Saturday 29 May 2010

Turkey: pre-qualifying

Turkey is a new track, and weird because it’s one of the few (along with awesome Interlagos) that goes anti-clockwise.

Last year Vettel did less well at Turkey, with Button winning and Webber coming second. In earlier years, the Ferrari team had a good run.

I said on the main site that I thought it could be a good race. Ferrari have had a good history there, the McLaren should be nicely suited to the track but Red Bull are so dominant they must be in the mix.

P1 saw McLaren get a 1-2 (Hamilton first) followed by the Mercedes (Schumacher first), then Vettel, Kubica and Petrov, Webber, Alonso and Sutil.

P2 had Button fastest, ahead of Webber, Vettel, Hamilton, Alonso, Rosberg, Schumacher, Kubica, Petrov and Massa. However, it was more notable for the fact that both Red Bulls had problems, with Vettel losing water pressure and Webber’s engine dying.

In P3 Vettel came top with a stonking lap, followed by Rosberg, then Hamilton, Kubica, Alonso, Schumacher, Button, Massa, Petrov.

The session was remarkable for a number of spins and errors, from the likes of Hamilton, Vettel, and Webber, the favourites for pole. Webber could’ve been higher but he stuffed up an otherwise promising lap.

Vettel’s evens for pole, Webber 3.75, Hamilton between 9 and 10. Hard to say whether Hamilton or Webber represents better value, and, of course, Vettel’s seriously fast.

Having taken a little while to consider, I think Webber represents better value. His odds may be overstated because he had a great lap wrecked due to an error (something that happened to his rivals also, but earlier in the session) and he outpaced Vettel here last year. [I did also back Hamilton, but that was speculative and before P3. Vettel was about 0.3s faster than Hamilton in the session, a very large gap to overcome, I feel].

So, I’m tipping Webber at 3.75. I’ve also set up some in-game lays (as per Kubica at Monaco) and would advocate doing the same here.

Morris Dancer

2 comments:

Jamei said...

Yeah Webber does look good value at that price, unfortunately I used the last of my funds on an unlikely but good value Button qual/win double after the second practice session which I am now trying to lay off.

I have laid Massa at 1.18 to get into the Top 10, around that part of the field, the mean practice time is typically a very good indicator of qualifying position (in dry weekends) and on that measure Massa comes out 11th behind Sutil and Petrov.

Morris Dancer said...

Bad luck with the Massa lay, given that Alonso cocked up in Q2.

Glad to see Webber got pole.