Betfair.net

The F1 race this week moves to Singapore for the second ever night race. Two weeks ago in Italy, Hamilton had the best car as was expected, but his team's decision to run a two stop strategy cost him the win. The one stop strategy was clearly the way to go and Rubens Barichello was able to pull off the win thanks to the lone pit stop.

Ironically, Barichello lost what should have been an easy win in Spain earlier this year after his team switched him from a 2 stop to a 3 stop strategy while keeping Jenson Button on a 2 stop strategy. One has to wonder how long it will take teams to realize that the 22 seconds it takes for an extra pit stop is almost impossible to make up on the track.

The 4 point differential between what should have been a reverse of the Jenson Button-Rubens Barichello finish in Spain is looming large with the championship points now. The main storyline from Italy, however, was the continued improvement of Force India and the near certainty of a Brawn GP constructor championship.

Last year's Singapore race was won by Fernando Alonso in what is now seen as a very controversial race. Recently, after Nelson Piquet Jr. was let go by Renault, it came to light that the team asked Nelson Piquet to crash at an opportune moment in last year's Singapore race to allow Alonso to come out with the win. Consequently, several of the top brass at the team quit to save the program for Renault.

As for the track itself, almost all drivers commented that Singapore was a bumpy circuit and also mentioned how difficult it was to maneuver the various turns. The track most closely resembles the slow Monaco course but actually has more corners. For that reason this course, like Italy, favors the cars with the KERS system as well as Brawn GP whose cars lately lack the horsepower of its competitors but handle the turns far better.

Unfortunately for Red Bull the track doesn't favor their setup at all so any chance to snatch victory from Brawn GP will likely disappear once the race is concluded.

For the race this year the logical bet is the McLaren and Brawn GP cars. Hamilton is clearly the best driver on the slower tracks like Singapore and Kovalainen and, while not showing much in the way of finishes, he is qualifying well and appears ready to break through at any time. The KERS system of McLaren is clearly better than that of Ferrari or Renault although Kimi Raikkonen has used it to his advantage as well.

It was clearly evident from the last race that Giancarlo Fisichella doesn't feel comfortable with his new ride at Ferrari yet. As for the Brawn GP cars, Barichello has out-qualified and out-driven Jenson Button the last 3 races. Barichello's championship aspirations looked all but done following the Hungarian GP but 2 wins and a 7th place finish now has Barichello only 14 points behind Button and only a 7/2 underdog. It will be interesting to see if Barichello can continue to put pressure on his teammate and from what has been observed there's no reason to expect he won't.

Looking at the pole position bets, it's probably a good idea to look past the McLaren, Brawn and Ferrari cars to try and find an upset. It's very likely that none of those cars will be fueled lightly after the last race but other cars may be willing to take a chance on a multi-stop strategy hoping for some more "timely accidents" and also to get as much TV time for the sponsors as possible. If a driver qualifies in the back they rarely get shown.

Force India fueled Giancarlo Fisichella very lightly at Belgium and they did the same with Adrian Sutil and Vitantonio Liuzzi at Monza. There's really no reason to expect different from them this race and the team has shown that they have the cars that can compete for the pole position if not for the win. Sutil is a whopping [42.0] to win the pole position for the race and while he is a definitely a longshot he has to be given a small play at the odds.

Fernando Alonso qualified on the pole in Hungary but hasn't done nearly as well since. Mind you, Alonso has shown quite a bit of speed on slower tracks (particularly in qualifying) and without question he'll want to perform well in this race to prove that his win last year wasn't attributable solely to cheating by the team. Alonso is a healthy [20.0] dividend at Betfair at time of posting to win the pole position. Having said all that, Hamilton is clearly the best qualifier of the group, has 2 pole positions in the last 3 races and has the KERS advantage.

With that in mind here are the pre-practice bets at Betfair:

To win the race:
Lewis Hamilton at [3.75]
Heikki Kovalainen at [21.0]

To win qualifying:
Lewis Hamilton at [4.0]
Fernando Alonso at [20.0]
Adrian Sutil at [42.0] for a small play