Even without the overnight rain, which carried on into the morning and affected this morning's GP3, GP2 and Porsche Supercup events, today's race promises to be a bit special.

Sebastian Vettel dearly wants to win his home race - one of the few boxes he has yet to tick - however, Mark Webber and Lewis Hamilton have other ideas.

Though Red Bull continues to put a brave face on things, the fact is that the 'feud' between its drivers continues to simmer away, brought back to the boil a couple of weeks back during the final stages of the British Grand Prix. Despite the Australian's claim that a win for someone other than Vettel would be good for the sport, the fact is he would dearly love to beat him on home ground - much like Vettel did at Melbourne earlier this year.

Then there's Lewis Hamilton, who despite the naysayers - of which he was one - has performed miracles thus far this weekend, losing out on pole by the smallest of margins but crucially giving Red Bull something to think about overnight.

Just minutes after the (increasingly tiresome) Eddie Jordan suggested that the wheels are falling off at McLaren, Hamilton stuck in a "wicked" lap just 0.055s shy of Webber's masterpiece. If that was the wheels coming off god help us when McLaren gets its act together.

As if the though of these three battlers isn't enough to make you go all gooey, we have Fernando Alonso in the mix, the Spaniard demonstrating for much of this weekend that Silverstone was no fluke.

Truth be told, most of us expected Alonso to be sitting alongside a Red Bull at the front of today's grid, however, that wicked lap from Hamilton, not to mention McLaren's numerous updates, leaves the Spaniard starting from fourth, right behind his former teammate at Woking.

That said, his Maranello outfit is fearful, admitting, ninety minutes before the race, that the cold changeable conditions are the very worst they could hope for.

Rain, and even better, changeable conditions, being the great leveller, the architect of some of the sport's greatest upsets, will be exceedingly welcome in the eyes of some drivers, and who's to says that a number of drivers, including Button and Schumacher haven't been doing rain dances in their hotel rooms overnight. And then there's Kobayashi.

Despite the fact that the forecasters promised us rain throughout the weekend, up until today we had seen just a few spots, though it has been uncharacteristically cold. With everyone on a dry set-up and no wet running we can expect fun and games from the outset indeed, we could be in line for another thriller. Maybe not in the sense of Montreal, but perhaps (hopefully) more of a Silverstone.

As if proof were needed just how bad it could be, David Coulthard spun a priceless Mercedes W196 during a demo run just a short while ago, almost taking out Mika Hakkinen, in a similarly rare car, in the process.

Other than the big guns, watch out for Sutil and Petrov, not to mention di Resta and Maldonado, while Chandhok will be keen to impress, certainly if he is to take part in his home race later this year.

Funny enough, as the pitlane opens, not only has the rain stopped, the track is clearly drying. However, there are dark rain clouds surrounding the circuit, the Nurburgring, like Monaco, enjoying its own little microclimate.

As the drivers make their way to the grid, some diving back into the pits so that they can complete another lap, burn off fuel, perform practice starts and get used to the track conditions, a few spots of rain begin to fall.

As the field heads off on the warm-up lap, the air temperature is 13 degrees C, while the track temperature is 15 degrees. The rain has stopped, but clearly there will be more. Indeed, Williams claims there will be a downpour around thirty minutes into the race, while Renault says fifteen minutes. At which point it starts to rain again.

Everyone is on slicks, the leading ten on the softs on which they qualified, and as the field heads off, and as the rain appears to stop it is unlikely that there will be any last moment diving into the pits for inters.

They're away, and Hamilton has the edge, Massa goes wide at the first corner while Alonso moves up on the inside of Vettel and passes the German. Further back di Resta spins while Button loses a couple of places.