F1 spanish grand prix

[kompressaur]

I dont know when it is but i am just reading htis about it-

Kimi Raikkonen is no bigger than 4/7 with Hills to win the Spanish Grand Prix after maintaining his dominance of the weekend in Saturday's final qualifying session at Barcelona.

Raikkonen secured pole position in his Ferrari in the dying seconds to pip the Renault of home favourite Fernando Alonso, who will start alongside the world champion.

Alonso is as short as 9/5 with the same firm but a more realistic 5/1 with Stan James and Bet Direct.

Felipe Massa, who won the last grand prix in Bahrain, will start directly behind his pole-sitting team-mate on the second row and is the 5/1 second favourite for the win, again with Sportingbet.

BMW Sauber's Robert Kubica lines up fourth on the grid and is 20/1 with Lewis Hamilton 12s from fifth on the grid.

Heikki Kovalainen, who will start sixth in the sister McLaren, is 40/1 with Sportingbet.

Aside from a meaningless Saturday practice session and a wobble in Q2, Raikkonen has been the class of the field throughout the weekend and should cruise to his second win of the season providing he gets a clean start.

Alonso is likely to be pumped up in front of his home crowd and his controversial tactics at the start of this race last season showed that the Spaniard will not hesitate to be aggressive should an opportunity present itself at the first corner.

But with a podium finish up for grabs the former champ is unlikely to risk compromising his race this time around.

Which should leave Raikkonen in clear air to cruise to a simple victory and to extend his championship lead.

Renault's executive director of engineering Pat Symonds confirmed that his lead driver was on a light fuel load in a television interview following the session.

"Well obviously there's some strategy involved," he admitted to ITV, and on being pressed further, conceded: "I don't think it'd be any secret to say that Fernando and Nelson [Piquet, who starts ninth] are not on the same strategy."

So Raikkonen's main threat, as in Malaysia and Bahrain, is likely to be his team-mate Felipe Massa.

Massa admitted that he failed to produce a clean lap when it mattered most, suggesting that his fuel load is not significantly greater than Raikkonen's.

And with Alonso and Massa separating Raikkonen from the on-form Robert Kubica, the Finn's task is very straightforward on Sunday afternoon.

We're not generally big fans of tipping at short odds but there is a strong case to suggest that Raikkonen should walk away with this race.

He has been the fastest man all weekend, is driving the fastest car and is on pole position at a circuit where the pole sitter has won in each of the last seven years.

Ease the boredom of the race by having a hefty bet on Kimi to walk away with the ten points.

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anyone with an interest in this or am i a day too late?

[kompressaur]

oh i have more from the same place-

"I've never known anything like it. The speed [at which] the team have developed the car has amazed me."

The words are not those of Kimi Raikkonen or Felipe Massa, the winners of the last two grands prix, but of Nick Heidfeld, the man whose team, BMW Sauber, now lead the constructors' championship.

When Heidfeld first tested the Swiss/German outfit's new car in the winter, he was distinctly pessimistic, citing high-speed handling issues and instability under braking as his chief concerns.

And team-mate Robert Kubica was also nonplussed, initially struggling to adapt to the loss of the team's bespoke electronic control unit as well as suffering from the same problems which afflicted Heidfeld.

But fast-forward three months and the pair find themselves in the thick of the title battle, just three and five points respectively off the championship lead.

Kubica qualified second in Australia and secured the team's first ever pole position in Bahrain and it appears that their qualifying pace, if not quite yet their race pace, is at least a match for the Ferraris.

And with their astonishing rate of progress showing no signs of relenting, there is every chance that Heidfeld and Kubica can take the fight to Ferrari and McLaren for the rest of the season.

They still look to be around a quarter of a second per lap shy of the red cars in a race stint, and possibly ahead of the McLarens - although messy races for the Silver Arrows in Malaysia and Bahrain muddy the picture.

But with the start of the European season traditionally being regarded as the point at which the pecking order on the grid is confirmed, we will see this weekend whether they will continue to live up to their promise.

All the teams have completed thousands of testing miles at the Circuit de Catalunya and they will all be bringing their latest aerodynamic developments and suspension tweaks to the Barcelona track.

Ferrari's radical 'nose hole' front end has been downplayed by the team but is sure to attract plenty of comment, as are McLaren's 'tongued' front wheel fairings and Renault's modified engine cover, but it is often the least visible modifications (or those underneath the car) which prove the most effective.

And BMW, with their supercomputer Albert 2 crunching the numbers, appear to be the masters of understated efficiency.

If they have maintained over the last three weeks the level of progress that has been evident since January, their drivers' chances of a pole position look very good indeed.

If not for a grassy moment on his flyer in Melbourne, Kubica would already have two poles to his name this season, and it appears that he is their best bet for the top slot again on Saturday.

The team should continue with their policy of fuelling one of their drivers light and one fairly heavy, although it isn't clear how they decide such matters - it could be that each driver gets priority on alternate basis, or that the fastest driver in Saturday practice is rewarded with first choice on race strategy.

Nevertheless, the 7/1 on Kubica transferring his recent form into a second consecutive pole position has to be worth an interest, while a saver on his team-mate would be a sensible approach.

For the race itself, Raikkonen remains a clear 13/8 favourite ahead of team-mate Massa (5/2) and McLaren's Lewis Hamilton (9/2).

Hamilton was horribly off the boil in Bahrain last time out, botching his start and damaging his front wing which caused a subsequent accident with Fernando Alonso.

Struggling with a damaged car for the entire race he finished only 13th, his fastest lap bettered by all but one of the 19 classified finishers.

Straight after his dominant win in Australia it would have been inconceivable to imagine 9/2 being available for him to win just three races later but with his last two outings being compromised it is not easy to suggest quite what he and team-mate Heikki Kovalainen are capable of at this stage.

With Ferrari looking ever-stronger and BMW stepping up to the plate, McLaren may yet emerge as only the third fastest team on outright pace, a position from which a podium finish would be an achievement for the pair.

We'd rather put our trust in the longer odds available on the BMW drivers at present.

Aside from our interest in qualifying, try a punt on the Hinwil boys scoring an audacious win on Sunday at 10/1.

The logic goes that the Barcelona track is one of the few on the calendar (Magny-Cours being the other obvious example) which rewards ultra-grippy tyres relative to a lower fuel load.

At most circuits drivers can leapfrog those ahead by fuelling longer than their rival then staying out on track for an extra couple of low-fuel laps after the man ahead has pitted.

But at the Circuit de Catalunya, the benefit of fresh tyres outweighs that of a lighter car, meaning that the advantage of a longer first stint is largely negated.

All the teams will know this of course, but Ferrari, aware that their car is the fastest over a race distance, are often content to employ a conservative fuel strategy, aware that the race will come into their hands once the pitstops are completed.

A more aggressive strategy could be called for this weekend, and BMW, with their excellent qualifying pace, could be best placed to advantage - if they dare to be aggressive with both cars and lock-out the front row, at least one of their drivers may prove uncatchable.

This track is one on which it is almost impossible to overtake, so if either Kubica or Heidfeld can get into clean air early on, it would bode very well for the rest of the race.

And if their car does happen to have the pace of the Ferraris, perhaps hindsight will judge Ladbrokes' 33/1 on a one-two finish one of the bets of the season.