F1 Fanatic

I’m expecting a run of repeat winners – Alonso, Hamilton, Vettel, Webber, Button and probably Rosberg too to win the next 6 races in any order. ;)

@Kingshark yes Lotus looks a good bet. The surface in Valencia should favor the Lotus too. The Lotus seems to prefer rougher, more abrasive surfaces than the smooth Monaco/Canada type surface.

yes, Nico has matched Vettel. Both would be leading the championship if you counted only points post-China. And doing a countback at this stage of the season is really not worth much, as the countback result has so many opportunities to change from now to the end of the year, and probably would.

@DavidJH Yes it is true. They’ve been on course to do so many times, but something always comes up. eg. 2010 Valencia, 2012 Canada… something always comes up.

@prisoner-monkeys I heard people saying that, but I don’t really know where that came from in the first place really. Going into the Monaco weekend the only thing that I felt had the Lotus going for it was that it was (or it looked to be) the most drivable car. ie easy to drive on the limit, which would give the drivers confidence for Monaco.

Having said that they hadn’t (to that point, and arguably till now) actually been anything special in traction stakes nor qualifying, both of which are crucial in Monaco.

I did however think the McLaren, not the Lotus, would be the car to beat in Monaco.

Everyone this season will only win a single race. But the champion will be a driver that didn’t win a race throughout the year. :P

Valencia – Grosjean
Silverstone – Perez
Hockenheim – Schumacher
Hungary – Massa (after going against team orders when he’s leading Alonso)
Spa – Raikkonen
Singapore – Kobayashi?
Korea – I’m sorry, I ran out of reasonable contenders. :p

My prediction of Vettel was wrong, but it would’ve been right if it hadn’t been for that blasted alternator.

Now for the second repeat winner – I still think it’ll be Vettel :P

If not in Silverstone, in Hockenheim. Both are circuits where he’s gone well at in the past, and in theory, the updates on the Red Bull should work better on the Silverstone layout than they did the Valencia layout, where rear downforce is much much more important than in Valencia.

It remains to be seen how they’ll perform in the cold though. However, Mark Webber did win a cold, semi-raining Monaco Grand Prix, let’s not forget.

Hockenheim as a circuit layout demands similar characteristics to Bahrain and Valencia, to an extent. Coupled with home support Vettel could be mighty there. While Vettel sort of choked in front of his home crowd last year, I am convinced that his beef is not with racing at home, but with racing at the Nurburgring.

It will be interesting to see how the track temps balance with the circuit layout. Silverstone will be cold – of that I’m sure – but the corners also are very fast, which immediately put loading on the tyre, which will also stress and heat them.

@katederby I don’t remember track conditions in Silverstone 2010 – was it “hot for Silverstone?” or just plain hot? ie was it hot considering that it was Silverstone? Or was it overall hot?