MorrisF1

We're four races into a probably 19 race season (there's still a chance the inaugural Russian Grand Prix, due in October, could be suspended or cancelled for political reasons). Intriguingly, every single qualifying session and race, excluding Australia where Hamilton suffered a DNF due to reliability failure, has been identical to 2013 in terms of which Mercedes driver was faster. Now, that could be coincide but it's 7/7 which suggests that even if last year isn't a perfect guide, it's at least worth bearing in mind. However, there were a few DNFs last year. In addition, the Indian Grand Prix has gone (huzzah), we see the return after some time of the Austrian A1 Ring, and the probable first race in Russia. Upon checking, we also lost Korea. So, even though we have 15 races still ahead, not all of them can be considered for predictive purposes. Here's how they stacked up in 2013 (first name is qualifying 'winner', second the highest placed in...

The Alonso bet came off, which I'm quite pleased about. The hedge was matched, but I suspect it would've been green even if Ricciardo had passed him near the end. Obviously it was better to do without hedging, for the second race in a row, but I'll never complain about a green result. Unfortunately, Raikkonen continues to struggle with the Ferrari, and Vettel (possibly due to strategy errors) was again outclassed by his team mate, so Mr. Putney's tips did not, alas, come off. It's fair to say the race was not a classic, particularly after the excellence of Bahrain (feels odd typing that). Before the race the assumption was it would be dry, there'd be a fair bit of tyre degradation and the number of stops could be 2 or possibly 3. Off the line Hamilton retained the lead, Rosberg left the handbrake on, and Massa made a flying start (again) only to collide with Alonso and drift back. The Spaniard, meanwhile, leapt into third and was very nearly into second. Rosber...

I missed the first five minutes or so of qualifying. It turned out Maldonado starts last, because an oil leak on his car meant he could not set any laps at all. He had a 5 place grid penalty for ramming Gutierrez in Bahrain (too lenient, if you ask me). There was some dispute as to whether this will be carried on to the next race or not, so we'll have to wait and see. Qualifying was wet throughout, slowly drifting from full wet to intermediate territory. Q1 went largely as you would expect, and we lost the pointless teams, absent Maldonado and Gutierrez. Q2 saw the slightly surprising departure of both McLarens, as well as Raikkonen, who was only 11th. In the Finn's defence, he has had limited running in practice, but it was still something of a surprise. We also lost Kvyat, Perez and Sutil. Q3 was quite interesting. Hamilton was faster by miles than everyone else. Rosberg may have challenged, but fluffed one lap with a locked brake and a second by spinning at the final corn...

I was intrigued by the top 3 drivers' market, but there are a huge number of potential candidates for the third spot all with good reasons for backing them, so I've decided not to bother. Earlier this week Stefano Domenicali announced a surprise resignation as team principal of Ferrari. Whether he resigned or was resigned is not clear, at the time of writing, but it was a shock. I quite like Domenicali. He started off his F1 career working in the car park and worked his way up to being team principal of the sport's most famous name. But for a bad strategy call in 2010 and two pieces of bad luck in 2012 he would have been in charge for one or two more Alonso titles. His replacement, Marco Mattiacci, appears to be a car salesman. Many think he's an interim leader, whilst Ross Brawn (huzzah!) or Flavio Briatore (boo hiss!) are talked into taking over. On Tuesday we found out the result of Red Bull's appeal against Ricciardo's disqualification in Australia. Apparen...

Blimey. It took 10 goes, but Bahrain was transformed, not unlike a frumpy librarian who turns out to like latex catsuits. An absolutely fantastic race from beginning to end, action throughout, huge amounts of passing, great excitement etc etc ad nauseum. It was also the first race I've watched on Sky, which was a bit unexpected. I must say the commentary team are a cut above the BBC (in fairness, they are all ex-BBC and would probably be current BBC if the aforementioned organisation didn't have the loyalty of Judas and the common sense of a drunken bull terrier). On bets: one red, one green, and I'm content with that. It was the first race so far that was better not to hedge (overall there's not much difference). I'm considering doing Early Bets. These would be mentioned on pb.com and maybe over Twitter (and referred to in pre-qualifying pieces), but would not count towards the records. The reason for this is that I've made a couple so far this year, and they...

In Q1 everyone save Mercedes had to put on the soft tyres (about a second or more faster than the medium tyres) to make it through. Caterham and Marussia failed to escape, as did Sutil and Maldonado. In dry qualifying drivers start on the tyre they qualify on in Q2 (with an extra set provided for Q3). This is to stop people in Q3 not bothering to run, or trundling about lazily. During Q2 James Allen remarked that the Red Bulls were quite short-geared, which echoed an earlier comment that Ricciardo (unlike almost everyone else) was running in 8th gear at a certain part of the track. Q2 saw the following (from 11th to 16th) eliminated: Vettel, Hulkenberg, Kvyat, Vergne, Gutierrez and Grosjean. Vettel and Hulkenberg were outshone by team mates, with Ricciardo (in this session) 3rd and Perez 6th. Bit surprised Hulkenberg did not make it, frankly. Rosberg ended up with pole, ahead of Hamilton. Ricciardo qualified 3rd, but will go back 10 places as per his grid penalty. Bottas was next, foll...

I'd forgotten this is a night race this season. So, it'll be on at a civilised hour. The tyres are soft and medium. The circuit would seem to be one dominated by straights. In short, this should help the Mercedes-powered cars and hinder the rest. As qualifying's likely to be the first to be dry this year it'll be interesting to see the pecking order, particularly whether or not Williams can do a little better. There's an interesting article below about why and how the running order shifted from Australia to Malaysia: http://www1.skysports.com/f1/news/22058/9243392/how-mclaren-and-williams-dropped-down-the-order-as-the-2014-pendulum-swung-at-sepang Basically, aerodynamics matter more in Malaysia than in Australia. Bahrain is more about power than Malaysia. At the moment, we seem to have the following order for aerodynamics: Red Bull Ferrari/Mercedes For power, it's simpler, Mercedes are top, followed by other Mercedes-powered cars. So circuits where ...