It rained after today’s qualifying in time for the GP2 race at Spa, but the wet track arrived too late to help the Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro duo of Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello.

Both men had been hoping for rain to help reduce the current performance gap to the front runners, but in the end it was pretty much a case of status-quo as per the last few races, with the German setting the seventh fastest time and the Brazilian the thirteenth. In fact, because Renault’s Giancarlo Fisichella had to have an engine change before qualifying, he drops from third on the grid to thirteenth, thus promoting Michael and Rubens one place further up. Schumacher was not particularly happy with this, as it means he will start from the dirty side of the grid.

With a very high probability of rain hitting the track at some point tomorrow afternoon, the Scuderia and probably most of the other teams, opted for a semi-wet set-up on their cars for today’s one flying lap. With no major changes allowed on the cars when they are released from parc ferme tomorrow morning, this is the most sensible option.

It has been a long time since F1 has staged a wet race and at that time, the Ferrari-Bridgestone package was always very strong and so yet another unanswered question on this most uncertain of weekends is, will that still be the case? The race sees an all-McLaren Mercedes front row, Juan Pablo Montoya on pole and Kimi Raikkonen alongside him. With Fisichella dropping ten places, Row 2 now features the Toyota of Jarno Trulli and the other Renault of championship leader Fernando Alonso.

We have now reached a point in the season where the Spaniard can actually become world champion this weekend. In order to become the youngest ever champion in the sport, the Renault man must score four more points than Raikkonen in tomorrow's Belgian Grand Prix. On Row 3, Michael has his brother Ralf alongside him in the second Toyota.

Jean Todt: “There were so many unknowns going into this session and there still are. We were expecting rain, but it did not come and so in terms of the gap to the best, we are in a similar situation to the one we have seen in the last few races.
 

"In analysing today’s result, one also needs to take into account the different choices in terms of set-up and strategy, based on the weather forecast, which is suggesting there is a strong chance of rain tomorrow afternoon. Honestly, I hope this turns out to be accurate. It would allow us to see if, such a long time after the last wet Grand Prix, the Ferrari-Bridgestone package has still got the edge in these conditions, or if we will still suffer from the heavy penalty of lack of grip that has made this season such a struggle.”

Michael Schumacher: “We said that we did not think there would be much of an improvement after Monza and so today’s performance is pretty much what we expected. We did the best we could and it seems that I will start from sixth place, which is okay, although I would have preferred to stay seventh on the clean side of the grid. If it stays dry, we can only hope to fight for points, so obviously I prefer if it rains as that would make the situation more open. Today, we ran the car with a bias towards a wet set-up, which is reflected in the lack of top speed.”

Rubens Barrichello : “Given that we have opted for a very conservative race strategy, I do not think that twelfth on the grid today is too bad. We have to see what the weather will do tomorrow. Taking all the possibilities into account, I think I have a chance of scoring points tomorrow.”

Ross Brawn : “I am slightly disappointed with this performance, as I thought we could make a little bit of a step up this afternoon, from what we saw in the morning. I suspect the track was a bit slippery. We would not complain if it is wet tomorrow. Rubens is a bit further back than we would have liked, but let us hope he can move up a bit if and when it rains tomorrow. We did take the possibility of rain into account in the way we set up the cars today, but they do not have a full wet set-up.”

Qualifying session: Michael Schumacher: 7th 1.47.476 3 laps chassis 249; Rubens Barrichello: 13th 1.48.550 3 laps chassis 248; Temperatures: air 23° C, track 25/24° C