F1: Ferrari's feverish work pays off; but still in trouble

It is often said that the test of a great driver is to be able to make the car do more than it is designed to do. In qualifying for today's Turkish Grand Prix, that's exactly what Alonso did. Never has a prancing horse been more appropriately affixed to a racing car as it jiggled, jumped and dived under him. Vitally Petrov in the Renault was able to set and forget the steering for most corners; Alonso worked frantically this way and that, constantly shifting the direction of the front tyres to try to hold the car on course.

That, it has to be remembered, is after Ferrari's three week push to develop a new front wing.

Fridays are never a good guide as to Ferrari's performance: they use it for testing rather than practice and have done so since the ban on in-season testing was brought in. And there is nothing wrong in that. But this weekend was different. Ferrari, so concerned at being so far off the pace in the opening rounds, used Friday for genuine practice. And they surprised everyone by the improvement the new front wing - and a couple of lesser changes - had made.

But Ferrari were not so confident. When qualifying started, the first run was done on soft tyres. Save for Ferrari, only the bottom handful of teams did that. Having had cars fail to make even Q2 in recent weeks, the one thing that the team was prepared to do was sacrifice a set of tyres to secure at least a top 17 grid position.

In the event, having used even more soft tyres, both Ferraris made it to the top 10. Massa decided a P10 start was good enough and elected not even to run in Q3, so saving a set of soft tyres.

The available tyres will prove critical for Alonso: he has burned two of his three available soft sets - and he has to start the race on one of those. That should not be such a hardship because it means that he has run two sets of soft tyres through a heat cycle - and earlier in the year, Webber showed that that can be an advantage.

But Massa has an uphill struggle. He can use new tyres (if our interpretation of the rules is correct) because he did not run in Q3. That might give him, in effect, one pit-stop advantage over Alonso.

Massa should not be under much pressure from behind: Barrichello and Sutil are behind him.

But all the fast men (plus a suddenly resurgent Michael Schumacher) are in front of him. He is going to find it dificult to capitalise on those new tyres - unless the front group remain in a pack and he can stick close behind them, passing them as they make their first tyre stop.

But Massa is dependent on making one stop less than the others. If other drivers go for a two-stop strategy, then Massa will be in trouble: the awesome Turn 8 shreds tyres with lateral forces that are only slightly less than those an Indianapolis (where additional compression causes very specific problems) and a one-stop strategy is almost certain suicide: we know that the soft tyres work well until they don't and then they are a liability. Exactly where that point is has not been demonstrated as no one has run long enough to find out for sure. But the general feeling in the paddock is that it will be somewhere between 12 and 15 laps in - with Massa's new tyres taking him to the upper end of that range.

For some cars - possibly Hamilton whose tyres take a beating on even a benign circuit - three stops will be the way to go: three soft "option" sets and one hard "prime" compound.

But, for the record, Vettel took pole from Webber. Rosberg took third - thrashing Schumacher again.

Top 10:

Vettel, Webber, Rosberg, Hamilton, Alonso, Button, Petrov, Schumacher, Heidfeld, Massa.