Sunday 5 April 2009

A few other points

My pre-race predictions of fuel stops:

Firstly, I can't be judged on those who brought their stops forward for wet tyres, but for the other drivers, I was closer with my guesses than either James Allen or the BBC pre-race show.

Vettel stopped L13 (2 later than Allen and the BBC predictions, 1 earlier than mine).
Rosberg Glock and Sutil stopped on L15 (as Allen predicted, 3 later than BBC, 2 earlier than mine).
Webber stopped L16 (1 later than Allen said, 4 later than the BBC, 1 earlier than my prediction).
Trulli stopped on L17 exactly as I predicted, and he weighed the same as Rosberg, Glock and Webber, so my assesment is reasonable (Glock surely pitted early to prevent both Toyotas stopping on the same lap).
Raikkonen stopped earlier than I imagined, and put on wets, on a dry track. Apparently Ferrari thought the downpour was starting on lap 18.
Button stopped exactly as I predicted, on lap 19, 3 laps later than James Allen's prediction and 4! laps later than the Beeb expected.
Barrichello stopped the following lap, one earlier than I imagined.

Basically, even with the fuel loads published, any guesses about fuel seem subject to a "give or take a couple of laps" degree of inaccuracy.

Last year's leading drivers [2008 points](2009 points so far):
1. Hamilton [98](1)
2. Massa [97](0)
3. Raikkonen [75](0)
4. Kubica [75](0)
5. Alonso [61](4)
6. Heidfeld [60](4)
7. Kovaleinen [53](0)
8. Vettel [35](0)

This only goes to show how different this year's pecking order is. We should allow for the fact that Vettel and Kubica came close to big scores in Melbourne, and that Malaysia was no normal race, but still Brawn have already exceeded their 2008 total (they managed that after one race!)

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