In a late night e-mail exchange, a respected McLaren insider revealed two things; firstly that Blue Velvet is one of his favourite films - to this day he is still known to 'sing' In Dreams when there's a Karaoke evening - and secondly that he feels confident his team may win today.

Ok, so he was a little inebriated, and it was approaching 1 am local time, but, ignoring the fact that Blue Velvet is a great film, all the more so courtesy of the chilling performance given by the late Dennis Hopper as Frank Booth, there is the very real prospect of McLaren pulling off a surprise victory today.

Red Bull went into the weekend as favourites, indeed, they've taken pole position, however, there have been reliability issues throughout the weekend, not least a rollbar failure for Sebastian Vettel on his final flying lap in Q3 yesterday.

While the Red Bulls are the class of the field, reliability continues to be a major concern, and the McLarens have shown remarkable pace here, witness the fact that Hamilton and Button qualified third and fourth, all four covered by 0.486.

Therefore, maybe, just maybe, today's race won't be the Red Bull steamroller we were expecting.

Other than Red Bull and McLaren, it looks as though the scrap for the remaining points will, once again, be between the Mercedes, who appear more competitive here, Felipe Massa and Robert Kubica.

While Mercedes has made progress, there are worried faces just along the pitlane where Ferrari's 800th Formula One World Championship Grand Prix is shaping up to be one of those events the team will want to forget about as soon as possible. More worrying however, is the fact that the Maranello outfit appears to be sliding backwards, a situation not helped by the fact that Fernando Alonso continues to make needless mistakes that simply make things harder for he and his team.

Both Renaults are in top ten qualifying positions, however, once again it appears that Kubica bears the real responsibility for his team's fortunes. That said, Petrov has looked good here all weekend, he likes the track and has raced here a couple of times in GP2.

While Kamui Kobayashi did well to qualify in the top ten, the Japanese driver and his team will be happy merely to finish today's race, such is the Swiss outfit's appalling reliability. Consequently, keep an eye on Sutil giving another sterling performance in the Force India and also Sebastien Buemi in the Toro Rosso.

Williams continues to disappoint while Lotus continues to establish itself as the best of the newbies. As for Hispania and Virgin, both teams clearly have their problems, a situation not helped by the restrictions on testing. However, the one good thing about Virgin's struggle is that at least we're not subjected to the awful grinning Richard Branson every fortnight.

With the swathes of empty grandstands there are fears for this event's future, even though Bernie Ecclestone claims that it is safe. Ironically this is one of the few tracks that Hermann Tilke can be proud of.

That said, having seen the empty seats in Monaco and Barcelona - and not everything can be put down to the recession or the ash cloud - F1 needs to up its game if it is to give the World Cup a run for its money over the coming weeks.