Massa (still can’t believe he nailed Monaco pole) likely to be in the hunt as well. Kimi needs to improve his qualy performances but I think he would still be happy with anything on the front two rows as long as he can carry more fuel. Could we see some low fuel runs from the likes of Renault and Toyota? Nobody seems to want to take that gamble this year – maybe because the safety car rules mean you don't want to be caught short on fuel, but this is a home track for Alonso and we all know what they tried in Barcelona.
As for the race I'm going to stay away from this market for the moment. The only thing catching my eye is Kimi at 5.1 but there’s too much risk involved. There’s a high chance of a safety car around a track like this which could shuffle the order at anytime in the race. Although it doesn’t make for a great result (an artificial winner because of a safety car) it would be nice to see one of the 999/1 runners come in first!
All of this probably sounds a bit vague and that's intentional. I made the mistake last race of looking for something which wasn't there and I paid the price. It's not just me being cautious though. A quick look on oddschecker will show only half the bookie's have put their odds up (at time of writing) when they usually have them ready be now. This is a risky race but with higher risk hopefully will come higher reward.
Normally in the build up to a race weekend I take a look through the history books, check out recent form and build up a picture of how things may pan out. Obviously this time around I can only use recent form as a measure of what may happen but this is something I use very loosely. In fact recent form in F1 can often be misleading and is one of the ‘errors’ I look to take advantage of when scouting the odds. Pat Symonds (the brains at Renault) made a great comment in his race preview when asked what he thinks the pecking order is. Read it here. The media and some F1 fans are often far to fickle when it comes to changes in the pecking order. After the French GP it was all "Ferrari have the fastest car", then when McLaren went and won the next two races it was "McLaren have the fastest car" - then Massa showed the Ferrari was very quick in Hungary and everyone gets all confused about who has the fastest car. In reality the performance of the car depends on a lot of factors (downforce levels required, tyres used, brake usage, did the driver have a skin full last night?) and things will chop and change. What you should look at is the general trend over a number of races and that’s something I try to do with a couple of excel sheets I use to collect data.
I will be entering very few positions before the weekend starts on Friday with the practice sessions. Usually practice sessions can be taken with a pinch of salt but this weekend they will play a crucial role as teams try to dial in their set-ups.
At first look you would have to say the McLarens look favourite for pole, with Massa (still can’t believe he nailed Monaco pole) likely to be in the hunt as well. Kimi needs to improve his qualy performances but I think he would still be happy with anything on the front two rows as long as he can carry more fuel. Could we see some low fuel runs from the likes of Renault and Toyota? Nobody seems to want to take that gamble this year – maybe because the safety car rules mean you don't want to be caught short on fuel, but this is a home track for Alonso and we all know what they tried in Barcelona.
As for the race I'm going to stay away from this market for the moment. The only thing catching my eye is Kimi at 5.1 but there’s too much risk involved. There’s a high chance of a safety car around a track like this which could shuffle the order at anytime in the race. Although it doesn’t make for a great result (an artificial winner because of a safety car) it would be nice to see one of the 999/1 runners come in first!
All of this probably sounds a bit vague and that's intentional. I made the mistake last race of looking for something which wasn't there and I paid the price. It's not just me being cautious though. A quick look on oddschecker will show only half the bookie's have put their odds up (at time of writing) when they usually have them ready be now. This is a risky race but with higher risk hopefully will come higher reward.
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