F1: Schumacher P1 - but it's a phryic victory in Q1 in Spain

Michael Schumacher will start today's Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona from 10th position. He scraped into the top ten and then did not even set a time in Q3. The reason was simple: his team was not even certain that they would be able to get him into Q2 if he adopted the same strategy as Red Bull, Renault and McLaren who decided that the hard compound is rubbish for the Barcelona race and needed to save as many sets of soft tyres as possible. Schumacher therefore joined Ferrari in trading a reduction in embarrassment for the tyres he will need in the race and burned a set of soft tyres for the primary purpose of not finishing down amongst Lotus, Virgin, HRT - and the increasingly lost Williams (or so it seemed at the beginning of the weekend).

Getting a clean lap early in the session, Schumacher posted the fastest time in Q1 - when the quick teams weren't trying to do better than not to be in the bottom set that would not make it to Q2.

Behind Schumacher, a little bit of history was being made: Team Lotus's Kovalainen battled with the hard tyres going off after just three laps, swapped to soft tyres for a final run and for the first time put the little team that can into Q2 with an on-the-limit drive to P15.

But it was between them that the interesting stuff was happening as tyre strategies are now being played out right from the beginning of qualifying: the teams that knew that, barring something really stupid happening, they would fill six of the top eight places (allowing for an Alonso miracle and an increasingly consistent Rosberg and / or Petrov having one of his frequent good days) did just enough, on hard tyres, to avoid being dropped.

In the Q2, again, Red Bull and McLaren again played it cool. Petrov as the sole remaining Renault after Heidfeld didn't even make it out of the garage for Q1 after a fire in morning practice, made a decent fist of it. But it was Pastor Maldonado who made everyone sit up and take notice: Barrichello went out of Q1 with a mechanical failure. His team-mate, in just his fifth F1 race, slammed the Williams into the top ten. And - much surprise - he did it without fighting the car around every corner: Maldonado is not the world's smoothest driver. In GP2, he had a disturbing habit of bringing the car back in a paper bag full of bits. But that's not because he's rubbish: it's because he drives a little outside his experience - which, paradoxically, is the only way to gain experience. In Barcelona, a track he knows well, in a car he has now done about 1000 racing kilometres in, he showed a fast and remarkably smooth drive. In fact, in-car footage showed little wheel movement; from outside, the car looked like it was on a slowing down lap. But it wasn't and Williams has been rewarded with a P9.

For the team, it is a huge vindication of the car that is said to be, in some respects, the most radical in this year's series. Put this in perspective: it is one place (and less than a tenth of a second) behind Massa in a Ferrari and only four places behind Button - the master of smooth driving.

Up at the pointy end, Vettel was aiming for his sixth pole in a row. It was more than ego: it was the first step in starting to claim Michael Schumacher's records for it was some ten years since the last driver, SCH, to achieve that aim.

But in the event, it was the emotional Mark Webber who, with watery eyes, claimed his first pole of the season, a clear three-tenths ahead of Vettel. Vettel was livid. To save tyres, he did not go out for a final run - which is traditionally where he puts in a lap that unsettles everyone else for the next day's race. Worse, Red Bull are still having problems with KERS. Webber's was working, Vettel's was still uncertain so he didn't use it. eight tenths back from Vettel, Hamilton is blunt: he does not expect to keep up with the Red Bulls during the race. Alonso, just 0.003 of a second behind Hamilton continues to defeat the best efforts of his car to ruin his day. Button was just 0.002 behind Alonso. He won't mind being demoted one place in the dying seconds of Q3: Ferrari have used more soft tyres which will hurt their race performance, they won't pull off the line as quickly as Hamilton who will dive across in front of Alonso, leaving Button a clear line on the clean side of the track while Petrov and Rosberg mug each other into the first high speed corner.

For Button, his race will depend on whether another tyre strategy mistake is made: courteous as ever, Button took part of the blame for the awful end to his Turkish GP: and on balance it is right that he should - in the past he has over-ridden instructions from the pit wall to change tyres. This time he stayed with the programme when he should have stayed out. He won't make that mistake again: he has the tyres in hand to do four stops - and therefore the option to change to three stops if the race unfolds in that direction. It's easier to drop a stop than to add one.

While few expect anything other than a Red Bull - probably Vettel's - to be first to cross the line with the other in second place, Button - who may benefit from less tyre wear than others on a track that has too many tyre-destroying 90 degree bends - may well be lining up for a well-deserved third.