Mercedes have released a set of stats to show how crazy overtaking has gotten this year.

They have counted all the overtaking moves in the first few races “using a combination of video, timing data and GPS technology” (read: ceefax) and have worked out that this year truly has been batshit crazy.

With the Pirelli tyres, DRS and KERS all competing to be the most talked about thing of 2011 the overtaking moves for each race so far are as follows:

Australia – 30

Malaysia – 70

China – 90

Turkey – 112

Being used to the processional nature of GP’s in the last few years this certainly seems alot – and in Turkey it certainly was.

But how will Spain fare? Normally the dullest of all races (excluding Monaco, but at least they dress up for it) will this years gimmicks make the Circuit de Catalunya the first Spanish GP where I haven’t accidentally made food halfway through thanks to sheer boredom?

Well, judging on previous Spanish races the stats are:

2008 – 11

2009 – 3

2010 – 10

“However, the total from 2008 includes passes made because of damage or mistakes, while the 2010 number includes passes by faster cars on a car from the bottom three teams. The number of ‘normal’ overtaking manoeuvres was: 2008, two; 2009, three; 2010, two.”

Two?

Yes we moan about dull races, but two fucking overtaking moves in a race? How did we stand for it? It’s not surprising that overtaking stats haven’t been all over tv coverage of recent years.

So by all accounts Spain should be the big test of the new rules, if it’s not dull here, it won’t be dull anywhere (except Monaco, see above)