The official F1 grand prix prediction thread. Post all predictions here.

[aseem]

I think its too optimistic to think Kimi can win it. If track record is anything to go by, there are more chances that Kimi or JPM's cars might fail in the remaining races than Alonso's. In any case I dont think Kimi can win it now by his driving, its more like Alonso loosing it. Also it doesnt make any sense anymore to steal two points away from Montoya by focussing on Kimi as two points no longer cut it. So, if not next, than surely by next to next race, they will GIVE UP!!! Like I predicted JPM to win the race, I predict Alonso to be the champion!

[mclaren1885]

Originally Posted by aseem

If track record is anything to go by, there are more chances that Kimi or JPM's cars might fail in the remaining races than Alonso's. In any case I dont think Kimi can win it now by his driving, its more like Alonso loosing it.

well coming to the point that the championiship if at all goes to kimi as u put it might be due to alonso loosing it but isnt the same fact the reason for alonso leading the championship..the primary reason alonso is leading the championship is the lack of reliability on the part of mclaren and if kimi still manages to win the championsip i think its fair and square..well my brain says its all over for kimi but hear says no hang on for a sec there might be a surprise in store(typical indian mentality that of heart over mind)..i think the next race will decide the drivers championship and then its a race for the constructors..once the drivers isuue is decided upon will be intersting to see both the renaults and mclarens gunning for the constructors..will be a spectacle to watch!!!

[merve_extreme]

Originally Posted by sridhar24

but then why do you hate Flavio..

Yes he is a talent hunter.but i dont like the way he shows off and is happy at others problems.IMO his face(read smile) and actions give a sign of wickedness .though he may be a good man but I DONT LIKE HIM,SAME WITH ALONSO.

[BUSA]

well i guess thats simple to answer..lot of people think mika took a sabatical but the real truth was ron dennis forced him into retirement as he saw the challenge coming from ferrari and wanted mika to end on a high note and also ron wanted new blood into mclaren(thats kimi ofcourse)..he couldnt chuck coulthard as his contract had already been singned and david wasnt intereted in leaving..if ron can do that to mika one of the all time greats then i guess montoya will fare no better..looking at his tremendous potential at williams ron signed JPM but he has not been upto the expected results remember he was the chosen one to beat michael for the championship..so right now his place might be up for stake even though he has his contract signed..bcoz in formula 1 its not talent alone that gets u a seat(look at poor villeneuve) its the point scoring finishes and in this case podium finishes consistently which JPM is lacking..i bet aseem will differ with my views(juss kidding!!!)

That is totally wrong!! Mika has 49% stakes in Mercedes/Benz and he is the cause of Kimi in mclaren! He owns Benz!! So Ron cant chuck him!!

Yes he is a talent hunter.but i dont like the way he shows off and is happy at others problems.IMO his face(read smile) and actions give a sign of wickedness .though he may be a good man but I DONT LIKE HIM,SAME WITH ALONSO.

My opinion is also the same. But includes that ******* Jean Todt who also acts as a ******

[sridhar24]

It was a good race for the Renault team. Great job by Fisichella in his home race and Iam happy about the result. It was just what I expected from the race. I really feel very bad for Ferrari and MS, i had hoped for a betteer result for them.
Now its become even more difficult for Kimi to fight for the driver's title and i am saying it again he can forget about winning it.

[aseem]

Mc Laren, I think you heart has been very wrong at times. You mentioned yesterday that Juan wont help Kimi... read this:

Post-race press conference - ItalyReproduced with kind permission of the FIA1st Juan Pablo Montoya (McLaren), 1h14m28.659s; 2nd Fernando Alonso (Renault), 1h14m31.138s; 3rd Giancarlo Fisichella (Renault), 1h14m46.634s. @#3#Q: Juan Pablo, it looked to be relatively straightforward until those closing laps, but before we get into those, let’s just talk through the first phase of the race with Fernando right on your tail.
Juan Pablo Montoya: Well, I pushed really hard for the first few laps and I opened up a gap and I felt quite comfortable. We thought we were going longer than them so it was a matter of just maintaining the gap and then the car became quite oversteery. You’ve got a lot of adjustment in the car. I worked with it a little bit, but I never really felt comfortable with it to be able to push hard so it was like one lap you could push but the next lap it would go really bad. Generally it went pretty good but we got to the end of the race. I could see the tyre breaking up a little bit on the left but at the end it just went really bad, there was just no grip.

Q: So how did you go into those closing laps? How can you drive the car that way bearing in mind the problems that Kimi had earlier in the year, and the problem that Kimi had in the race today, also with a tyre?
JPM: The thing was you couldn’t really push or lean on the tyre or anything. It was go as slow as you can, I turned down the engine before that, so I brought it back up to full power and everything and I think that helped me a little bit. I was calculating but I couldn’t go any quicker to be honest. Any quicker was a big risk to go off. When I had four seconds with two laps to go I thought it should be OK.

Q: But you did it and this was the scene of your first Grand Prix win as well, so an emotional day for you.
JPM: Yeah, the first time I won here I couldn’t spray any champagne so it was nice to do it here to be honest. It’s nice, it’s good for me for the championship. I think we only took a point off Renault here but it’s better than nothing.

Q: Fernando, you raced him long and hard in the early phase of the race, but when the pit stops came, it looked as though you had a slowish ‘out’ lap.
Fernando Alonso: Yes, I felt I had very bad grip going out of the pits. Maybe the tyres were a little bit dirty and maybe they weren’t ready on the first lap. I was penalised a little bit by this and the first laps after the pit stops I lost a little bit of time but I was lucky that I wasn’t fighting with anyone so I took the race quite easily.

Q: But you weren’t far away from Juan Pablo in those closing laps.
FA: Yeah, at the end the team informed me of the tyre problem that Juan Pablo was suffering. I pushed a little bit more and like Juan Pablo, I turned the engine up again, full power and we tried to put on some pressure but maybe it was too late, but for us, second place is good. The target for the last six or seven races was to be on the podium and I am constantly on the podium and sometimes in front of Kimi, so it’s OK for me.

Q: Giancarlo, a great drive from where you qualified yesterday. Look back at that qualifying lap, shame it wasn’t cleaner. If you’d started a little bit higher up the grid…
Giancarlo Fisichella: Yeah. Unfortunately yesterday I had a problem braking for turn one, I had a problem with the retardation and I couldn’t stop the car. I lost more than six tenths there, so today was a bit of a difficult race for me, starting from eighth position but the car balance was good, just the grip level was really poor and it was really difficult, but the strategy was perfect. I had no problems in the pit stops so today has been a good day for me and I’m able to achieve a good third position which is what I expected from this race.

Q: As it turned out, you were running a lot more fuel than the guys just ahead of you in the early phases of the race. Were you aware of that at the time, did you know that the pit stops were going to help you as much they did?
GF: Well, yeah, we know more or less the fuel load compared with other people. We were quite optimistic that we had more fuel than the two BARs and the two Ferraris. I was a little bit worried about Jarno’s fuel, and in fact he stopped one lap before me, but on that lap I overtook him and I went through to the end in third position.

Q: Juan Pablo, this was the first Grand Prix since the Dutch Grand Prix in 1961 with no mechanical retirements. On this sort of circuit, a relatively quick lap, I guess the traffic must have been horrendous.
JPM: Yeah, the traffic was really bad. Most of the people moved out of the way pretty quickly. I was a bit concerned right before my last stop because I had four cars ahead of me and I thought ‘Oh no’ and they just told me that Fernando had pitted. You never know how much time you’re going to lose. I lost about a second so it wasn’t so bad. I think it was good enough that I managed to open up a gap to Fernando on that stint.

PRESS CONFERENCE

Q: Juan Pablo, a good start off the line?
JPM: Yeah, we got off the line really well. I had a good start. It was a bit strange for us in the last race to have a bad start. Here, I had a good start and I braked quite early into the first corner. I didn’t have anybody close to me so it went quite well. I pushed quite hard in the first two laps and I opened up a good gap and then I started having loads of oversteer. I didn’t have any in testing last week or anything. How we got it here I don’t know. Every year I come here I have the same thing. You go testing – the car’s fantastic. Qualifying – good. Get to the race and it just goes tits up. But even like that I managed to adjust all the differential and all the things on the car and went around a little bit and afterwards, when they told me I had to push and open a gap I managed to open a gap, even with the car like that, so it was good.

Q: So did you manage to dial out some of that oversteer?
JPM: I dialed out some of it but I didn’t have any confidence in the car to lean on it, to go into the corners and say OK, I’m going to lean on it because I tried to close the diffs and everything and mid-corner, when I had a stable entry it would just understeer so it was one or the other. It was a bit of a pain in the *** but it was good. Even like that, I won the race, so I don’t mind.

Q: Could that have contributed to your tyre problem?
JPM: No. It was kind of strange because from the word ‘go’ the oversteer was there and right at the end, I was looking at the tyres constantly in the mirrors and you could see a little bit on the left tyre but after the last stop it just broke into pieces.

Q: Had you been told about what happened to Kimi’s tyre?
JPM: No. I actually asked where Kimi was running because my plan was if Kimi was behind me to help him for the championship and I never really got to that point. They told me he had just pitted again. It was a bit of a surprise for me because I had seen him pitting on the TV, so I thought he’s pitting now and I radioed the team and they said he had a problem with the tyres so it was a bit of a shock. And they said look after your left rear tyre, and I had been having oversteer all day long on it.

[mclaren1885]

Originally Posted by aseem

Q: Had you been told about what happened to Kimi’s tyre?
JPM: No. I actually asked where Kimi was running because my plan was if Kimi was behind me to help him for the championship and I never really got to that point. They told me he had just pitted again. It was a bit of a surprise for me because I had seen him pitting on the TV, so I thought he’s pitting now and I radioed the team and they said he had a problem with the tyres so it was a bit of a shock. And they said look after your left rear tyre, and I had been having oversteer all day long on it.

well all these statements seem good after the race..so JPM was really careful in chosing out his words.."plan was if kimi was behind me to help him for the championship and i never really got to that point" exactly the situation for team orders never arose..would have been really interesting if that situation had come and then see how helpful JPM would have been to kimi..trust me he wouldnt have given up his place that easily to kimi..

[mclaren1885]

remember there were similar situations at williams where JPM was asked to make way for ralf but he never obeyed team orders but he kept saying he would help ralf and blah blah..and trust me old habits die hard..not unless he was given a very stern i mean a really stern warning form ron will he back off..
ps: see my audio system thread,got a prob!!!

[aseem]

I think he never obeyed to consede to Ralph as Ralph was never ahead of him by a huge margin and he favored his chances. Besides Williams never made pit strategies to favor Ralph. I think Mc Laren are heavily favoring Kimi and this any blind man can see. To put Kimi on one stop essentially meant that if he didnt make any unforced error, he would have won the race any how as JPM was told not to push and conserve his engine.

[aseem]

Hi BHPians, After an interesting and drama packed Italian Grand Prix, it makes sense to start a new poll for up coming Belgian Grand Prix. Last time I got it right by predicting a Montoya victory, lets see what Belgian has in store for us. For all you Kimi fans, its getting to do or die situation. Lets see if there is still optimism left.
Let the poll begin!!!

[mclaren1885]

as usual heart over mind ..so its kimi for me to put his foot on the top step of the podium aseem buddy u didnt post ur views as to who will win,not JPM again i hope...playing safe ha !!! hope this GP is as exciting as the italian and the diagreement(btwn u and me) on this prediction as good as the last one too..let the fun begin..

[2L8uLoose]

No offence intended but HAHAHAHA NK on the podium... well stranger things have happened in the circus called Formula One...
I guess ANYONE except Montoya would look good on the top step..

[aseem]

I am hoping for a JPM victory. Its amazing how a lil bit of confident can do. However I feel reliability apart, with Mc Laren favoring Kimi so much, its difficult for Juan to come anything but second. However seeing Kimi's luck off late, I find it safe to bet against him, thats why my vote is still for JPM and its for all to see.

[karthik247]

i would want Michael Schumacher to win it, but since thats not really gonna happen according to his current run, it SHULD be KIMI..and Alonso should be outta the points..

[aseem]

Originally Posted by 2L8uLoose

No offence intended but HAHAHAHA NK on the podium... well stranger things have happened in the circus called Formula One...
I guess ANYONE except Montoya would look good on the top step..

Its predicted that its going to rain in the Belgian Grand Prix. Our local hero Narain, will be racing the new Jordan for the first time. So dont count him out just yet!