After 4 dramatic and close races, with 4 different winners, this season looks like it will be close all the way to the wire.

At last, F1 reaches Europe :)

I expect the teams will be making some significant upgrades to their cars.

Button enjoyed McLaren's early season advantage in Australia. Alonso took full advantage of the severe weather in Malaysia. Rosberg was sublime in China where the Mercedes operated within its performance window. However, in Bahrain, the RBR (in the hands of Vettel) was too strong.

I think it is very ominous that Vettel is once again in the quickest car on race day. The chances of a third consecutive world title just went up significantly. The name of the game is all about in-season development and RBR are as good as any other team at that. I somehow feel that McLaren has been overshadowed since Australia.

The dark horse is Lotus. Both Raikkonen and Grosjean were extremely strong in Bahrain. But so far, Lotus has not performed to its best in every race so it would be a brave bet to think they can perform as consistently as RBR for the rest of the season.

I think this season will play out as follows:

At the front, it is a battle between RBR, Lotus (and McLaren if the track temperature is warm enough). McLaren's weakness is tyre temperature. When the temperatures cooled in Bahrain, their performance vanished and they were very weak by the end of the race. The catastrophic pit stops simply added salt to the wound but the more worrying factor IMO is underlying speed in cooler conditions.

Mercedes and/or Sauber may occasionally steal some points from them too (but this depends on everything going their way and that all factors are within their limited performance windows).

But fundamentally, IMvHO, this title battle is between Vettel, Hamilton, Button and Raikkonen. Sadly for him, Alonso doesn't have the car to challenge for the title.

Of course, there are rumours that Ferrari will effectively launch a brand new chassis mid-season. Let's see if that happens and, if they do, how quickly Ferrari can make it work. Even then, it may be too late by then to challenge for the title. It all depends on whether the points are evenly distributed or whether one driver (eg Vettel) can rack up lots of points before Ferrari launches a new chassis. If that is the case, it will be harder to catch up.

Barcelona should be a great indicator of where the teams stand. They tested there twice pre-season and it's a very familiar circuit. It will be interesting to compare lap times with the pre-season tests to see how much faster the cars have become since the season began.

Looking forward to the race! :)


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