Sebastian Vettel has taken his 8th consecutive race win this season while also setting the fastest lap of the race. Romain Grosjean took second place at the start never to give it up while Mark Webber finished right behind in third.
My prediction:
This track has red bull written all over it + we have med and hard so I think there will a lot less confusion regarding tire strategies as pretty much everyone will comfortably 1 stop. Vettel will take pole by half a second in front of webber and then go on to win the race by at least 20s while being told from lap 3 to slow down. Web will start 2nd on dirty side and will immediately fall to 5th place before 1st corner. He will then slowly fight back to finish 2nd. One of the lotuses will be on the podium with the 2 RBs. Mercs will be 4 and 5th followed by the other lotus driver and both ferraris.
After the missed, and not unhappy about it, race in Abu Dhabi I am actually looking forward to this one. Cars last year both lacked grip and had a very minimal tyre degradation here, producing a very fine race.
Vettel win, Webber has issues but brings it back to second because the RB is so fast. Grosjean has a good race to come in third again with Rosberg fighting for 4th and 5th with Alonso. Hamilton to have a crap race and be stuck behind Hulk for 15+ laps to ruin his strategy.
The race will be a two stopper, the best option will be to go option option prime, as the medium tires are faster and last almost as long as the hards. Going option, prime will not work because the hards will not make it more than 30 laps. Not to mention it will not be as cold as it was last year, which helped keep the rubber from degrading. Maybe Vettel could one stop, everyone else will have to two stop to have a relatively successful race.
I agree, i hope they go for a low df setup, to hell with tyre deg. Tyres degrade faster than they should anyway if stuck behind the dirty air of a slower car thru corners.
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