My predictions for the 2011 season.

With exactly 1 month till the start of the first race in Melbourne, Australia I have decided to reveal my predictions.

Top 12 drivers (in any order):

Fernando Alonso

Felipe Massa

Sebastian Vettel

Mark Webber

Lewis Hamilton

Jenson Button

Rubens Barrichello

Nick Heidfeld

Nico Rosberg

Michael Schumacher

Kamui Kobayashi

Adrian Sutil

Winner of drivers championship: Fernando Alonso.

Top 6 teams (also in any order)

Red Bull

Ferrari

McLaren

Mercedes

Williams

Renault

Winner of Teams Championship: Ferrari

Bahrain may be cancelled.

Following the political unrest in Bahrain, Bernie Eccleston has admitted that they will have to make a decision early next week on wether the Bahrain race – and the testing the week before – can take place. Now that this news is out, I wouldn’t be surprised if a number of tracks in Europe or in the Middle East which have passed the test to host F1 announced that they can be ready quickly to replace them. That’s what happened when we had the problems last year when no one was sure if the South Korea GP would take place.

Ferrari want rain!

Ferrari are after rain at Jerez today, on twitter they posted “Now it is just matter to wait for rain, if it will ever come…”. They’re after the rain so they can try out Pirelli’s wet compound of tyre, that way they’ll know what they’re like before we get to Malaysia where it’s likely  that there will be rain, and a good chance of that rain being heavy. That’s the problem with only testing at tracks where rain isn’t that likely, and maybe one of the testing sessions should be somewhere like Spa where you’d expect there to be rain within the four days testing.

Told you it would be Nick!

After Kubica’s crash I said that the replacement would either be Nick Heidfeld, Nico Hulkenberg or Pedro De La Rosa. Well, Nick Heidfeld has been handed the chance to do this weeks testing. Nick has had 11 years of experience, so he’s the  man to tell Renault what they need.

They’ve also announced they’ll be using Bruno Senna as well as Vitaly Petrov in the testing, so I think it will be one day each. One good thing we can get out of this, is to see how Senna compares to the other drivers, as last year his car was too slow to be able to tell.

Kubica is recovering well after his crash in Italy, but doctors are warning that he may never race again, and if he does it may not be until 2012.

Kubica crashes!

The driver from Poland was taking part in a rally near Genoa in Italy. He has fractured his right arm, leg and hand, and although the injuries aren’t life threatening he may never drive in F1 again as he already has titanium bolts in his arm after a road crash in 2003 when he was passenger. It’s almost certain he won’t make Bahrain, and it’s odds on for either Bruno Senna or Roman Grosjean to drive in the testing next week. If he can’t make the start of the season then Renault will need to find another driver, here is my shortlist: Nick Heidfeld, advantage: lots of experience, disadvantage: may not be as skilful  as other candidates; Nico Hulkenberg, advantage: probably the best driver on my shortlist, disadvantage: almost no experience; Pedro De La Rosa, advantage: he’s experienced disadvantage: he’s got the least skill of the lot and Kimi Raikkonen, advantage: he’s experienced, he was linked to Renault earlier in the year and skilful, disadvantage: he’s just signed a deal with the Red Bull rally team.

I wish Robert and all his friends and family my sympathy at this time and I hope that he’ll be ok to drive again, if he never drives again then F1 has lost a star.

Testing Fastest Times.

By now you should have a vague idea of the standings from last weeks testing. But, over the days the track will have got more rubber put on it, so times on the 3rd day should be quicker than the 2nd and the 2nd quicker than the 1st. Because of this I’ve decided to try and estimate the times as if they were all on the first day, to do this I collected the results for all 3 days. If there were any drivers who’d driven on days 1 and 2, I would get how much they’d improved by. I’d then find the average (mean) for these improvements. I did the same for the second and third days. But as Nico Rosberg improved by over 5 seconds between days 1 and 2 (because he could only do 9 laps at the start of day two before the car suffered hydraulic problems) I have excluded his result as it is an anomaly. For laps on day 2 I got an average of 1.273 seconds which I add onto their day 2 times, and for times on day three they add 2.460 seconds (1.273 + 1.187), that way everyone’s time is as if it was set on the first day. Here are the results, it goes driver name, team name, what year the car was build for and  day 1 time.

Sebastian Vettel – Red Bull – 2011 – 1:13.769

Nico Hulkenberg – Force India – 2010 – 1.13.938

Gary Paffett – McLaren – 2010 – 1.14.292

Paul Di Resta – Force India – 2010 – 1.14.461

Fernando Alonso – Ferrari – 2011 – 1.14.553

Robert Kubica – Renault – 2011 – 1.15.604

Kamui Kobayashi – Sauber – 2011 – 1.15.621

Lewis Hamilton – McLaren – 2010 – 1.15.626

Adrian Sutil – Force India – 2010 – 1.15.661

Narain Karthikeyan – HRT – 2010 – 1.15.740

Nico Rosberg – Mercedes – 2011 – 1.15.918

Jerome D’Ambrosio – Virgin – 2010 – 1.16.003

Jenson Button – McLaren – 2010 – 1.16.013

Vitaly Petrov – Renault – 2011 – 1.16.351

Mark Webber – Red Bull – 2011 – 1.16.396

Michael Schumacher – Mercedes – 2011 – 1.16.450

Felipe Massa – Ferrari – 2011 – 1.16.477

Timo Glock – Virgin – 2010 – 1.16.677

Pastor Maldonado – Williams – 2011 – 1.16.689

Sergio Perez – Sauber – 2011 – 1.16.929

Jaime Alguersuari – Toro Rosso – 2011 – 1.17.214

Sebastian Buemi – Toro Rosso – 2011 – 1.17.761

Rubens Barrichello – Williams – 2011 – 1.17.796

Heikki Kovalainen – Team Lotus – 2011 – 1.21.922

Testing

Yesterday marked the start of the 2011 season, with the first testing. The pack were pretty spread out, and the 2010 cars seem to be slightly quicker than than the 2011 ones. Despite this Vettel in the RB7 -the new Red Bull- was the fastest by quite some margin with a time of 1.13,769, 0.2 seconds ahead of Nico Hulkenberg in the 2010 Force India. Mercedes didn’t have a good day, they suffered a hydraulics problem whilst Rosberg was driving and it took until late afternoon for them to fix, so we’ll find out how quick their car is today. D’Ambrosoio in the Virgin 2010 started his F1 career well, finishing 7th only 2.3 seconds off the Red Bull, the only other new teams testing yesterday, Hispania weren’t as good, their driver Narain Karithikeyan was second to last and only ahead of Rosberg who drove only 9 laps. The only other point of interest is that F1 new boy Paul Di Resta was only 0.5 seconds off Nico Hulkenberg in the same car, this looks promising as in testing it’s not too hard to find 0.5 seconds.

Full Standings:

Vettel – 2011 Red Bull  1.13.769

Hulkenberg – 2010 Force India  1.13.938

Paffett – 2010 McLaren  1.14.292

Di Resta – 2010 Force India  1.14.461

Alonso – 2011 Ferrari  1.14.553

Kobayashi – 2011 Sauber  1.15.621

D’Ambrosio – 2010 Virgin  1.16.003

Petrov – 2011 Renault  1.16.351

Schumacher – 2011 Mercedes  1.16.450

Alguersuari – 2011 Toro Rosso  1.17.214

Barrichello – 2011 Williams  1.17.335

Karithikeyan – 2010 Hispania  1.18.020

Rosberg – 2011 Mercedes  1.19.930