British Grand Prix

07/07/2012 | By More

I’m off to see the British Grand Prix this weekend. Just my luck that the race day should coincide with the moment the first Briton in 74 years is going to be playing the men’s final at Wimbledon, I’d quite like to watch that. But I can’t renege on the offer to take my son to Silverstone, even if it means trudging through what is likely to be very boggy ground.

 The weather forecast looks mixed at best and this could add some spice to an already interesting Formula one season. Formula one has been as mixed as the weather in 2012. So far this season there have been seven different winners in eight race and it’s been really hard to predict what is likely to happen next.

Teams are much more competitive this season but it’s the tyres that are the story this year. Pirelli say their objective is to ensure entertaining races that remain unpredictable all the way to the chequered flag, with pit stops, a strong emphasis on team strategies, and a less marked performance gap between compounds. Michael Schumacher said that driving on them was akin to driving on “raw eggs” and concluded they were having too much of an influence on the racing. But as Pirelli pointed out, it has made more varied and entertaining racing. From a trading perspective this has meant wild volatility and that has ensured trading F1 this year has achieved a pay off much better than expected.

Given the above, the past may not be a good guide to the future. However, from a statistical perspective, I had a good look at the last decade of racing at Silverstone and it popped up a couple of interesting statistics. OK the circuit changed recently but the course overall it’s largely similar. The stats said that, on average, drivers who qualified in places 1 to 7 lose a place or two on average during the race. Silverstone is a circuit where overtaking can take place and it has some fast straights so you can sort of see how that could happen. More interesting was that 82% of drivers in pole position ended up on the podium, 64% of second and third placed qualifiers performed the achieved the same. If the weather remains mixed, it could be an interesting race.

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Category: Motor sport

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I left a good job in the consumer technology industry to go a trade on Betfair for a living way back in June 2000. I've been here ever since pushing very boundaries of what's possible on betting exchanges and loved every minute of it.

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