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Absolutely Brill. Enjoyed the old updates on 606 .

Nicely done, thanks!

Nice one, thanks Ian.

I look forward to your reports for the rest of the season.

Very interesting.

This is a nice feature, hope we see more of it for the rest of the F1 season.

Is this going to be a regular occurance for every race? If so, brilliant!!

So to summarise, chance of showers friday, drier saturday, heavier rain showers late sunday. Windy with changes in direction.

Great to see you have a proper home for this, just a shame that ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Sport seem to be unaware of it / ignoring it / whatever.

An interesting new feature, thank you very much.

Good blog, I hope this is done for all F1 races.

Chhers Ian, here's hoping for a good race, whatever it takes!

BTW, your comment on Points West about horses at the Gold Cup having understeer or oversteer in the wet made me chuckle.

Fantastic blog, Ian, and thank you for your regular updates for each race.

Would like to see this for all the Grandprix if possible

This is a very very good blog post! Looking forward to this weather analysis before every race weekend =)

Glad to see ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ ID getting more contact. This should be linked from the Weather/F1/sport part of the site

Thanks very much Ian. Look forward to your updates and future blogs!

Thanks for the update Ian. :)

Just a note:

"the forecast models tend to hold the rain at bay out west, until evening"

The race starts at 17:00 local time.... I'm not sure in the above what you mean by evening, but 5pm to me seems like the evening? ;-)

The 1 thing I'd say there DMN is he mentions it probably being dry during the race......possibly suggesting evening as in after the race.....however it seems like it's very much a case (for all 3 days) of the weather being uncertain, and confidence in the forecast seemingly being low at the moment.

As I'm a realist I will take it all with a pinch of salt.

Considering the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ posted incorrect predictions for some of the GPs last year I hope the F1 teams don't use this info. What am I saying? Of course the teams wouldn't use this info.

Furthermore the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ can't even correctly predict the weather for the next day for parts of the UK. It would be a bit of a shock if the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ could predict the weather more than a day in advance for a place half way across the globe. But I suppose stranger things have happened.

But you can't blame weathermen for trying of course - if you keep shooting in to a barrel you're bound to hit at least one fish.

Keep up the good work ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ - we would be lost beyond reason on everything meteorological without you.

My Good Self, generaly the teams use the MeteoFrance system (think it's that anyway), certainly they use that for the radars they use at the tracks. Worth bearing in mind as well though that some forecasts on well respected websites last year were wrong in other places too (Germany was meant to be a wet race, as everyone expected, but overnight the rain accelerated and fell well before the race instead). Also bear in mind he isn't just using the Met Office forecast, he'll be taking forecasts from various weather models, forecasts, radars, even for things such as low/high pressure, and I for 1 appreciate it, as the more forecasts, details we can get across the web, the better.

I assume you mean tomorrow. Seeing that I think you wont do a update at silly O clock

Be good if this rain speeds up a bit and gives us even just some light rain in the last 10 laps or so, if nothing else. Still plenty of time to go.

Thank you for these Ian. I really find them useful as you always go into plenty of detail and give us hope of an exciting race due to the influence of the weather! Judging by Bahrain we may need rain in any race this year to make it even tolerable.

Perhaps rather foolishly, despite the latest forecasts, I'm hoping we'll get a bit of rain during the race on Sunday. Can't that rain just speed up a bit?

Yes I agree. Melbourne should be more intertesting as the track lends itself to more exciting racing (less runoff etc.). I just hope we get a good spectacle this weekend!

Thank you for your comments. More of the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ weather people should be using blogs

Fascinating but what about the A417?

This is frustrating Ian (not you or your blog, before you worry!), but the fact that the forecast seems like it'll give us a dry race......all I want is that rain to speed up by just 2-3 hours, that's all, to give us at least some light rain in the last 10-15 laps.

Well after a rather unexpected wet 2nd session, it just proves that the forecast is very difficult to get right this weekend. Delighted that the rain for Sunday has sped up, hopefully it'll be enough to even just give us the last 10-15 laps with conditions like in FP2, where the drivers are uncertain as to which tyres to go for.

True Ian, not wholly unexpected, but obviously it was expected to be a low chance, although needless to say, that small chance became a very big chance in the time between FP1 and FP2! Will be interesting to see if we get any more rain tomorrow, either during practice or qualifying (if we get a repeat of the light rain we had today, during qualifying, to the point where the teams aren't entirely certain which tyres to put on, that could certainly give us a bit of an unpredictable grid). Still holding out hope though that the rain for Sunday will speed up just a little bit more and give us an extra dimension to the race, even if it's late on. Enjoying reading the forecasts though, and good to know that you're constantly responding to questions/what people are saying, it's appreciated.

Well, well well.

After 1st practice I thought it looked like it was going to be a dry running all day - how wrong I was!

The race could be very very interesting if it starts to drizzle towards the end.

Really enjoying your updates Ian, please keep up the good work :)

Yeah I noticed that. I think Sunday will be the same as well, as although rain is seemingly maybe a bit more likely (in the sense we know there's actually an obvious big band of rain heading that way, whereas tomorrow may see the rain just appearing on the radar out of nowhere, kind of like what happens at Spa/Nurburgring), in terms of the timing, which is still impossible to predict, the rainfall radar could be absolutely crucial on Sunday as well.

Ian, given that the rain has moved forward as such for Sunday, do you think that trend could continue leaving us with possibly a totally wet race?

Or is that unlikely? To me, it'd seem weird for a band of rain to move 'eastwards' in one update then stay stationary in the remaining few updates.

That's really interesting Ian, that in the space of about 36 hours, we've gone from a relatively low chance of some light drizzle appearing in the very late stages of the race due to the forecast models positioning it the way they did for a few days in a row, to potentially drizzle/light rain at the start, with it getting even wetter as the race runs its course, and so possibly leaving us with what could basically be rain all the way through. Admittedly there's still a fair way to go until we have an even clearer picture, and it could change many more times, but it's certainly a very interesting development all the same.

Thanks Ian! It's going to very interesting if it starts to drizzle before the starts - talk about a guessing game!!

Great attention to detail Ian!

Looking forward to your updates over the weekend!

I hope the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ splash out and get you a massive bonus for your efforts!

JPollock

Any more word regarding Sunday Ian? Or even Saturday's action?

It seems like Ian's predictions have been spot on so far... I like it! Even if Friday's was slightly worse than expected.

Let's hope the rain continues to move east faster. ;)

Autosport have done their own update this morning for anyone interested:

why wasn't Michael Schumacher penalised for speeding through red flags and lights in practice other than losing that lap. Surely the rules say you must slowdown at once and either stop or make your way slowly or carefully back to the pits?

everyone is complaining about the lack of overtaking, lets loose the mandatory tyre change, then you have to overtake on track. Michael Schumacher said without refuelling it would be difficult to overtake! We don't want overtaken in the pits we want it on the track.

Why not ban all electronic aids to the driver. electronic should be contained by the engine bay. Mechanical bar rate changes, gear change, throttle, clutch, brake bias etc. no more retirements due to lack of some hydraulic/pneumatic system. And ban power steering.

nik......you're posting this in the wrong area.....this is about the weather.

Ian, will you be doing an update today for tomorrow? ;)

I'm gonna be so annoyed if we don't get any rain of good measure during the race! ;)

Thanks for the update Ian.

Still seems relatively likely that we'll get some rain........the question I guess now, even with what, 12 hours or so to go, is when will it get there, and how heavy will it be. Hopefully it'll at the very least be wet enough to make the teams have to either use, or seriously consider, the intermediate tyres. Will we be getting an early morning (UK time) update Ian, given that presumably there'll have been another couple of runs on the model forecasts before the start of the race?

Seems like I'll be turning on my PC at 05:30am to see Ian's update! :)

Delighted to hear that Ian, the more forecast updates we can get, and the closer to the rae they are, the better.

I hope for some rain in the race tomorrow

Great news Ian if you can do a small update before the race! May have to get up just a little bit earlier just to check it out and fill my confidence and anticipation ahead of the race. :)

Well looking at 3 different rainfall radars, at the moment, there's some rain to the north, which may head south, there's some rain not too far from Melbourne, and a large (and growing all the time) band of rain coming in from the west. I can't see it being a totally dry race personally. At the very least I reckon we'll see some light rain, even if it just makes it damp, but not wet enough for inters. Seems like the chances of us having a bone dry racetrack throughout the race, and no other rain falling, is decreasing all the time (that's the way I read it at the moment anyway having looked at a few radars).