Monaco has lots of things that are funny about it. One is the way that the residents don’t pay income tax. Another is that there is a street market every Friday. That doesn’t seem odd you might be saying, lots of places have street markets. Well yes they do, but Formula One only has one street circuit and that’s in Monaco too. You might think that the market would handily move to a wednesday or something at times of the grand prix, but no. The market came first so it keeps it’s Friday slot and that means that the Friday practice sessions happen on a Thursday. They actually dismantle and rebuild bits of the circuit overnight.

Talking of rebuilding lets take a quick look at the practice sessions. Hamilton have his car an almighty whack yesterday in practice two and the mechanics are furiously rebuilding it. Given the extra day I’m sure they’ll be fine. In practice one and two Alonso headed up the time sheets. This flatters Alonso slightly because he was the only major runner to use the super softs in practice one and hamilton obviously didn’t finish practice two. The Ferraris haven’t looked so fast. Certainly not in practice one on those harder tires. In practice two though Kimi was second, several places ahead of Massa. Some have suggested that Monaco is a bit of a bogey circuit for Massa. He certainly hasn’t gone well here.

All important in this race is the qualifying and the strategy. Massa has been on pole a lot recently. Is he hiding his light under a sandbag?

Ferrari had a long run of success here in the first half of Michael’s time with them but not for the last five years. In fact a different driver has won monaco in the last six times we’ve raced here. But the big disadvantage was always seen to be due to Michelan. Now that they are out of the picture anything could happen.

But as always it’s your job to guess. At this race there’s always a chance we won’t get eight people finishing. What would happen then? Although as it’s unlikely I think we should have all eight guesses (plus that all important poll). Good luck!

Click on the picture to be taken to a zoomable map (this has always been a feature but I forgot to tell anyone)