After Friday’s washout here at Spa-Francorchamps and with a high chance of rain expected in today’s race, the team decided it that it makes more sense to run one car on a full wet weather setup and forgoing a good starting grid rather than have both cars start high up the grid but struggles in the rain.

Technical Director Willy Rampf explains: “Due to the uncertainty over the weather tomorrow we hedged our bets and went for different strategies for each driver. We had to compromise between getting a perfect set-up for qualifying and trying to second guess what the weather might do, but Felipe and Jacques both did very good jobs and I think we are in reasonable shape now whatever conditions we have for the race. We can approach it with confidence.”

Despite running on a wet weather setup, Jacques did managed a good start during the first intermediate on his qualifying run, but fell out of contention as it became evident he was struggling with his car.

He said, “All round the lap my rear brakes were locking and I had no rear-end grip, so I was fighting the car the whole way. It’s disappointing because I’ve been quicker than Felipe so far this weekend and even though we didn’t change a thing on the car after practice this morning the balance had gone away by the time I did my qualifying lap. I have no idea why.”

The man of the hour was undoubtedly Felipe Massa as the Brazilian executed a clean and precise lap around the famed Spa Francorchamps, crossing the start/finish line with an astounding 1:47.867s, almost a second off his teammate’s laptime.

Massa later said, “That was a really good lap! The balance was good and I didn’t make any mistakes. This morning the car was oversteering a bit, especially on old tyres, so we gambled a little and made some changes to the set-up which worked really well for qualifying. It was definitely a step forward. Now I’m looking forward to the race. There’s a high chance of rain tomorrow, but we are in good shape whatever happens.”

Here’s how the two drivers fared throughout today free practice and qualifying session at Spa:

Driver (Chassis) 3rd Free Practice 4th Free Practice Qualifying, grid pos. J. Villeneuve (C24-04) 1:51.655, 15th 1:48.204s, 12th 1:48.889s, 14th F. Massa (C24-0) 1:50.877, 13th 1:48.551s, 14th 1:47.867s, 7th