Renault reign in wet Shangai

Fernando Alonso managed to put in a pole position on a crucial time in the championship, and even more importantly Fisichella joins him on the front row. It was an easy pole for the Spaniard who was fastest in every session of qualifying. Both Honda cars are on the second row, while Schumacher is the best Bridgestone driver in 6th place.

As early as in the beginning of the week, weather forecast were expecting lots of rain, possibly even on the race day tomorrow. Qualifying though starts extremely wet with continuous rain and almost no wind at all.

It quickly became apparent that just like in Hungary, the Michelin teams are incredibly advantagious in these conditions. The first 5 knocked out drvers are all Bridgestone equipped cars. It are more specifically both Toyota's, the Spyker MF'1s and Super Aguri. During the first session, Tiago Monteiro caused a red flag 3 minutes from the end by parking his car alongside the track. It's unlikely though that this has changed the final outcome of the first knockout session.

In the final stages of Q1, David Coulthard asked through the radio for extreme wet tyres as the visibility was close to zero. It may be that the FIA will allow the use of these tyres during the race if the same conditions continue intul tomorrow. It's not clear if the extreme wets will provide better grip and how durable they will be compared to the regular wet tyres used in qualifying.

Session two went green when both Ferraris set a time that appears too enough to move through to the final part. After errors by both Renault drivers with 8 minutes to go, they both set the benchmark again by placing 1st and 2nd. Michael Schumacher is with 1 minute to go already put back to 13th place as Webber and the four Red Bull related cars all put in faster times than him. Even Felipe Massa is faster than the German. The Brazilian however had an engine failure on friday and will be moved back 10 places on the grid. Yet again it wasn't finished as Schumacher, Kubica and Doornbos imrpoved again to qualify for the final session.

The final session unfolded a bit as expected until Kimi Raikkonen lost his right rear view mirror. This time around Fisichella put in another excellent lap and will be next to his teammate Alonso on the front row. Behind them are both Honda cars led by Barrichello. 5th is Raikkonen and 6th Michael Schumacher who, despite Bridgestone tyres, managed to put in a reasonable laptime.