Ahead of today's qualifying session, the air temperature is 29 degrees and the track temperature is 44 degrees. It is bright, sunny and very, very warm.

We said at the beginning of this morning's free practice session that Friday's two session posed more questions than they answered. However, in this morning's session it was much of the same, with an engine failure on Vettel's car causing a twenty-five minute stoppage.

Consequently, we go into this afternoon's all-important session under the impression that Adrian Sutil is the pace setter ahead of Nakajima and Kubica. Now, no disrespect to any of these three drivers, but we do not expect them to be at the front of the grid tomorrow afternoon far less standing on the podium.

Certainly, Brawn appears to have rediscovered it's early season form, but it remains to be seen whether this is genuine progress or merely a blip down to the exceedingly high temperatures over the last couple of days. On the other hand, Red Bull has been disappointing here thus far this weekend, with Vettel's engine failure this morning merely compounding the Milton Keynes outfit's misery.

The limited running this morning, coupled with an off yesterday afternoon, has made it difficult to judge where McLaren stands, a situation made all the more difficult by the fact that Hamilton and Kovalainen are running two different chassis, the Englishman in a short wheelbase car and the Finn in the standard (longer) version. However, it was clear in Hungary that the Woking team has made a major leap forward.

Fernando Alonso topped the timesheets yesterday afternoon, and it is reasonable to expect the Spaniard to be one of the quicker men in the forthcoming session, eager to be ahead of the KERS runners on tomorrow's grid.

Ferrari hasn't looked too promising thus far this weekend, and with Badoer seemingly unable to kick life into Raikkonen it doesn't look as though the Prancing horse will be springing any surprises for the time being.

Toyota has also been disappointing, but the TF109 was off the pace in Monaco also, so maybe its simply this kind of track which doesn' suit the Japanese car.

On the other hand watch out for Williams, which continues to impress, and Force India, which, courtesy of a raft of upgrades, is really causing a stir here, especially in the hands of Adrian Sutil.

Normally, we would take this opportunity to make our prediction as to how the next hour will unfold, however, we simply don't have enough data on which to make a reasonable assessment. Therefore, we're going to stick our necks out and say Alonso on pole, ahead of Hamilton with Brawns right behind. Though, based on previous events this weekend we'll probably see Sutil on pole ahead of Nakajima and Kubica.

The lights go green and Badoer leads the way, on super-softs, followed by Buemi, Nakajima, Sutil and Fisichella.

Badoer crosses the line at 1:42.957, however, this is almost instantly beaten by Nakajima, Fisichella and then Sutil. The long, long line of cement dust, the result of Vettel's engine failure this morning, is still clearly visible.

As Buemi and Kovalainen both post fast sector time, Alonso remains the only driver who hasn't left the pits.

Sure enough, Buemi goes quickest, ahead of Rosberg and Raikkonen, only for Webber to take third with a 40.291. Moments later, Kovalainen takes the top spot with a 39.997. Elsewhere, Grosjean gets it all wrong at Turn 5.