[bobibnoxx]

Hmm, interesting thread. It's going to be quite tricky and considering, how tight the field is, I think we are going to see a few surprises if one can call them so (like Button and a Mercedes failing to reach Q3). I certainly don't expect the so-called Top 4 teams to occupy Top8 grid slots and we are always going to see some fluctuations from that point of view. Unlike others I must say that new teams have realistically no hope in hell in beating any of the cars from established teams on merit - they are at least 2 secs per lap slower than the slowest "old team".

Kobayashi is behind de la Rosa, because in his two F1 GP's he hasn't shown himself much of a quali-man - his strength was racing. Massa behind Alonso in quali? Well, I'm going with last year's trend on slick tyres, when Massa was actually better at racing than in qualifying! I have a suspicion that an outsider team might spring a surprise in Q3 by qualifying into Top3 after opting for soft tyres instead of hard ones that others might choose - if the latest information about a tyre-conserving Sauber is anything to go by, it might be them opting for that. But I didn't gamble on that now, because I'm not entirely sure, how will the tyre strategies pan out!

Provided no-one has failures during Q:
1 Vettel, 2 Alonso
3 Webber, 4 Hamilton
5 Sutil, 6 Massa
7 de la Rosa, 8 Rosberg
9 Hülkenberg, 10 Buemi
11 Button, 12 Kubica
13 Schumacher, 14 Kobayashi
15 Liuzzi, 16 Barrichello
17 Alguersuari, 18 Petrov
19 Trulli, 20 Glock
21 Kovalainen, 22 Senna
23 di Grassi, 24 Chandhok