2012 Forumla One World Drivers' Championship Betting Update: Kimi Raikonnen & Lotus shorten after Jerez testing, Hamilton drifts

JEREZ, SPAIN - The four-day testing of Formula One cars at Jerez is hardly the best pointer to the season ahead, but there were a handful of significant betting moves after the week of testing drew to a close this afternoon in Andalusia.

Day One was all about Kimi Raikonnen, making his long-awaited return to the sport after leaving Ferrari following a disappointing 2009 season. ‘The Iceman’ has since played around in WRC and NASCAR, but is returning to F1 with a two year contract at Lotus. The Flying Finn completed 180 laps in two days in the new E20, and took the headlines on day one by topping the timesheets with a nippy 1m 19.670s.

Obviously Kimi was keen to downplay his return, saying that it was merely ‘positive’, that they had ‘no major issues’ and that ‘I’m happy with what we did’.

Team-mate Romain Grosjean is also returned to the sport, and last year’s runaway winner of the GP2 Series confirmed that Lotus are in rude health at this stage of the season by setting 1m 18.419s in medium tyres, which was the fastest time on day three, eclipsed only by Nico Rosberg, who was piloting a 2011 Mercedes. It is also perhaps significant that Grosjean completed an encouraging 117 laps on Thursday, giving himself plenty of time to get to grips with the E20 and showing that the car is definitely up to collecting points this F1 season. On Friday Lotus experimented with soft tyres and longer runs, which should give them plenty of data to chew on over the coming week.

Certainly, the times need to be taken with a pinch of salt, especially considering Barrichello topped the Jerez times this time last year before an abysmal season with Williams. However, considering that the Lotus F1 team had been dismissed by the bookmakers ahead of the 2012 season, they are now being afforded a shred of respect. Raikonnen started the week as a 50/1 shot with Sky Bet to win back the Drivers’ Championship, which he won in 2007 with Ferrari, but is now just 14/1 with the Harrogate-based firm. William Hill were still laying 33/1 on Kimi winning the title on Tuesday evening, but now the best industry price is the 22/1 with Bet Victor.

Similarly Grosjean is 100/1 from 500/1 with Betfred this week, and Lotus are 50/1 for the Constructors’ Championship, having been 1000/1 with bet365 when betting first opened in October.

Fernando Alonso is many people’s idea of a good wager this season, and the Spaniard delighted the fans that had come to see him by finishing top of the day four times with a 1m 18.877s. That came after a gaffe from Brazilian team-mate Felipe Massa who had told the press that the new Ferrari is ‘very ugly’, and suggested that it would not be competitive this season. Perhaps Ferrari did their best on Friday to reassure their loyal fan-base, but in any case Alonso has been trimmed into 4/1 from 9/2 this week by Irish bookie Paddy Power and is the strongest threat to Vettel’s dominance according to the betting (often a reasonable indicator).

World champion Sebastien Vettel is just 5/4 with Betfred to clinch a hat-trick of titles and emulate Michael Schumacher and Juan Manuel Fangio, but that price looks a bit short considering that Red Bull cannot make use of the exhaust blown diffuser this season. On Thursday Vettel finishes second to Grosjean in the standings for the 2012 cars, but it is far too early to say whether he will be as dominant this year. At the moment his odds remain steady and it is hard to see them moving drastically in either direction before the first practice sessions in Australia. Red Bull remain strong at 21/20 with Blue Square for the constructors’ title.

The other significant move this week was Lewis Hamilton, who drifted out to 6/1 from 11/2 with Bet Victor and was also on the slide with bwin, Stan James and Coral. Hamilton was only fourth on Friday with a best lap time of 1m 19.640s, and the failure to use a platypus nose could prove very costly to both Hamilton and Button’s title bids. Supposedly the McLaren team had researched nose options over the winter, but they could well have screwed up considering that Hamilton was pipped by Vettel on Friday, when the Red Bull team are almost certainly concealing their true speed. As an alternative to the red-hot favourite, Alonso certainly looks better than Hamilton at this stage, although there are bound to be plenty of betting moves after the Barcelona testing, which begins on 21 February.

The first Grand Prix this season is in Australia on 18 March, but the bookmakers are not taking bets on it just yet.

2012 Drivers Championship Betting