Before the race week festivities start, let's take a look at the projections based on the data at hand.

The model predicts a bit of continued success for Lewis Hamilton, with the likelihood of him scoring points putting him at top for the first spot, anticipating him qualifying 3rd. Charles' good run of bad luck leave's him hoping for a windfall, tortured Clint Black meme's aside, if you're a LeClerc fan, you're hoping race day the math takes into account a wildcard to change his fortune.

George and Kimi have higher likelihood of winning, but effectively a greater risk of something spoiling their fun. While the model shows George's probability of a DNF being higher, given the results of Catalunya, a non-math based guess would suggest those odds are likely even. Considering they also haven't made contact with each other yet, there's another x-factor to bad race results.

Then we have Max. His race looks to be some solid points, but not competing for the podium. Isack is not looking as hot for this race, despite some solid driving this year as being the number 2 Red Bull car going better for him than some of the others. Both drivers have a high risk of DNF.

Next on the list and also dealing with a high probably of DNF is McLaren. With Oscar projected to substantially outperform his World Champion teammate. Followed by Alpine, with both drivers outperforming expectations this year. Pierre having some strong races this year, and Franco... not crashing. With RB likely rounding out the top 10.

The back half of the field is starting to feel stale with Cadillac learning through their first season, and whatever is happening Aston Martin usually playing a bit of musical chairs for the last four places. Given the high probability of DNF's across the top of the field, we Americans can hope for Cadillac approaching points.

Time to keep ourselves honest. While we didn't post them publicly, our prediction engine was running for the previous race. While we predicted Kimi/Lewis/George, in that order, we only hit on two. It was very nearly 3 until the reliability gremlin found Kimi on the last laps.

We'll come back after qualifying in a few weeks review prediction changes with new data right before the race.