Qualifying today was quite exceptional (except that ITV edited it too much in their late morning repeat). Despite it going against my personal advantage in the championship, as soon as Lewis started his last lap I found myself rooting for him. If he gets pole, I thought, he really does deserve to be champion. Alonso had been faster than him pretty much throughout the session. Lewis seemed troubled, even Martin Brundle said so. But Lewis was clearly quicker through the first two sectors – he was easily going to get pole – all we needed was some great commentary from James. And we got it! His brilliant ‘there’s a car on the track!’ couldn’t help but remind me of the famous ‘Some people are on the pitch. They think it’s all over. It is now!’.

On a related note, ITV pointed out that Lewis has been one or two tenths slower than Alonso recently. My feeling is actually that Lewis is faster than Alonso, but he’s losing perhaps five tenths with set-up problems. This is his first year, after all. So the fact that he’s only one or two tenths slower is not bad, but very, very good.