Qualifying from Bejing

And then it rained. It looked like disaster for the Renaults when they took to the track with the intermediate tires and both spun off within seconds. Was it too wet for even the Michelin tires, had the team miscalculated and sent the drivers out too early?

And then something amazing began to happen. On the next lap the Renaults started to lap consistantly, each lap faster than the last. Quicker and quicker they went, round and round, resetting P1 and fastest sector times every lap. And then it cut to Schumacher.

Schuey was fighting the car as the front washed wide on almost every turn. The Ferrari seemed like it was ready to snap on every entry, tear loose on every exit as its 2.4 litre V8 chugged under the traction control on the treacherous surface. But the inferior Bridgestones were no match for the French rubber and Michael struggled to stay in the top half of the final qualifying before slipping back to sixth place on the grid. With Massa starting from 23rd, after his ten place penalty and blown engine, Michael finds himself sandwiched between the two Maclarens with both Honda's occupying the row in front of him heading into an extremely tight first corner.

I don't know whats going to happen, but if this was a game of poker I'd say that Renault just took the Ferrari teams raise and re-raised back at them. The pressure is all back on the red team and Michael is left on his own to fight against a dominant qualifying performance by the Renault team in their title defence.

PS Go Alonso!