Silverstone, 7 July

Fernando Alonso will start tomorrow’s British Grand Prix, the ninth round of the World Championship, from pole position. Felipe Massa is on the inside of Row 3 in fifth place. Those two simple sentences relate the facts behind Scuderia Ferrari’s first pole of the season and its best overall qualifying performance, taking both cars into consideration. However, they do not begin to tell the story of a Silverstone Saturday afternoon that included nail-biting times for the Prancing Horse personnel.

As expected, this morning’s dry final hour of free practice was just a diversion, an interlude in a weekend where the top story has been the weather, both because of its effect on the on-track action and the chaos it has caused, mainly for the spectators, who nevertheless are here in their tens of thousands as usual. So, it was hardly surprising when a light drizzle began to fall in the run up to the start of Q1. That first part of the proceedings saw a track damp enough to require Intermediates, at the end of which Fernando was fifth and Felipe thirteenth. When it was time for Q2, the rain had intensified and the Scuderia had its first lucky break, when Fernando survived a high speed spin without hitting anything and was able to continue to return to the pits. However, both men were well outside the Q3 zone when the session was red flagged as the conditions had become too dangerous to continue. Thus began a long and tense wait which lasted over an hour. After the restart, the Ferrari men kept their cool and both made it through to Q3, where, as Fernando said, it was all about being in the right place at the right time, on the right tyres. The Spaniard’s last lap evidently fitted these criteria as it saw him take pole position.

Joining him on the front row tomorrow will be Mark Webber for Red Bull, while the second row features the German duo of Michael Schumacher, third for Mercedes and Sebastian Vettel fourth in the other Red Bull. Felipe has his former team-mate, Kimi Raikkonen in the Lotus, on his outside on Row 3. Predictions for tomorrow’s 52 laps of this famous airfield are pointless as the rain is expected to be on hand once again. However, what one can say is that the F2012 evidently performs well on a wet track and, as far as Fernando is concerned, assuming he can get off the line ahead of the rest, he will have the great advantage of good visibility on this high speed track.