This is it. The show down. After Free Practice 1 and 2 Lewis seems to be keeping things calm and collected but Massa and Alonso seem to be on it.

Massa always seems to go well at his home circuit. Hamilton must be asking, as the Happy Mondays used to say, are you twistin my melon man? It’s all mental from here on in. Massa continues to be the underdog with everything to gain and nothing to lose. Lewis is under incredible mental strain. The question is… Can he finish the race?

In our own championship the situation is something like this:

1 Fourstar 104
2 Nick 97
3 Alex 83
4 Igor 82
5 Bearded Stew 77
6 GrifF1 76

Nick will have to go some to overhaul Fourstar at this stage. There is a rather close battle shaping up between Igor and me and between Stew and GrifF1. So there is everything to play for.

Also after this race we will know the final standings in the championship.

A final reminder of the rules. For this race we want your predictions of pole and the top 8. And as usual you will get 2 points for every prediction you get right and 1 point for every near miss (except on Pole where you’re either right or wrong). You also get 2 extra bonus points for predicting the winner (so the winner gives you 4 points, but putting the person who comes second in the winner slot only gives you 1 point).

This is all as usual.

But at the beginning of the season we all predicted who would make up the top 8 of the championship and which driver would score the most polls. The rules for allocating points work in the same way. But the whole score for this is doubled.

Clear? No. Oh well never mind.

Just for ease of access here is what everyone said about the championship. Man how wrong were some of these predictions?

Alex

Poles: Hamilton

1. Raikkonen
2. Hamilton
3. Kovalainen
4. Massa
5. Rosberg
6. Alonso
7. Kubica
8. Nakajima

Stew

Poles: Hamilton

1. Raikkonen
2. Hamilton
3. Kovalainen
4. Massa
5. Rosberg
6. Alonso
7. Heidfeld
8. Piquet

Nick

Poles: Hamilton

1. Hamilton
2. Raikkonen
3. Massa
4. Kovalainen
5. Alonso
6. Rosberg
7. Coulthard
8. Kubica

GrifF1

Poles: Hamilton

1. Raikkonen
2. Hamilton
3. Massa
4. Kovalainen
5. Heidfeld
6. Kubica
7. Alonso
8. Rosberg

Fourstar

Poles: Raikkonen

1. Hamilton
2. Raikkonen
3. Massa
4. Kovalainen
5. Alonso
6. Heidfeld
7. Kubica
8. Piquet

Igor

Poles: Raikkonen

1. Hamilton
2. Raikkonen
3. Kovalainen
4. Massa
5. Kubica
6. Rosberg
7. Button
8. Coulthard

Finally the times for the sessions today:

Free Practice 3 – Sat 13:00 (not shown on tv)

Qualifying – Sat 16:00 (15:10 on tv)

Race – Sun 17:00 (16:00 on tv)

Good luck!