Sunday 16 March 2014

Australian Grand Prix

The betting pool is back.  In my continuing quest to earn @Tiberius_Jolly some easy money, I'm still trying to see what the best F1 betting strategy is.  Last season, betting on the racer who was fastest in Saturday practice came out ahead, slightly, from betting on the winner of qualifying (work on whether it was statistically significant or not is on-going).

The results of this for this season could be less clear cut, because of the changes in technical regulations.  For the last few seasons, it's been "who can challenge Red Bull?" while this season no-one knows what's going to happen, especially given Renault's engine troubles and the way something about the Red Bull (and Lotus) aero designs seems to exacerbate them.

That being said, Vettel was still 4th on Friday practice, even if he was nowhere in practice 2 or qualifying.

I'm also going to start using the William Hill betting calculator (http://form.williamhill.com/betcalc/EN/calc.html) to work out the winnings.

Fastest Friday PracticePriceFastest Saturday PracticePriceFastest QualifyingPrice
Hamilton15/8Nico Rosberg4/1Hamilton5/6
Amount won/lost on a £1 bet-£1Amount won/lost on a £1 bet£5Amount won/lost on a £1 bet-£1
Amount won/lost on a £10 bet-£10

Amount won/lost on a £10 bet£50Amount won/lost on a £10 bet-£10
Season Total £1 bets-£1Season Total £1 bets£5Season Total £1 bets-£1
Season Total £10 bets-£10Season Total £10 bets£50Season Total £10 bets-£10

The price for the Saturday practice may be slightly less than it could have been as I was only able to get it after qualifying had finished due to time zone difference.

Obviously, it's too early to draw any firm conclusions, but so far (1 race within what is likely to be a crazy season), it looks likely to be like last year where the fastest guy after Saturday practise is a good bet.