A look back at qualifying

To interrupt the looong break until Spa, I thought it might be interesting and possibly even helpful to look back the season so far. This weekend, I’ll write about qualifying (which I rarely, if ever, bet on last season). Next weekend, I’ll take a look at race betting.

The figures below all assume a £10 stake with no laying (or backing, as the case may be). [I do advocate setting up in-game lays/backs to mitigate losses].

Bahrain – 2 tips, both wrong – red £20.
Australia – no tips
Malaysia – 2 tips, 1 right – green £45.58
China – 2 tips, both wrong – red £20
Spain – 1 tip, right – green £45
Monaco – 1 tip, wrong – red £10
Turkey – 1 tip, right – green £27.50
Canada - 1 tip, wrong – red £10
Valencia – 1 tip, right – green £28.50
Silverstone – 2 tips, 1 right – green £23.34
Hockenheim – 1 tip, wrong – red £10
Hungary – 1 tip, right – green £8.50

So, that’s 1 neutral, [Australia because I didn’t tip], 6 green and 5 red. The net result so far is a profit of £108.42 from a total stake of £150. That’s quite a bit better than I was expecting, but does make me a bit concerned about how woeful my race betting must be to have a net loss overall (so far) for the two combined.

Anyway, back to qualifying. Generally, I’ve done pretty well. Two losses at least could easily have been wins (Kubica for pole in Monaco when he came second and Alonso at Hockenheim where he lost by 0.002s). I seem to be reasonably good at both pole and the Q3 market, and was amused to read in an early season pre-qualifying post that I was considering stopping betting on it. If anything, I should ignore the race and bet only on qualifying, based on present stats.

I suspect I’m better at qualifying than the race because there is more information available. The P3 qualifying simulation offers a very good opportunity to assess prospective performance, and usually that’s enough to be either correct or close enough laying is possible.

Last season there was more pre-race information available because the fuel loads were effectively made public (weight was published, which indicates fuel on-board). This made it possible to forecast who would pit when, whether they’d be in traffic, the condition of their tyres, who would benefit from a safety car etc.

However, I’ll say more about this during the probably depressing race betting post I’ll write for next weekend.

Morris Dancer