The Predictors: 2013 Bahrain GP

Last week I introduced a new segment called 'Cor With The Score' to accommodate my friend Cory Wood, who is an avid F1 fan and is looking for bragging rights as the person that 'told-you-so' with the weekend's results. However, two more chums of mine have similar goals, and so the three, and myself will be giving a little prediction of the top ten, and occasionally chipping in with some words about the week previous or upcoming. The predictions will be in a small table so you can compare the differences

'COR WITH THE SCORE' By Cory Wood

Admittedly, Shanghai fell short of my expectations. With the whole tyre situation and teams not going into qualifying looking for grid position but looking at tyre wear for the race, it wasn't the entertainment iIpersonally like to see from the F1 roadshow, hopefully Pirelli have picked a better combination of tyres for Bahrain. Ahh yes - Bahrain. I can't really see much changing with only 7 days between races. Mercedes are looking strong with some good early season pace as are the Red Bulls, but again, I see this race being down to Raikkonen and Alonso. Both are race winners this year; Alonso is the king of self-preservation and Raikkonen? Well he 'knows what he's doing'. Being a very stop start track with 4 long straights and not much in the way of high-speed cornering, Mclaren may surprise some people and Jenson Button seems to be getting 110% out of the car like Alonso did last year.
My prediction is quite similar to the actual positions in China.
Look out for:  Jenson Button


'OVERJAKING MANOUVRES' By Jake Bayes

 
Looking at previous form you could fancy any of Alonso, Massa, Vettel or Raikkonen to perform this weekend. Both Ferrari drivers are repeat winners here and Vettel won in 2012. The red bull car may be better suited to some of the slower speed corners, allowing Vettel to show a repeat of his strong history here (unfortunately). Button also has a win here from Brawn GP's wonder year of 2009, and there's Mercedes new pace to look out for too.




'PARKIN'S POINTS' By Kyran Parkin

Alright, so the Pirelli tyres are going to be a major factor across this weekend. Bahrain will give us higher temperatures than we've seen so far this season, add in the combination of the Hard and Medium compounds, and we should get some great racing. Based upon what we've seen so far, the Lotuses seem to have the edge with tyre conservation. Kimi has already notched
up a win and is on a staggering 33 race finishing streak and a 21 consecutive points finishing streak... so I tip him for the podium, but I will go ahead and call him for the win. (He knows what he's doing.) Second place will go to our good friend at Ferrari, Mr Fernando Alonso. He's on a high after winning at China less than a week ago and the Ferrari is showing it's speed and consistency. Plus we know how good Fernando is with a bad car. This year's car is incredible
in comparison. Third place is a tough one to call. We have potentially six drivers all capable of snatching that final podium  place. Based solely on what I've already seen, much to my disgust and loathing, 'Finger Boy' aka 'The Spoilt Brat'  will take it. (-.-) I would love for Lewis to get three podiums in a row, unfortunately I feel, as usually is the case, the tyres just won't hold up on the Mercedes.


Many thanks to my three informed peers. And now, their predictions.