We take Vettel to win again in Bahrain

Qualifying is over and we now await another exciting Bahrain Grand Prix from this excellent middle east circuit. The drivers are growing to love this venue and the atmosphere it provides and the two Toyotas of Jarrno Trulli and Timo Glock sit one and two on the grid, followed by Sebastian Vettel in a Red Bull and Jenson Button in the Brawn GP.

When we come to placing bets on the race, we think pays to listen very carefully to what the drivers have to say post-qualifying, the clues are all there and it doesnt take much reading between the lines.

Following our success betting on the appearance of a safety car last time out, this time we think it will pay to back “no safety car” at 1.6 on Betfair. The Bahrain Grand Prix circuit was purpose built for the modern formula one cars, providing every safety feature conceivable and in particular, long run off areas. The weather will be typical middle eastern hazy, but very hot sunshine with reasonable humidity levels, no rain this week! If a driver over-cooks a corner, the run-offs provide a place to go and the retrieval of the car is relatively easy. It would take a catastrophic coming together and much debris on the track to bring the safety car out. So our first bet for the race is no safety car.

Now we turn to the important part of the event, the race and the likely winners.

The line up on the grid provides the starting point for our search for a likely winner and the provisional grid plus the weights of the cars is important. We think the podium finishers will come from the first seven on the grid.

1. Jarno Trulli, Toyota, 648.5 kg
2. Timo Glock, Toyota, 643
3. Sebastian Vettel, Red Bull, 659
4. Jenson Button, Brawn GP, 652.5
5. Lewis Hamilton, McLaren, 652.5
6. Rubens Barrichello, Brawn GP, 649
7. Fernando Alonso, Renault, 650.5

The Toyotas have done extremely well during qualification and it would be reasonable to expect them to be quite bullish about their chances. Here is what they had to say:-

Jarno Trulli

I’m thrilled to be back on pole again. This weekend has gone well and it’s great to be starting at the front tomorrow. In fact this afternoon didn’t go quite as smoothly as yesterday because I had a bit of a problem with my brakes during the session. That’s a bit of a worry for the race so we’ll have to look into it overnight. Still, I’m confident for tomorrow because our race pace has been good this weekend and we’ve been looking after the tyres well. The first three races haven’t really worked out for me but I hope we can now change that. We tested here over the winter and this track has gone well for our cars in the past. To have both cars in the top two shows we did a very good job.

Timo Glock

It’s brilliant that we’ve been able to take the top two places today. We had a problem on my car yesterday and we were struggling but the team did a good job to change things for today. We were quickest in the session this morning, though I lost a bit of running with an electronics glitch. But qualifying went extremely smoothly. The wind changed a bit and it was a struggle to get used to the prime tyres in Q1. After that I felt more comfortable in Q2 but in Q3 I made a small error after Turn Eight so I couldn’t catch Jarno. A big thank you to all the engineers and mechanics because it’s been a hard start to the season for everyone and this is a great result for us.

We find it surprising that both Toyota drivers seem a little wary of their cars’ reliability either in qualifying or practice and this may lead to a more cautious approach to the race to ensure points but not necessarily maximum points.

Looking at the weights of the cars it is apparent that Vettel would appear to be carrying more fuel and is planning a longer first stint and he seems to confirm this

Sebastain Vettel

That was a good session, we could see in Q1 it was very tough and it wasn’t enough to do one run on the prime tyres, so everyone had to put on the option. But it was a smooth qualifying session and we had no problems. The car was very quick, we only needed one run in Q2 and we remained at the top, even though the circuit was improving, which was very good. In Q3 the two Toyotas were a bit too quick – I’m looking forward to tomorrow, I reckon they might pull in a little earlier than us! But, it’s a long race, so let’s see.

We are hoping that Vettel gets a clear track when the other drivers pull in to refuel and take Vettel to win the race by maximising his lead during this period of the race. The odds for a podium finish for these seven would seem to confirm our thoughts so the task is to find the value in the race and we can see no option other than to back Vettel to win with the best odds of 3.85 at Betfair or a free bet at BoyleSports at 9/4.