Round 9 has passed on by...

...and the battle up front in NNF1 is still hot and sweaty.

The top three or four may not have changed much since round 3 but that doesn't paint the picture at all. Each race agonising decisions on whom to pick, who to play, what will happen. It's just too much and the stakes, oh yes they are high, the pain, the tension...

Actually it's not that bad but pretty good fun and the state of play is such that a miscalculation and bloody Liuzzi could really ruin your chances. Luckily for most just about everybody chose him last weekend and nobody suffered as much as they could have, in fact six of the top ten had chosen him and nine in the top fourteen ...Cheap but popular obviously.

The three driver scenario kicked off to a good start I thought with no obvious combination being supreme. It looks like that if you weigh it either way (engine/chassis or to the drivers) you could lose out but the stand out detail was that reliability is still the key.

The biggest climber last week was Ixopo Racing (Thirston) up six places. Pure fluke no doubt.

At this stage if you're lagging a bit to far behind it's time to risk it in order to try climb the ladder because the chaps (and one lady) up front are being pretty consistent, only Martin has really dropped the ball in round 8 when Liuzzi dnf'd on the first lap when no one else at the top had chosen him. What was a 40 odd point lead became a 20 odd point deficit in and instant. It must have hurt up there in Manchester.... Other than that The Mossley GP Team have been a model of consistency being in the top three from round 1.

Whizz Wheels had a similar thing happen to them in round six when Coulthard dnf'd on lap one, Whizz Wheels had been consistently hovering in the top six since round one, as high as second and then David Coulthard came along and dropped him down to 16th just like that...

Our current leader 'Red Cow Racing' is the only number 2 team in the top eight which is pretty outstanding, with the priority team surely being the number one team. He must be nervous though, can his long term selections keep him at the front while his rivals get to choose a hot combination at every race...there's still three races left in the the current number two team's with the next scheduled change for round thirteen.

And 'Inter Ferrari'? Just lurking there in fourth spot for the last however many rounds, he lost touch at one stage but has slowly pulled the gap to the top three in. Massa's mistake exiting the pits in Montreal hurt him and dropped him temporally to 5th. One to watch out for in the coming GP's...