Romain Grosjean will be happy if this week’s weather forecast for Melbourne proves right.
Although Wednesday will be warm and sunny in the Victorian capital, the clouds will begin to gather on Thursday, when the F1 circus congregates in the nearby Albert Park paddock for media and scrutineering activities.

Then, when practice signals the official start of the 2012 season on Friday afternoon, rain and isolated thunderstorms are predicted.

And isolated showers are forecast for the qualifying and race days.

Lotus driver Romain Grosjean has not tested his new E20 mount on a wet track, and the last time he saw rain from the cockpit of any F1 car was in Brazil 2009.

“It feels like a long time ago!” the Frenchman confirmed.

“I’m ready if the (Melbourne) track is more slippery, and I’ll try to make the best of it.

“I like racing in the wet, so maybe it will be a bit of an advantage for me,” added the reigning GP2 champion.

Sunday will be his eighth career grand prix, following 7 races with the Enstone based team – then known as Renault – in 2009.

Jaime Alguersuari has admitted he is hoping the grey weather at the Nurburgring so far stays around until Sunday.

“We’re expecting a wet race,” the Toro Rosso driver told El Mundo Deportivo newspaper.

“We have more to gain than to lose if it is (wet),” Spaniard Alguersuari, 21, added.

“If you can’t activate the DRS system (on a wet track) that benefits us more than the others. But points are possible in the wet or in the dry.”

A vague regulation was cleared up at Silverstone after Lewis Hamilton and Mark Webber were summoned by the stewards.
The pair were seen using their ‘DRS’ adjustable rear wings during rainy Friday practice, even though the innovation cannot be used on a wet track.

But McLaren, testing a new rear wing configuration ahead of the British grand prix, exploited a loophole in the rules that makes no mention of DRS being banned when the car is fitted with slick tyres.

“The stewards just wanted to understand so that they could tighten the wording of the regulations for the next race,” Hamilton confirmed.

The stewards, including 1992 world champion Nigel Mansell, took no action against the 2008 world champion or Red Bull’s Webber.

Whilst still a main contender for the 2010 title, Mark Webber insists his own expectations for the season have already been met.

“I am totally relaxed and looking forward to the last races,” the Australian told the Swiss newspaper Blick in Sao Paulo.

In Korea recently, the Red Bull driver was comfortably leading the world championship when he spun on the wet track and crashed.

He is now 11 points behind Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso, with Red Bull reluctant to fully back his championship charge over young teammate and team favourite Sebastian Vettel.

Webber said: “I have achieved more this season than I expected. My target is already fulfilled.”

The 34-year-old, however, is still fully motivated to win his first drivers’ title, shifting the pressure onto Alonso.

“Ferrari will be fast here, but Fernando will be concerned about his engine situation. I can push as hard as I can and have always been strong in Brazil,” insisted Webber.

The F1 paddock is expecting rain at the new Yeongam venue.

After a dry inaugural race weekend in South Korea so far, forecasts are predicting rain later on Saturday and overnight, with a very high chance of more heavy showers on race-day morning.

And the threat of rain for 1500 local on Sunday – the scheduled race start – is more than 50 per cent, leaving some drivers worried about the effect of a wet track atop the new and already low-grip surface.

“It’s going to be tough whatever the weather does,” warned McLaren’s Jenson Button.

As afternoon becomes evening in Singapore, the storm clouds are gathering above the city street circuit.

As the experience of the past week has shown, any significant rain from now until the race-start at 8pm is likely to guarantee a wet track for the grand prix.

“The track dries incredibly slowly,” observed Red Bull’s Mark Webber.  “It’s something I haven’t seen in my entire career.”

Until late afternoon on Sunday, the sun had been shining in the Asian city-state’s Marina Bay area.

But with three hours to go until race time, the skies have darkened, the wind is picking up, and there has been the odd drop of rain.

There is rain showing on the longer distance radar, but most paddock sources believe the race should be dry.

“If it does rain, the track will never dry out.  It takes so long,” agreed McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton.

For Nico Rosberg, it was not only in the rainy morning practice round, but even under the drier conditions in the afternoon. On the morning of the Mercedes driver was 1.747 seconds with residue at position six, the second 90 minutes of training, he finished with a 0.562 seconds gap to fifth place.

“Today was mainly a matter of review, as our updates are working,” said Rosberg. “I think we have the hinbekommen well. In view of the weekend we see quite good. But we have to wait and see.”
“Today was not too bad, I think, however, that many things because of the conditions were a little different. And since you did not drive much, this time one should not take too seriously. I also think we can do better, will than we have done at Silverstone, or at least the same level., I think we have a good weekend. ”

The problem the training because of weather conditions was: “Simply because of wind, because the conditions all the time changing. We started on the very, very wet track, so we had the full rain tires. Then we are a bit driven, have so far learned, it should rain tomorrow. ”

“Especially under these conditions, I would be very confident. In the morning we drove very fast times, at least I was this morning, very fast. If there are such conditions, I would be very confident.”

“In the dry the track was still damp at the beginning of something. You changed so much. In addition, it was necessary in view of the race with a lot of fuel on board, go and try, all within an hour may resort in dry conditions that we in the end ultimately have. It’s difficult when you have to do as much work on the set and things like that. ”

Time of the Mercedes driver also lost by an incident in training, which cost him the front wing. The Wiesbaden cut from the first corner too strong: “The bollard was simply too big.” The front wing broke off from what Rosberg led in allusion to the “front wing” allegations at Red Bull for joking: “I took Michaels: He moved back to the old.”

It is interesting this weekend, the choice of tires, for Bridgestone has the softest and the decision the toughest – a distance, such as has never been before: “At the moment seems to be the soft no great problem to present, he seems to fit even actually” so Rosberg. “It will not, like in Montreal when the tire was within ten laps at the end.”
“They seem to be better, maybe it will therefore be the problem, the hard to move properly to work, because this really looks very hard. That is probably right now the trend. But it’s hard to say how it will be because we are probably not enough laps, and the track is not in the condition as it will be on Sunday. ”

Of course, hopes Rosberg on a successful weekend, after all, it’s his home race, “I have won in every category, with which I came here it was not too bad, this is also to create in the formula first, it is a very special thing to go with the silver arrow here, after all, I grew up in relation to racing 20 kilometers away. There, the race team my father was stationed, for which I completed all the races when I’ve worked up. ”

“It’s a great feeling to drive here from all spectators. Hopefully we will see in the stands a lot of silver caps, which we applaud. It will be incredible to get to all a good result for the team, for the teams, that would be great. “

Lewis Hamilton crashed his McLaren towards the end of the morning practice session at wet Hockenheim on Friday.

In tricky conditions that also caused many of his rivals to spin or run off the German track, the McLaren driver lost control on the exit of turn three and made sideways contact with the barrier.

“The car is damaged — heavily,” he sheepishly told his team by radio before angrily emerging from the MP4-25, featuring a revised blown exhaust update that McLaren is testing at Hockenheim.

Jenson Button, second in the drivers’ championship behind Hamilton, also radioed the pitwall during the session, complaining about “terrible” rear handling issues.

Shortly afterwards, as a dry line began to emerge, Bruno Senna marked his return to the HRT cockpit by beaching the car in the gravel at the final corner.