Bob Barnard Track Engineering

How great to see a Williams on pole again! I must confess to a soft spot for Sir Frank's Team, as I think most people have. Mine started when Alan Jones won the championship and then to see how Sir Frank has battled his own personal problems and the struggle to stay competitive is an example to us all. Let us not forget it was Hulkenburg and not Barrichello that did it, well done Nico, and what a great way to repay Sir Frank's comments about your ability of just last week. Maybe it was the confidence boost he needed. Interesting qualifying session with nothing between the Red Bulls again, and if Nico had a wet set up then he will probably go backwards fast in the race. Interesting to read his comments of Friday that they would be lucky to make it into Q3.

Hard to see Lewis doing anything other than trying to stay in touch and Alonso, who knows, but both of these guys need the Red Bulls to break again. Mark looked in a determined mood, and it looks more and more like my predictions over the last few months may come true and Mark will leave at the end of the season. Horner's "Mark needs to focus on the job" sounds like a "shut the **** up" to me. Let us hope tomorrow is dry and we can see a straight fight.

On the engine front there are more opinions from Cosworth and Renault that the proposed 2013 engine regs need to be very tightly framed to prevent a runaway spending war, or leave the V8's alone. All is not settled.

HRT has a new partner to help with the money as was suspected, so let's hope for a better season next year. The talk of using the Toyota chassis does not gel with me as the rules change again next year. I think the discussion with Toyota is probably more about using their engineering consultancy they have set up at the old F1 base. I can be wrong though, after all I did not pick Hulkenburg for pole.

Stoner took pole in Valencia so we should be in for a good race tomorrow with Lorenzo, who despite being a Spaniard, says he does not like Valencia. Spain is a bit like Australia, not so much a country as a collection of States. Nice to see Checa managed not to be slowest, just. But he is getting closer to the top lap times.

In Zuhai the Peugeots start at the front. The really interesting thing at Zuhai was the announcement of the Intercontinental Cup calendar for 2011. No Petit, just a "race outside Europe TBA" in October? Sebring is listed. In the GT class the big story is the Porsche Hybrid qualifying second, although it does not actually qualify for points.