Badoer will be last and/or will crash out, get speeding fines etc etc............................

La source to Les Combes is 20s full throttle, KERS can only be used for 6s a lap. T14 to the final chicane is another 15-20s full throttle. KERs will only help Lewis pass once a lap if he he has the aero to stay close. On top of this there are only 2 or 3 big harvesting zones at Spa for the KERs to be recharged which work against it compared to most tracks .

Id still take it if on offer but I dont think its quite the advantage as Valencia where there are 4 shorter straights to deploy and lots of recharge zones.

everyone thinks the red bulls will dominate, I however am not so sure after their bad performance in valencia. Why weren't they as good as before in Valencia? purely the nature of the circuit and the temperature? hungary was pretty hot/warm as well and resembles valancia a bit.

Valencia and Hungary are traction tracks (as is Monaco)
Spa (and Nurburgring and Silverstone and Monza etc) are aero ....
hot/cold is more a brawn issue not a redbull issue

You make your own luck. It's evident that Seb is another car-breaker

well i have a theory that redbulls big jump in silverstone was HUGE but slowely others have clawed back. Now in spa lets hope its like silverstone (but redbull advantage reduced) rubens still finished on the podium and nobody else could challenge rubens for 3rd. We all agree brawn have improved a little more since then so HOPEFULLY if tyre problem is solved a little brawn can at least challenge for the podium. THe problem is teams like mclaren, williams and ferrari if KERS not much of a help we can eliminate mclaren and ferrari but williams been fast everywhere so they may spoil brawns party if they cannot get the tyres sorted.

Anticipated on track action aside for one moment...

Looks like they've only managed to sell 46,000 tickets for race day and need at least 70,000 to break even. They lost €4m when 55,000 attended last year. Not good.

Silverstone was very close between Brawn, Ferrari and Williams, but now they all have Mclaren in the mix.

If Button doesnt get qualifying right he could well find himself out of the points...

Well, I'll be there with GA ticket which costs € 160. My hotel and rental car don't cost that much combined. The grandstand tickets were substantially more than that. Stupid CVC debt service.

http://www.ferrari.com/English/News/Pages/...GP_preview.aspx

Ah im so excited!!!!!!!!!!! I just love Spa, even more so after Valencia

And I'm leaving for it tomorrow morning ;-)

Pitwalk on thursday 15:30 is the first thing on the schedule!

Should be a complete contrast, including the weather!

Just to satisfy your Spa appetite before the weekend, I bring you the old Raikkonen in 2002 at Spa: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1Hz7ItDX68

Don't you miss the old qualifying system (and the old Kimi for that sake?) where the drivers were absolutely on the edge?

Unless it rains it will be another boring race.

Is the length of the track possibly a disadvantage for KERS ? It is 7 km long, with lap times close to 2 minutes, yet the device can still be used only for 6.67 seconds. I would have assumed that it is better for tracks like Interlagos or Monza, but maybe there are places at Spa where it really gains a lot of time.

I don't think it does. If you set your gearing to take advantage of KERS at the end of straights you'll only be able to use it on one straight and the lower revs you find yourself at the 2nd straight will be a disadvantage. If you decide to use it to get to your top speed earlier it might save1-2 tenths at the most per lap. And as said Spa is only a 44 lap GP due to circuit length. 44x6s deployments = 264s deployment time over the race compared to 342s at Valencia. Spa is primarily about downforce level to achieve top speed and find an excellent mechanical setup for the twisty middle sector.

FIA need to get rid of rev limiters and maybe change the KERS usage time to make it more interesting/usable.

if you only use it for a couple of seconds coming out of la source, the extra speed will carry trough during the 1.8km straight. (providing eau rouge is still flat; http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/26082009/58/...amp;order=date). That's a massive gain IMO.

I think it's more likely kers teams will try to run half a degree of extra wing (and compensate with Kers) than seek to outright outaccelarate people with it. And remember spa is short lights-to-first-corner so I doubt there will be fireworks at the start.

That is what the FIA wanted to do, and double the KERS capacity. But the cost was controlling costs! FOTA did not want controls of costs, rather they wanted a "gradual" drop in spending ... in other words, they did not want to drop spending! So the solution is to continue to dumb down F1, and to continue to have high costs.

The good news is that nice chaps like Flavio and Adrian and the rest will continue to get paid a bit more than most blokes do.

how exactly is KERS controlling costs?

I don´t Know if Alonso was in position to fight for victory with Hamilton, but Alonso was a strong candidate to get a Podium finish in that race.

When Alonso made his first pitstop (Lap 10 or eleven, I don´t remember), he came out of pits ahead of Piquet.
When Kimi (Second in Hungary) made his first pitstop (Lap 17 maybe?), he came out of pits behind Nelsinho.

any pictures from Spa? I cant wait to see the atmosphere...

You are quite wrong on that front ... KERS development costs easily broke the FIA's proposed budget cap.

And the FIA intended to increase KERS capacity in 2011 not 2010, 2011 regulations are still about 10 months away, KERS might still get a boost in the regulations that make it more useful. But keep in mind it will come with a compromise, increased storage requirements ie more batteries ie more weight.

its supposed to be a dry weekend.

if the output power remains the same the batteries don't have to become bigger. you need to cycle twice during a lap in that case.

Some low downforce rear wings:

output power increases actually ... bolded for effect. And I m quoting myself cause I can

I really hope not, F1 could do with an interesting race after the Valencia procession.

cool first time all year i think we have seen those.

is that a upper limit or a fixed value? could they run @ 100 KJ/s for twice the duration for instance?

what team will benefit most from the lower downforce? mclaren already had lower downforce in the beginning of the year, could this be an advantage or them? (or less of a disadvantage)

disadvantage

It's interesting that if you go to Kimi's Official Forum most of forumers there consider Renault to be in the same level than Ferrari. I don't think so of course, but actually you cannot stat anything for sure yet either because neither Hungary nor Valencia can be taken surely to know where Renault really is, due car failures.

In Germany Renault had a pretty competitive performance, even when the car had just loaded fuel. Too bad the awful strategy pushed the Renault to the back of the grid, but still Alonso was able to recover quite a lot to finish in points.

I'm not saying Renault is great, because it isn't. I just mean "wait and see and let's not take Renault out of the battle so surely".

So is the word that it's going to be a dry weekend? I'm shocked autosport doesn't have the weather forecast up for the weekend yet...

I find it funny again though that Planet F1 has an article saying "Weather looks uncertain as ever" and every single other site has it being dry. That site is great to see how wrong they get it

I am curious, has anyone ever actually watched the Belgium GP whilst sitting in a spa bath?

No, but that sounds delightful!

http://www.autosport.com/f1/

rain for Saturday, dry on Sunday. (no mention on what time the rain is supposed to fall)

And very apropriate as well!

ah yes, thank you, I forgot about that part! But I was actually referring to the "detailed weather forecast" which would be...well....detailed.

anyway, thanks for this

I'm doing what I usually do, predicting the result I'm hoping for: A closer championship coming out than going in. It's not that I don't want Button or Brawn to win, it's that I want whoever wins to do so in the last race. Think of the excitement surrounding a championship finale on a new track.

wow

All gonna depend on the weather. I'm less interested in seeing whether its going to rain, and more interested in the temperatures. Whether its going to rain is hardly ever definite, while temperatures are typically more predictable 3 to 4 days ahead of time.

Low temperatures(below 75 degrees) - I expect Red Bull to be strong. The track will already be good for them, with the fast corners and all, too. One big problem, though - Spa is hard on engines, which is probably a big concern for the Red Bull guys right now.

Warmer temperatures - I expect it will be much closer between Red Bull and BrawnGP.

Of course, I think Lewis could be a genuine threat again, too. Their car seems to work well regardless of the temperatures. I'm not sure how much of their recent success has been down the track layouts suiting them, but I'm guessing that there's much more to their improvement than just that.

And while I think Kimi is usually great here, I'm worried that since Ferrari have kinda stopped their development of the car for the most part, that there might not be much he can do to pull a surprise win or anything. I think a podium would be a good result.

Rosberg and Alonso are always up there, but I dont think they're gonna be threatening the guys up front at all. Behind them, who knows? The field is quite tight and things tend to get a bit more unpredictable, especially with BMW and Toyota being so incredibly inconsistent from track-to-track.

It will be difficult to beat Brazil 2008 but I'd love to see it come close this year!

The only way that it wil come close will be if all 4 drivers (RB and Brawn) are within 4 points of each other, or a 4 way tie, and it's decided on the last lap at the finish line.... by a nose... IRL style

That's what we said after Brazil 2007!

formula1.com weather:

rain for practice & qualifying

Welcome to the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps, the 12th round of the 2009 FIA Formula One World Championship.

Despite a heatwave in the Hautes Fagnes region last week, Spa looks set to be wet as showers are forecast for Thursday through Saturday, when the ambient temperature will begin at 24 degrees Celsius and decline to 20, then 17. Race day should be dry with partial cloud and 18 degrees.

The race will run over 44 laps of the 7.004 kilometre (4.352 mile) track, or 308.176 kilometres (191.494 miles). It starts at 14.00 hours local time, which is two hours ahead of GMT.

Yes, throwing the car off the track in Q2 was definitely awful strategy by Renault.

"I can't believe that spin didn't save .7s!"

Alonso finished 7th despite during the race he was pushed back to the last positions. His strategy got ruined in part for the same reason than Kimi.

When Alonso pitted for the last time he started a quite nice recovery. In fact he got the fastest lap of the race, lap 49 (he pitted in lap 46). Of course BRawnGP had problems with their tyres, colder weather doesn't suit them very well, but Alonso was going during a lot of times and with similar conditions than others only slower than the Red Bulls.

So my statement is still standing.

How detailed did you want ?

http://live.autosport.com/commentary.php/id/135