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Hi all,

I'm afraid I don't think we're going to have a lot of luck with this line of enquiry - once you take out races that were affected by Safety Cars in the first ten laps, and then exclude wet races, there's only a sample of four to compare.

For what it's worth, these are the figures for the gap (in seconds) from 1st to 12th at the end of lap 10:

Sakhir	27.319	33.215
Hungaroring	40.263	21.312
Valencia	39.665	24.370
Singapore	56.917	37.489
Average	41.041	29.097

[td]Circuit[/td][td]2008[/td][td]2009[/td]

There's such a variation in those figures that I don't think there are many conclusions to be drawn. Probably the field is slightly closer on pace this year than last, but the gap between the average spreads looks far too big for me. It comes down to individual cars' fuel loads as much as anything I fear.

The evidence of my eyes suggests cars can follow each other a little more closely than in 2008, but not much - not enough to make a big difference without a KERS boost or a mistake from the man in front.