THE Japanese Grand Prix this weekend is bound to see an interesting battle between Williams and Ferrari, which are third and fourth respectively, but only separated by nine points.
There will also be a lot of other battles, as we have seen from Singapore that the cars are much closer now than they have been before.
At Marina Bay the first nine places in qualifying were separated by only 0.569 seconds, the closest it’s been all season.
We can expect Sebastian Vettel and Daniel Ricciardo in their Red Bull projectiles to be pushing the Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg very hard.
Fernando Alonso says that he is confident that Ferrari will pass Williams on points, and that he will fight to the end of each race this season.
He feels that Ferrari is on the up after a low point at Monza.
Valtteri Bottas and Felipe Massa at Williams, however, have very different thoughts and a very good car from the Grove headquarters with of course a Mercedes engine.
Don’t be surprised if one of them makes Alonso eat his words.
Toro Rosso, with Jean-Eric Vergne and Daniil Kvyat, is always an interesting team.
Vergne is going harder than ever to secure a place for next year because whiz kid Max Verstappen is taking his place.
It will be interesting to see Verstappen taking part in the first free practice in a Toro Rosso F1 car, now that he has been granted his super licence.
Take note of his driving and, after he has settled in, what his lap times actually are.
We still have the Russian, USA, Brazil and UAE races to go after this one.
The UAE race in Abu Dhabi is the last race and it counts for double points.
Qualifying is on Saturday at 7am and the race on Sunday at 8am.
