It’s that time of year again when the drama that is F1 moves into the home straight, and that inevitably means the time has come for some drivers to jump from sinking ships and teams to shed excess fat. Yes it’s time to predict who’s going where and what teams are shaping up well for next season.

It’s not really a prediction but first up is the news of Alonso almost certainly replacing the completely uninterested Raikkonen at Ferrari. Raikkonen will hopefully move on to greener pastures in the rallying scene, it’s not as if rallying has banned drivers drinking so there really is no reason he shouldn’t go. That means Alonso will team up with Massa at Ferrari, presuming of course that Massa is fit to drive again.

So now we have an open seat at Renault, Grosjean should hold on to the second seat. I think the frontrunner for the Renault seat will be Robert Kubica, who lets be honest, hasn’t been happy at BMW for a while now and BMW pulling out is sure to drive him away. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say Sebastian Loeb is also in this race, he was rumoured to be getting a trial run in the last race of the season and quite frankly the Frenchman has achieved everything he could have possibly dreamed of in rallying. I think Kubica should take it but if he doesn’t there is the second seat at McLaren to consider.

McLaren is one the few consistent superpowers in F1 and Heiki Kovalainen simply does not deserve to clog up one of the scarce superpower seats. The only problem is that many drivers are wary of a Mclaren drive because of a certain Lewis Hamilton, one only has to look at the 2007 season to see what McLaren favouritism for the Brit can do. For that reason alone I think that Kovalainen will stay, Kubica will go to Renault and Loeb to one of the new teams. I say this because if Kubica has to decide between Renault and McLaren, he’ll go down the French road purely because Hamilton is, shall we say difficult to work with.

Toyota also needs a new driver to replace Trulli, who’s lust for the sport seems to wane a little more every race. When Button wins the World Championship, he’ll be looking for the big money, and we all know Toyota ticks that box prodigiously. That presupposes that Brawn’s fortunes will diminish next year and without another bout of drastic rule changes I really do believe the traditional powers will resume station. Brawn should then snap up Nico Rosberg, which takes care of most of my main picks. Next week I’ll go deeper into driver movement and also what teams should be at the front come next season.