Whether it can possibly be worth all the bother, today’s British Grand Prix will be a cracker.

Fernando Alonso starts from pole, Mark Webber second. But we are most interested in who is starting third, Herr Michael Schumacher. Those among us old enough to recall Michael’s First Coming will remember him being more than a little tasty in the wet. And let’s face it, the one thing we should be able to predict by now about this year’s home race is that rain will play its part.

It will be worth it. Every time we say Fernando Alonso is in the form of his life, he just gets better. Mark Webber, can we remind you, has pretty much matched Sebastian Vettel this year and leads the chase to Alonso in the championship. Vettel himself starts fourth, quite possibly behind where he should be. Lewis Hamilton starts eighth, most definitely behind where he should be. The top ten looks like this then; Alonso, Webber, Schumacher, Vettel, Massa, Kimi Raikkonen, Maldonado, Hamilton, Hulkenberg and Grosjean.

No Jenson Button there. He starts 18th having been dropped at the first cut after being caught out by yellow flags on a very fast lap. Paul di Resta starts 11th and in a right old grump as he thinks Alonso didn’t pay as much attention as Button did to similar warnings and so excluded Di Resta from Q3. Both Brits have points to prove. Button could just be spectacular. He’s never even seen the podium at Silverstone remember.

To be fair, it was just one of those crazy qualifying sessions, interrupted for over 90 mins in Q2 when the rain made the circuit un-drivable. Luck as much as skill and pace saw you through this one, not that it wasn’t worth watching. We expected statistics to show more opposite lock was applied in today’s one hour of qualifying than in the whole of last season. Wow. Just wow guys.

Crazy-fast racing cars on a crazy-fast circuit and little or no consistency of grip.