With half the season gone by, it's time to predict how many points each driver will rack up by the end of the season. Marcel Schot looks into that, and brings more anecdotes about the British Grand Prix (including the drivers' past performace at this event)

With half the season gone by, it is time to evaluate how drivers and teams performed in the first 9 races of the season, how many points they would accumulate if they continue to score on the same rate throughout the season, the actual number of points and what could be their final points standing, based on the difference between their actual number of points last year and the predicted value.

	2001	2002	2001	2002	2001	2001	2002
	halfway	halfway	predict.	predict.	actual	diff.	final
M.Schumacher	68	76	128.4	143.6	123	-4.2%	138
Montoya	12	27	22.7	51	31	36.6%	70
R.Schumacher	25	30	47.2	56.7	49	3.8%	59
Barrichello	26	26	49.1	49.1	56	14.1%	56
Fisichella	1	6	1.9	11.3	8	321.1%	48
Coulthard	44	26	83.1	49.1	65	-21.8%	38
Raikkonen	7	11	13.2	20.8	9	-31.8%	14
Heidfeld	8	5	15.1	9.4	12	-20.5%	7
Trulli	7	4	13.2	7.6	12	-9.1%	7
Irvine	4	3	7.6	5.7	6	-21.1%	4
Frentzen	6	2	11.3	3.8	6	-46.9%	2
Villeneuve	7	0	13.2	0	12	-9.1%	0
Ferrari	94	102	177.6	192.7	179	0.8%	194
Benetton	1	14	1.9	26.4	10	426.3%	139
Williams	37	57	69.9	107.7	80	14.4%	123
McLaren	53	37	100.1	69.9	102	1.9%	71
Sauber	15	9	28.3	17	21	-25.8%	13
Jordan	13	6	24.6	11.3	19	-22.8%	9
Jaguar	5	3	9.4	5.7	9	-4.3%	5
Arrows	1	2	1.9	3.8	1	-47.4%	2
BAR	12	0	22.7	0	17	-25.1%	0

The prediction for 2002 is based on the pace in the first nine races and the difference between the prediction and the actual result of last season. This, of course, should be taken with a grain of salt here and there. Obviously Renault and Fisichella won't be able to produce the same increase as last year, but other than that nothing is impossible.

If Montoya will be able to have as strong a second half as last season, he'll cruise to second place easily, while Ralf and Barrichello will continue battling for third close together. What is rather interesting, is that Ferrari have a legitimate shot at breaking McLaren's 1988 single season record of 199 points, which just lays emphasis on how big their domination is this season.

As for 2001, the table does reveal an interesting fact: both Sauber drivers Kimi Raikkonen and Nick Heidfeld lost their form in the second half of the season. The latter one is quite surprising, since Heidfeld's speed actually improved quite a bit when you look at qualifying positions: 10.6 in the first half against 8.8 in the second half. Looking at Heidfeld's second half shows that, with the exception of Indianapolis, he didn't actually have much chance to score more points:

France	6th,	lapped
Great Britain	6th,	10 seconds behind Raikkonen
Germany	ret.	startline collision
Hungary	6th,	lapped
Belgium	ret.	suspension failure in the void first part of the race
Italy	11th,	10 seconds behind Fisichella and lapped
Indianapolis	6th,	6 tenths behind Irvine, 15 seconds behind Trulli
Japan	9th,	5 tenths behind Trulli and lapped

When looking at the teams of 2001, it's clearly Benetton that's the eye catcher of the second half. After scoring just one point in the first half, nine more were racked up in part two of the season. However, this isn't a good representation of their entire second half, as all nine points were achieved in just two races - Germany and Belgium. And whereas Fisichella's Spa performance was first class, the fourth and fifth place in Germany were achieved mainly because two McLarens, a Williams and a Ferrari retired. For the rest, the second half was as mediocre as the first with only the Suzuka grid positions giving food to rumours that the team had been sandbagging all season.

If they were sandbagging at all, they overdid it at Silverstone. Qualifying saw the Benettons in 18th and 19th positions - well below the team's pre-2001 standards. In the race the pair of Fisichella and Button were both lapped twice, finishing 13th and 15th out of 16 finishers.

While Benetton struggled, Silverstone had the opposite effect on Mika Hakkinen: the Finn was fully back and peforming as was expected of him. The McLaren driver secured his first win of the season with a lead of over 30 seconds over Michael Schumacher.

This gave McLaren their third successive win at Silverstone. Overall, the Woking team now has 12 wins in the British Grand Prix, one more than rivals Ferrari. However, in the past ten years Williams have outperformed McLaren and Ferrari. Ferrari's numbers of course are pulled down by the complete lack of reliability in the early nineties, resulting in a finishing percentage of just 50% against 60% and 70% for McLaren and Williams respectively. However, what's really striking is Benetton's finishing percentage.

In the past ten British Grands Prix, Benetton drivers retired only three times - the last of which was in 1996. While the biggest successes for the team as a whole are Michael Schumacher's work, his role at Silverstone for Benetton was very limited: of the 48 points, the German scored only nine.

                                                pts per
          wins   pod.   pts.   fin.   retire.   finish 
Williams   5      8      74     14       6       5.3   
McLaren    3      7      61     12       8       5.1   
Ferrari    1      8      46     10      10       4.6   
Benetton   1      7      48     17       3       2.8   
(others)   0      0      31     86      64       0.4   

What's hopeful is that every 1-in-3 scoring rookies went on to become World Champion. The 1952 race, apart from the 1950 one where everyone was a debutant, was the best one for the new drivers. Mike Hawthorn, Dennis Poore and Eric Thompson finished three, four, five. Looking at the careers of these three, we can see how different things can go. Hawthorn went on to become the 1958 World Champion, while Poore and Thompson completed respectively two and one races.

Past Performance by Current Drivers

	1996		1997		1998		1999		2000		2001		Average Qualifying Position
	Qual	Race	Qual	Race	Qual	Race	Qual	Race	Qual	Race	Qual	Race
M.Schumacher	3	M	4	M	2	1	2	R	5	3	1	2	2.833
Barrichello	6	4	21	M	16	R	7	8	1	R	6	3	9.500
Coulthard	9	5	6	4	4	R	3	1	4	1	3	M	4.833
Raikkonen	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	7	5	7.000
R.Schumacher	-	-	5	5	21	6	8	3	7	4	10	M	10.200
Montoya	-	-	-	-	-		-	-	-	-	8	4	8.000
Heidfeld	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	17	M	9	6	13.000
Massa	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Fisichella	18	11	10	7	10	5	17	7	12	7	19	13	14.300
Sato	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Villeneuve	2	1	1	1	3	7	9	M	10	16	12	8	6.166
Panis	16	M	-	-	22	R	15	13	-	-	11	R	16.000
Trulli	-	-	13	8	14	R	14	9	11	6	4	R	11.200
Button	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	6	5	18	15	12.000
Frentzen	11	8	2	R	6	R	5	4	2	17	5	7	5.166
Bernoldi	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	20	14	20.000
Irvine	10	M	7	M	5	3	4	2	9	13	15	9	8.333
de la Rosa	-	-	-	-	-	-	20	M	19	M	13	12	17.333
Yoong	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Webber	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Salo	14	7	17	M	13	M	-	-	18	8	-	-	15.500
McNish	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-